How hiring international talent can transform your workplace | with Karin Bjorkman

Sam. Very welcome to episode 133 of a shortlist. My name is Johnny Campbell, CEO and co founder of Sophie's Hands and your host for today's podcast and live broadcast. And I'm broadcasting today from the home of Guinness here in Ireland, the Guinness Storehouse. So for those of you watching live, you can see behind me a background of this number one tourist attraction in Ireland, which is visitor area where they show you how to make Guinness. And I'm broadcasting on the day of International Women's Day. And I'm here today because I'm at the Talent Summit, a conference for senior HR folks here in Ireland, the largest of its colony, where we're discussing the new world of flexibility, international work, some of the challenges that organizations are going through around the tug of war as it's framed from the summit conference today between employers and employees and what's happening. And this is against the backdrop of tech layoffs dominating the news headlines. We know the availability of talent may have increased, or at least that's certainly the perception. However, it's still a really tight nail market in most countries and it continues to be super difficult to hire and create talent for many organizations. This requires thinking a little bit outside the box. In this episode in the shortlist, we're going to examine the benefits of hiring globally and how this can be a game changer for many organizations. So the added value that international hiring can bring to an organization is significant, of course, in terms of skills, experience and international exposure, but also, as matters increase, diversity and greater innovation. But how do you go about hiring international talent? Where do you start? What are some of the pitfalls and benefits? Joining us today on this shortlist, excuse the noise as we're coming from a live, busy environment here today, but we're joined by Karen Bjorkman. She's the founder of beyond it and Karen is a consultative partner in talent involvement with more than two decades of experience in international recruiting in the Netherlands and Sweden. She spent 17 years with induction Roads Recruitment Agency as a recruitment and executive consultant before setting up the Swedish army for Dutch base. And last summer, Karen set up her own agency, beyondo, connecting Canada's to international job opportunities. Karen, you're so very welcome to the show. It's wonderful to have you here. Tell us where you're joining us from. Tell us about the snow, where you are today and why this topic is particularly of interest to me.

Yeah, I'm joining you from Stockholm and thank you for having me. You having me on your show. We had cold orange Last night, so we had half a meter of snow, so we had to dig up the car to bring our son to school this morning. So normally in March it's very nice spring weather here, but no, we got snow again. Well, first of all, I'm a huge fan of social talent and I've been following your education and I have black belts, so very proud of that. And I'm very passionate about international recruitment as I have been living abroad myself and have experienced how it is to move to new countries, learning new languages, looking for new jobs in new countries. And I made it my profession to help others in doing that. So I've had the privilege to work with very big organizations to help them with the recruitment and especially then of recruitment of international talents.

So Karen, as we broadcast in March 2023, it seems that everybody is embracing the opportunity of hiring international talent. And you know, maybe they think about hybrid working as well. But this isn't something new to you. You've been doing this for a long time. So maybe talk to me about International recruiting for pre 2020. Tell me a little bit about that environment. Maybe share your story of being an international employee of different organizations in different countries and what your experience was like as well.

Yeah, so I've lived in Switzerland where I also did my education and there I met my Dutch husband which brought me to the Netherlands and were looking for a job in the Netherlands. I didn't speak any Dutch at that moment, so I was looking for a job where I could maybe use switch Swedish. And then I came in contact with Untouchables, which is a recruitment agency for internationals in the Netherlands. They only recruit non Dutch speakers. So I looked for a job via them, but then they ended up hiring me. So I did my career within their organization for yeah, and my experience there is that you come to a new country and not learning, not knowing the language, but you do have a good background, educational background and good work experience and you really want to, you know, get going. And Untouchables is there a very good example on what is pre March 2023? Because they celebrated their 2025th anniversary two years ago during the COVID But they started from day one hiring international talents. So there I was setting up, helping them, setting up an office in Eindhoven. They were only five years old and they had already 20 employees out of 15 different nationalities, for example. So it is possible if you're just open to it. And it's a very good example that you can create so much more when mixing different nationalities.

