O perfil do profissional auto-expatriado e a percepção de gestores de recursos humanos sobre este perfil

Abstract

The number of professionals who leave their home countries to get job positions in different countries has substantially increased in the last decade. Those professionals can be divided in two different groups: the expatriates, who started international careers and who today are increasingly frequent in multinational companies, and the new global professionals. The first ones are professionals who change countries by virtue of positions offered by the company where they work, but with change of headquarters. The second group are those professionals who self-initiated their expatriation, in other words, people who look by their own for new positions all around the world, assuming alone the course of their careers. This group is occupying an important place in companies because of their differentiated profile, flexibility, ease of adaptation to different cultures, besides their professional experience in different companies and different countries. The objective of this research is to identify this professional profile and the Human Resources Manager´s perception about it. For that, a qualitative study was conducted through semi-structured interviews with fifteen self-initiated expatriates and six managers of large companies human resources departments. As a result, the profile of these individuals was mapped and their expectations about people management practices that motivate them to stay longer in a given company were identified. This research also enabled a reflection on the subject on the part of human resources managers, who even if had not yet worked with this professional profile, and because of that have not develop specific management practices for that profile, could develop their own perceptions about the subject.