ROULHAC ENTERPRISES

By Rudolph Young

An overseas academic job may sound romantic, but once reality sets in, it can be a daunting experience. As a human-resources manager who has worked for organizations employing more than 60 nationalities and an occasional coach of expatriate academic administrators, I have often heard expatriates say that relocating from one country to another has been one of the most nerve-racking and disruptive events of their lives. The adjustment to a new job is often much harder when moving to a completely different culture without the kind of support that comes from friends, family, and regular daily contacts.

When things go wrong for expatriate employees, their costs may include unemployment, delayed career development, damaged relationships, and interruptions in their children's education. For universities and colleges, importing employees is not cheap. Relocation, housing, education assistance, travel, and repatriation can make the cost of hiring an expatriate triple that of a domestic employee. Human-resources administrators often have to manage the expectations of "wannabe expats." I recently received a call from a job candidate who refused to accept an offer to move to the Middle East unless his family was given an apartment with a view of the mountains. He was negotiating for a job in the desert, where there were no mountains.

Given the high personal and institutional stakes of relocating, it is critical to know what personality traits help people thrive as expatriates. But processes for the selection, orientation, and development of expatriate employees have often not been based on solid psychological research. Instead, administrators may act in a knee-jerk way because of the need to quickly fill positions. In some cases, they may choose candidates who are the most technically competent, even though the characteristics that make them successful in their home countries do not necessarily make them well suited to international jobs.

A question that I am regularly asked is whether there is an ideal-expatriate profile. I answer with the popular summary of Charles Darwin's thinking: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Many people do not adjust well to a new culture, language, and job. I have seen aggression, anxiety, depression, irritability, and feelings of low self-worth as a consequence. Negative physiological reactions such as insomnia, backache, and asthma also often occur.

Personality is the foundation of an expatriate's success because it shapes how someone copes in different situations. Administrators hiring expatriates should take stock of their personalities through structured interviews, tests, and reference checks. Personality assessment helps indicate risk for both the job applicant and the hiring institution. The goal is to produce individually crafted development plans for expatriates—and their spouses, when it applies—to help them prepare for the assignment, make the adjustment, and, in effect, manage their own personalities. Introverts, for instance, could get assistance in developing social support. Many administrators fail to use proper personality assessment, and the research behind it, because there is often a shortage of well-qualified candidates, and there are concerns that candidates may be put off by too much testing.

Many organizational-psychology researchers have investigated the importance of the "big five" personality factors: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. When the results of assessments are interpreted correctly, analysis of these five factors can be useful in determining which job applicants might succeed as expatriates. In my own work, I have added other dimensions for expatriate assessment. These include measurements of how effective people are at working in intercultural situations, stress-management ability, personal hardiness (ability to cope with negative events in a resilient and resourceful manner), and emotional intelligence (the ability to gauge an appropriate and constructive emotional response).

How does assessment play out for job applicants? When interviewing a top-tier candidate, I typically set up a videoconference led by a relevant expert. Much of the interview, of course, would revolve around the candidate's academic, teaching, or managerial abilities. But I routinely ask some questions intended to give me a sense of personality. I might ask about a time when the candidate worked on a team, and the challenges of that situation. With probing follow-up questions, I can get a sense of factors like leadership style, conscientiousness, and openness to others' ideas. Later, applicants would take some written tests designed to measure key personality traits. If candidates want to, they can upload to my institution's recruitment Web site videos showing them teaching in a classroom or giving a public lecture. Some candidates might be asked to participate in a role-playing exercise, such as making a presentation to a board of directors. And in calling references, I or another administrator ask some personality-related questions, like how the candidate deals with conflict.

When assessing a prospective employee's personality and potential success, an institution also has to consider how that person may affect colleagues. A dour or volatile person can disturb what was once a peaceful workplace.

The "big five" personality factors relate to expatriate success in surprising ways and cluster with other traits to accelerate adjustment or derail it. Job candidates who are open to new experiences also tend to be imaginative and have a greater likelihood of understanding and constructively dealing with complex issues.

Extroverts generally have related habits that help them adapt to a new culture. At the end of a business day, for example, an introverted consultant may want to go back to his hotel and work on a project, thinking such dedication will get the project to completion. An extroverted consultant may choose to socialize with local hosts, developing a rapport with them and showing an interest in their culture, which helps build relationships that make it easier to get work done in a professional setting.

Extroverts, at ease in starting conversations with strangers, pick up on foreign phrases, greetings, and nonverbal cues that act as social lubricants. They get energy from others and are more likely to be able to find the kind of people they need in certain situations like doctors or auto mechanics. Those who tend to prefer their own company may perform well in their home countries, where they already understand the culture and have friends, but are more apt to flop in a new environment. Learning a new culture can't be done on the Internet: It comes with in-person practice.

It's common sense that an agreeable person would probably thrive better in a new place than a disagreeable person. But apart from a pleasant nature, agreeable people often have other habits, like praising others, that help them succeed as expatriates. And there are subtle forms of disagreeableness: Those who consistently make comparisons between a new culture and their home, be it Kansas City or Mumbai, are often trouble, I have found. A manager overseeing an office with people from a dozen nationalities, including some whose home countries may be at war with each other, doesn't always want to "celebrate the differences," and doesn't welcome people who constantly look at their new country's culture through a home-country lens.

I also look for the right degree of conscientiousness in candidates. In a new culture, employees need to set up a framework for how they will get things done, whether in their work or family lives. In an expatriate's personal life, plans to go to the gym four times a week, have the children Skype their grandmother on Thursdays, or make reservations for the next holiday can help with homesickness. At work, setting a schedule of deadlines obviously helps to get a project done. But when conscientious people cross the line into rigidity, compulsiveness, or perfectionism, they can have trouble adapting. In Asia and the Middle East, process can be as important as results. Someone who is focused only on personal goals can increase conflict and offend many people. Flexibility is an important part of the conscientious person's makeup in the international professional world.

That process is as important as product was made clear to me in one recent cross-cultural encounter. I watched a group of Europeans meet with some Arab decision-makers, and I am sure the Europeans thought everything went swimmingly. They walked away with what they thought was a sure-fire, signed contract, ignoring some subtle negative signs. Among other things, they didn't realize the decision-makers were a larger group of people than the ones they focused their presentations on. In the Arab world, although decisions tend to be made—and overturned—at the top, key decision-makers often consult widely and have favored advisers who cannot be marginalized. A week later, after the Europeans went home, the "contract" was canceled.

The visitors should have spent more time trying to understand the power structure and then focused some of their attention on the influential advisers. Some observers might say that the Europeans did not have the relevant knowledge of how decisions were made in the country they were visiting. I would argue that if some of their team members had been more outgoing, more culturally perceptive, and more open to a decision-making process that was different from the one used in their home country, then they would have had a better chance at success. It takes adaptive personalities to learn such important cultural signals.

Editor's note: This column is the first one in a series.

Rudolph Young holds an M.B.A. degree and a doctorate in organizational psychology. He works as the human-resources director for the Higher Colleges of Technology, the largest public higher-education institution in the United Arab Emirates. The views expressed here are his own and not that of his institution.


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