So at the conference I'm at here today, the first keynote speaker shared some data around hybrid and remote working in 2023. And the speaker compared the companies who are office only, the companies who are hybrid, and the companies who are, you know, online only, let's say, are completely, completely, completely remote. And it showed that the number of companies who are office only is decreasing between 2023 and 2022. It showed that the number of companies who are fully remote is decreasing like a substantial amount. But the number of companies who are hybrid has gone up just I think, something like 52 or 53%. So seeing this shift, that definitely office only is currently becoming the exception. And we're seeing a kind of revolt though against pure remote. So where does that leave us when we look at hiring international talent? Do you think hiring international talent will be as much a focus as it perhaps has been the last two years, considering maybe the data suggests companies are increasingly embracing something in the middle, a hybrid form. Does hybrid require people to therefore be largely in the same location?

Yeah, so there are of course sectors where they really do need talents, which is, for example, they're not present on the Swedish market, where we mainly operate. Then they need to go abroad to see, okay, where do we find this talent with the expertise that we need? And then depending on the role and depending, I mean, for example, if it's engineering or construction, etc. It needs to be local, then you need to be in the country. But if there are roles where you can work in a hybrid model or even a remote model, your pool of talents is of course a lot bigger than just taking what's present locally.

Do you see it as something that is dominant in particular sectors, like areas like software, tech? Do you think such companies are more likely to have very international workforces versus, let's say construction or banking, in terms maybe more traditional, perhaps in each country would have only a domestic and very local national workforce.

Yeah, exactly. Well, working in it, it's predominantly English spoken. So those positions, they are being taken or are highly international talents are then highly wanted. But on the other hand, I thinking like, okay, why only within it? Why couldn't we then, for example, use English in other areas of sectors? And I think the construction business in Sweden, they need a lot of mancraft or handicraft or staff, so they will need to step over to speak English, for example, in order to get the people that they need. And I think the obstacle in embracing the international talents and wanting to integrate them into your organization is because organizations don't know how to go about because they think like, oh yeah, but there is a language barrier. Yeah, but if you look beyond the language barrier, if you say no to someone because of a language barrier, you might say no to a future CEO, for example. So it's very much on looking to, okay, where do we need to change in order to open up, to see the possibilities or to create the possibilities? I see that with many companies, for example, a lot of expats that comes on for CEO roles for three years. I mean, I know it's an incentive to work for a company. You're doing internal management, traineeship, etc. And you get to go to a country to be the country manager, for example. But if you're going to a country for only three years, you're not going to learn the local language because you know you're going to be sent out three years later to a next country. But then you are operating in an organization as a non local speaker. So why can't the middle management and also be non local speakers, for example? We're having the mix because, yeah, the higher management, then it's okay not to speak the local language, but the middle management, they need to. So I think like, okay, if organizations open up to see the benefits on the talent, if you open up then to have English as a company language, then you can welcome so much many more talents if you just do not close the doors just because of the local language. However, if you're an international company that wants to open up in Sweden and you're going to do sales in Sweden, for example, then I do understand that you need the local language in that sense, but so much more than only sales in Swedish in that sense. So I think, yeah, removing obstacles where people think that, oh yeah, but it's that scary or we don't know how to do it, etc. Then companies will could go a longer way.

I mentioned at the start that there's a massive shortage of skills in so many different areas and therefore other companies are hiring internationally to fill roles and international talent to fill roles. But is it just for that reason? Do you think that companies should look at international talent? Are there other benefits apart from, well, we can't find anyone locally, so you have to find international person. What are the other benefits, do you think of bringing in international talent even if it is a local talent that could do the job?

Yeah, I mean by opening up and look beyond to what your local talent is, you can increase the number of good people that you can hire. But of course I Mean, except for all those cliche things that it increases innovation and the creativity. You can just create a better mix. We make the fun. We joke about if you were cooking a soup and you just add salt and pepper, then you have a flat soup, but if you add some basil and other spices to it, you create a better soup. So, yeah, why don't do that with your staff in that sense?

