Question

a. What selection criteria are most important in choosing people for an overseas assignment? Identify and describe the four that you judge to be of most universal importance and defend your choice. b. What other criteria would you consider in choosing people for the country you are analyzing for your project?

Answer 1

1. Most important selection criteria in choosing people for an overseas assignment

1. Knowledge skills and abilities are the first and foremost requirements for choosing the personnel for overseas assignment. Personnel with right set of KSAs will be able to deal with new and different work cultures. Personnel equipped with suitable qualities need not be trained and monitored continuously; they will produce the results in their own style.
2. Personnel being sent for overseas assignment must have quality to adapt to the situations. Every country has different culture and different language. Personnel must have high adaptability to work in different cultures and must have motivation to learn new languages. Adaptability to culture and language will also remove job stress and enhance efficiency.
3. The personnel being considered for an overseas assignment must have sound health; both physical and mental. Overseas assignment comes with a baggage of stress, coping with new environment, adapting to food etc. an individual with good physical health will adjust to the environment and food, while an individual with good mental health will be able to deal with stressful situations. Frequent spells of physical/mental breakdown will result in wastage of time, cost and thereby renders an employee inefficient.
4. Family life and number of dependents on the individual being considered is another important criterion to be considered while choosing personnel for overseas assignment. High dependency on the personnel will distract them from performing the job as much time is spent on dealing with family issues who are staying far away from them.

2. Other criteria in choosing people an overseas project

1. The personnel being considered for an overseas assignment should have motivation to work abroad. In the absence of motivation, all other factors that are work in favor of personnel become irrelevant.
2. To work on an overseas assignment, the personnel must have leadership qualities. Demonstration of leadership qualities is an added advantage in managing and leading the team abroad. Working and leading the people abroad is a challenge and good leadership skills help an employee in dealing with people.
3. Every country has different business processes, different software and different technical specifications. Employees who are chosen for an overseas assignment must have knowledge and skills to deal with different technical specifications of various countries.