Why Stressed Candidates Make Better Cross-Cultural Hires
New research shows that individuals who experience more stress in unfamiliar cultures are faster at learning and adapting to social norms.
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When interviewing job candidates, you may look for evidence that they stay calm under pressure, and interpret signs that they are easily stressed as red flags. But our recent research shows that for cross-cultural positions, those red flags might actually signal your best hires.
Across five studies, we used a variety of methods to measure how easily people got stressed. We then asked them to learn the social norms of an unfamiliar culture through trial and error. We consistently found that individuals who were more easily stressed learned the novel cultural norms faster. Importantly, their stress levels declined as they learned the norms.
Although our studies focused on learning interpersonal norms in unfamiliar national cultures, our findings are relevant to other situations such as adjusting to a new organizational culture, interacting with partners from other backgrounds, and relocating abroad for an expat assignment. Our findings point to three recommendations for managers.