I love that analogy. So it makes me think then about the move to a lot of diversity focus for organizations and organizations. We focus about diverse workforces and often they look at, let's say, the color of somebody's skin, their gender, etc. Which absolutely important factors that mix it up and drive more diversity. But a lot of the conversation is about diversity because the consumer or the client of the customer is increasingly diverse and it's very difficult to produce. For example, an Irish person making a soup for someone in Kenya won't have an appreciation of what is. What is preferable to the Kenyan palate, because that person only knows what Irish people like. So talk to me about this, you know, increasingly international world in which we operate in and the importance therefore of your workforce representing the diversity of your customer base.

Yeah, exactly. You're saying that you need to mirror the customer base that you have. We have a major streaming service here in Sweden. They say that we have customers from the age of one, for example, till 99. And they're from. From Sweden, all around the globe back to Sweden. So we need to mirror our employees to, to what our customers are. And if people or companies has that mindset, they will open up to, to do even more. More sales. I mean, if, if, if. Yeah, unconsciously you're excluding a lot of customers just by thinking one path. But if you open up and say, like, okay, we will make brown face creams, rather only blank face creams. I mean, then you open up to sell even more, for example. So it's about thinking on, okay, where can we sell our products and where, where are our customers? And then mirror then the organization, and then the organization is then very motivated to make it happen.

I spoke recently with a VP of HR from a massive food company who make a lot of consumer foods and other brands we have in our cupboards. And he was telling me that their company's policy is around their product innovation, for example, is to look at international brands. And they have many international brands, soft drinks and foods that we all know well. But they also have extreme, very local brands that they keep local because they're recognizing that cultures, there's Common brands and tastes across many different cultures. But different cultures are different preferences and tastes. And it's really important for them to have that variety, to have folks who understand local tastes and can cater for that, but also can build international brands and products and that kind of local experience where you combine that local combination with global. To your soup analogy, you don't want to all, you know, eat Campbell's tomato soup.

Exactly.

The flavor and the richness is in the diversity of those different products. But tell to me about, you know, the practical steps of. If you're an organization that is predominantly, let's call it a monoculture, it's not a, let's say, traditional business would be where, you know, you hired domestically, you hired from one region, not many international staff. Maybe you've had a few over the years. How does one go about beginning to hire more international talent? And then what are some of the challenges that you might not expect that exist in trying to bring in international talent to that homogenous culture?

Well, first of all, there's so many things that you can do, but starting with only small steps would help. I think looking to your organization is key and that the whole organization is on the same page. I mean, you can't have a hiring manager who does not want to move away from the homogeneous group and you have an HR manager who really wants to embrace their diversity. So everyone needs to be on the same page. So education within the company is very important. As I said, I'm a very huge fan of the social talent and the education of the people who recruits the people is very important because you can't have someone who has, for example, no international experience then sitting in recruiting international people. So it's very important to train the organization or look into what do we need in order to open up. So you can't say like, okay, well, we need international talents because it's good for us. No, you need to be ready for it as an organization. And also the willingness. And if you don't have that, then it's going to be different or difficult. But there are so many steps. I mean, for example, hiring a recruiter who's international, for example, or send all the people for social talent courses, for example. So small steps. And I hear from a lot of clients that they say, like, oh, yeah, but there's so many things we need to do. Where do we start? And it's like, yeah, just start with the beginning and do small steps and. And then you will see the things will come automatically. But you need to have the willingness and the cooperation from the whole organization.

Are there often challenges, Karen, when it comes to adapting to qualifications? For example, so accountancy qualifications. I used to recruit accountants and I used to own the international recruitment like you. And I found obviously that there's accountancy qualifications in the US where they have the CPA qualification in England and Wales and other kind of antipodean regions, it's chartered accountants, certified management accountants. Within markets like Italy, you didn't follow a formal qualification in accountancy. It was more your degree and master's. And I found it very difficult to move international talent around because there was a lack of understanding of the standardization of qualifications. Does that happen in many different industries where a technical qualification is required, that there's kind of inability to translate different qualifications across different borders?

