Imported talent: recruitment of foreign nationals
27th April 2012 · 0 Comments
Certain types of job positions, such as high-level technology roles, always cry out for more talent than most businesses can quickly or comfortably access. But there is one piece of the puzzle that more companies could be looking at — funding and budgeting to attract foreign nationals as valuable additions to the team, from visa acquisition all the way through the green-card process.
Now obviously this isn’t a political blog, but without delving too deeply into those waters we can fairly say that different groups have different visions of how to make this facilitation easier, ranging from changing the immigration laws outright to finding ways of making the existing laws work more effectively for importing foreign talent. One challenge comes from the fact that the federal government currently sets the immigration quotas for the year at the beginning of October — and two weeks later, the quota has been fulfilled. Businesses then have to go back to stealing talent from each other for the rest of the year, while the new employees can use their six-year visas to jump from company to company.
Another challenge: This type of funding doesn’t come cheap — altogether, it represents a $15,000 to $17,000 process. But when you really need access to that key player, at some point you have to ask yourself what’s more important, time or money. It also goes without saying that highly security-sensitive positions can present extra challenges to this process. But if you need the talent and can’t find it here, what do you do — leave the position unfilled? Delay the project?
These are important questions worthy of further thought. Feel free to chime in with your own views on the subject!
