Based on your reading to the above case, answer the following questions:

1- Based on the chapter and case incident, provide 4 international HR mistakes Mr. Nasser has made so far.

2- How would you have gone about hiring a sales manager? Why?

"Boss, I Think We Have a Problem" An Arab Steel Company has been in business for about 20 vcars, successfully selling a line of steel industrial-grade doors, as well as the hardware and fittings required for them. Focusing mostly in Egypt and Jordan, the company has gradually increased its presence from the Cairo area into Alexandria and then into Jordan. The company's basic expansion strategy has always been: choose an area, open a distribution center, hire a regional sales manager, then let that regional sales manager help staff the distribution center and hire local sales reps. With the introduction of the new European currency in 2002, Ahmed Nasser, company president, decided to expand his company into Europe. However, the expansion has not gone smoothly at all. Unfortunately, the company's traditional success in finding sales help has not extended to its overseas operations. He tried for three weeks to find a sales manager by advertising in the International Herald Tribune, which is read by businesspeople in Europe and Arab expatriates living and working in Europe. Although the ad in the Tribune ran for about a month on the Tribune's website, Mr. Nasser received only five applications. One came from a possibly viable candidate, whereas four came from Candidates whom Mr. Nasser refers to as 'lost souls'--people who seem to have spent most of their time traveling aimlessly from country to country sipping espresso in sidewalk cafs. When asked what he had done for the last three years, one told Mr. Nasser he'd been on a 'walkabout." Other aspects of his international HR activities have been equally problematic. Nasser alienated two of his Egyptian sales managers by sending them to Europe to temporarily run the European operations, without working out a compensation package that would cover their relatively high living expenses in Germany and Belgium. One ended up staying the better part of the year, and Mr. Nasser was rudely surprised to be informed by the Belgian government that his sales manager owed thousands of dollars in local taxes. The managers had hired about 10 local people to staff each of the two distribution centers. However, without full-time local European sales managers, the level of sales was disappointing, so Nasser decided to fire about half the distribution center employees. That's when he got an emergency phone call from his temporary sales manager in Germany: "Boss, I think we have a problem. I've just been told that all these employees should have had written employment agreements, and that we can't fire anyone without at least one year's notice. The local authorities here are really annoyed." 1