Yes, of course, there are a lot of, like, institutes or organizations that do translate degrees in that sense, so that you can, you can, you can see, okay, your education in that country is equal to this country. And I think that's also very important to raise that awareness as well. Because if you have recruiters who only knows about this education in Sweden or this education in the uk, they will only seek candidates that comes from that education. So again, awareness from what the degrees can be and not being afraid of challenging that as well. You're mentioning the finance area. I would say that that would be sort of okay to transform your skills to other countries because there are numbers and the gaps and IFRS standards are fairly similar now all over. But it would be maybe more difficult for a legal counsel, for example, that really needs to know the local legal regulations. But yes, you're mentioning something that is important, but I think there again, it's not knowing what other educations could be. So awareness and also, I mean, okay, I'm convinced, okay, I work with recruitment and I advise clients, but I'm convinced that there is no perfect match. So I think you also have to look to a number of things when looking to a profile. Not only the credentials, but also what have they been doing and what can they do with the experience that they have and also the personality. What would be a fit? And I think looking more objective to a profile, I think then you can, I wouldn't say you can always match everything in, but then you will increase the possibilities in finding solutions.

So about 15 years ago, Karen, my job involved recruiting people to come to the Cayenne Islands and to the Caribbean in general. And whilst focusing on the skills, the talent, trying to attract people, assess them is really important. Half the job was involved in the Non job elements, which typically involved whether the person had a family who was going to relocate with them, whether you had to research schools, try and find a job for the partner, look at the suitability of the local environment to their background and whether they were successful there. I found it was an immensely different job than moving people in one country, which is what I'd done before to that. It was a very different skill set. It was much more encompassing. You have to become expert in so many more things and you have to balance the legal issues, such as not asking about someone's family circumstances early in a process because it might bias them. But you still practically have to understand, do they have a spouse, do they have children in school? Because these are real considerations that help them get there. So what's your advice and your experience in that bigger piece of mobility, which is actually the practicality of moving a person who usually is attached or often attached to a bigger family, and how do you balance those needs with the typical recruiting process?

Yeah, exactly, because if the spouse is not happy, that the recruitment won't be happy either. So it's a very important ingredient in the relocation and international movement. However, it does, like international recruitment, does not necessarily need to be that you are actually moving one family or one person to another country with a job. I mean, yes, with the expats regulations, yes, but in, in today's world, there are so many people that are choosing to move themselves. So. So you, you can recruit people that really want to relocate or they have already relocated. For example, at Undouchbos we were making jokes about that. 99% of the recruitments that we did was recruiting love refugees. So you move to a country. I'm one myself because I met a Dutch person and I moved to the Netherlands. So you have the intention on moving to a country wanting to integrate, willing to adapt and be in a country and be able to use your skills. And that's another aspect of international talents as well, because then you don't really actually take them from one country and move them because you need the skills. The skills might be around the corner even if they're not locals, you know, so.

So this growing newer area of international hiring where you don't actually need to physically move anybody and typically involves some legal implications. Right. So we've seen this big growth of the EOR employer record organizations. So explain that to me. Explain the mechanics of how people actually do it and do it legally so that you will have an employee who may never move to a different country, may stay in their home country and you don't necessarily have an office or a legal jurisdiction there. How do employers get around that or how do they work around those systems?

Do you mean that if I would say stay in Sweden, but I will work for our Irish company or.

Yeah, you can work for Social Talent, but you stay in Sweden and you live in Sweden 350 days of the year. So talk to me about how do I make that happen? Because it's not as simple as I just give you a contract.

No, exactly. Because if you live in a country, you would need to pay local taxes and then you would need to show that you have a local income. So should I work for Social Talent, but living in Sweden, there are opportunities via a number of companies that can legally hire me in Sweden on a social talent talent or like on a contract with them, but working them for you? Me living in Sweden. So it's this remote working construction. So it's. It's possible.

And how have you seen companies handle the challenges of normalizing salaries across markets? So, for example, if I had a team of product managers all based in the uk, I decide that my next two roles are going to be hired internationally and I hire somebody based in Lisbon and someone based in San Francisco. Those two markets are very different salaries than the UK market, let's say. So how are you seeing hiring companies balance those different challenges today?

Yes, of course. Yeah. Salaries are according to national markets, but you see a number of companies applying secondary benefits that are from the country where the head office is, for example. I mean, you see, I'm not sure if I can mention any names, but you see a lot of major Swedish companies having. What Sweden is very known for is maternity leave for a year or a year and a half, and that the partners can split this. I mean, on International Women's Day, this is a nice topic to raise. They give that to their employees in America also, for example. So you can move around those benefits and basically you can do as a company what you want, as long as it's not less than the local legislation.

