A while ago I was writing about how globalisation might help us in relocation, how instead of whining that we’re losing the identity because of all the global brands we can switch our thinking to seeing positives of this situation and use it to your advantage.
Have you ever worked on a project with your team being spread across multiple locations? Have you ever encountered problems in communication in between the teams based in different countries? Have you ever thought about what you can do to make this type of cooperation more efficient? I recently have and here’s a couple of […]
So you’ve now had the days when you loved the new city or country you moved in to. You’ve also been through some tough times where you just wanted to go home and never come back to this weird and intimidating place. After the whole spectrum of (completely normal!) emotions that you’ve experienced there should […]
So you’ve spent a couple of weeks, maybe even months enjoying yourself and saying all the good things about your new home. There’s a high chance you will go back to those feelings. Really! Before that happens though you might need to face the downside of moving abroad: Da Culture Shock.
No, no, it’s not going to be a post about marriage, don’t worry. Many smart books describe how the phases of the culture shock run, that there are four (you can find them under various names, but the idea behind them is the same): Honeymoon stage, Frustration stage, Adjustment stage and Acceptance stage.
Culture shock is more than just differences between where you’re from and where you arrived. It has its origins in our childhood environment, in the social groups we’ve been surrounded by and a part of, in our everyday life that we have been leading until the moment of moving abroad.
I hope you enjoyed the series of posts about one of the approaches to identifying dimensions of cultures, created by Erin Meyer. This post is supposed to provide a brief summary of the dimensions so that you have them in one place as well as encourage you to explore the dimensions in more detail.
Let me tell you a short story about George. George is a business development manager and that role requires him to acquire new customers frequently and persuade people to buy his products or services. He needs to frequently find arguments, prepare presentations, do his research in order to provide the results that his employer expects. […]
So… you’d like to hire some really good employees for your new project, but somehow it turns out that your candidate pool is very diverse culturally, including people from all over the world who are interested in that role. You review the applications, you interview them all and although you’re impressed by many of the […]
I have been working in recruiting for over four years now, dealing with international applications from all over the world for over three. What I keep seeing and hearing when talking to other recruiters though is that both during the initial selection process as well as interviews the cultural differences have their impact. And it’s […]