A director in Helsinki and a director in Hartford can be two levels apart.
Joshua Hollander ·
International companies hiring their first leader in the United States tend to make the same mistake, and it is rarely about strategy. The strategy usually travels well, but the org chart does not, because the same title describes a different job in a different market.
A director in Helsinki and a director in Hartford can be two levels apart. In one company the title runs a function and reports to the CEO, and in another it manages a team two layers below that. The words on the offer letter are identical, and nobody finds out how far apart the jobs are until the first three candidates turn out to be wrong.
Why it happens
The founder or CEO describes the role the way it works at home. A search partner in another country hears that description, pictures a company that does not exist in their market, and goes looking for the wrong person. We see this inside the Horton International network, which works across 36 countries. The word industrial, for example, means a different size of company and a different tier of the supply chain in Connecticut than it does in Birmingham or Stuttgart.
Company size changes the job as well. A head of sales hired by a company with a few hundred people at home is often expected to build a US team, close the largest deals personally and run the forecast. At many American companies those are three separate jobs held by people at three different levels, and candidates for each of them will read the role differently.
What to do before the search starts
Spend an hour with someone who hires in the US market before you write the job description. Ask them what this title means at a company your size here, who the person would report to in a comparable American company, and what candidates at that level will expect to own. Then write the role for the work you need done in the US, even if the title ends up different from the one you use at home.
The first US hire sets the pattern for every hire after it, because the next candidates will judge the company by who is already in the seat. That makes it the hire where a mistranslated title costs the most.