So, Simon Johnson, who's listening live asking. So you're basically outsourcing your personal payroll administration. Is that what we're saying here, that, you know, you're outsourcing the legal and administrative burden and responsibilities of payroll to a company as a legal entity in the jurisdiction that you want to hire?

Exactly, yes. Should I come and work for you? But wanting to stay in Stockholm? Yes.

And so, Simon, just for my context there. So at Social Talent, we've embraced international hiring. We used to always, of course, hire lots of international talent in Ireland with an organization that only has an Irish legal entity. We were restricted by the people actually living in Ireland, but we had a diverse international group of people, as you do in the Irish market. But since 2020, we worked with an employer of record, an outsourced partner. We use a company called Deal, but there are many and they act as the leading employer in that company country. But for all intents and purposes, the employee is an employee of ours. And just as you mentioned, Karen, we offer the same benefits to those employees, but we do it through the payroll of that organization. They manage the legal obligations. But there's another side to that, which is sometimes the jurisdiction you're hiring in may have better legal requirements around benefits. You might have more benefits than legally you're obliged to give to somebody in the market that you as a company don't necessarily give. The US employers have this a lot. Let's say a US employer might give 10 days holiday on vacation a year, hires someone in Sweden, they can't give them 10 days vacation because you have to follow Sweden.

But they, they won't take the job.

And they won't take the job. So I think there is that piece where it's not only do you have to normalize it, but you have a local advisor who helps you with those laws and requirements, working hours. And there's many. It's not just payload administration. There are a whole host of mutual legal responsibilities. Understand? But tell me therefore, what is the benefit of having a partner who has this expertise? Surely that plays a part if you're considering international hiring. And it's better to have a partner who really understands this. And maybe you could walk me through some of the benefits of working with an expert like yourself in your organization that have that knowledge.

Yeah, absolutely.

So what are some of those benefits? What are some of the kind of key reasons why an organization will partner with an organization like yourselves to, to. To. To do this or to understand this.

Okay. So. So I don't, I, I don't predominantly do the, the payrolling for, for other. So I do mainly direct recruitment. But I have partners then doing this. Yeah. For organizing the remote work. But the benefit that you can get then by working with such a partner is that it's done correctly and that you do offer your employees what's more conformed to the market and that you, that you do it right. Because you want your employees to be happy. Of course, so you should go by the books.

And of course you don't want to be sued either. There's always the legal risk as well, which is interesting.

Exactly.

I want to go back to the topic of the diversity of the talent and that potential. So, from your either empirical evidence or your anecdotal evidence, working with customers, what are the benefits of international teams? Teams staffed with people from many different nationalities and backgrounds? What do you see as the core benefits? And where would you say the most benefit can be found in terms of what kind of roles or sectors do you think the most benefit from having an international team can be found?

Well, first of all, yeah, as I said, the cliche things in creativity and innovation, but you have a larger pool of talents and you, if you go with that, you will also mirror the society and you can gain a lot of trust from your clients also by doing that. If I look to the international teams that I've been working with, you enrich yourself as a person with working with someone who is different to you. One could think like, oh, yeah, language barrier. Oh, no, that person is so different to me. But you learn so much from others. Okay, you can learn from someone who's native Swedish as well. But there are other aspects that you learn. I mean, it's. I, I personally think it's fantastic to learn how others are celebrating certain traditions, for example, or how people see different things. I mean, we are all biased. And if you have only grown up in one country and you've never been abroad, you only know your story, sort of. But if you speak to other people from various backgrounds, the mix of.

Who.

You can become yourself is so much better.

So what's your advice if you're going to try and find international talent to come work for you in a different country, short of, of course, advertising it, and people reaching out and saying, hi, I'd like to work for you from a different country, how would you go about sourcing or trying to find somebody who's probably more open to a role like that? Like, do you look for certain things? Are there keywords, particular backgrounds you search for? How do you distinguish people who are more likely to want to do this and be successful in doing so from all of the people out there?