Abstract
Talent recruitment and selection present distinctive challenges for Sino-foreign primary and secondary schools in China, which operate within hybrid institutional environments shaped by dual educational mandates, cross-cultural expectations, regulatory constraints, and internationalised curriculum standards. Despite the rapid expansion of talent management scholarship, extant research remains predominantly grounded in Western corporate contexts, offering limited insight into how talent is recruited and selected in internationalised educational organisations. This study addresses this gap by examining how Sino-foreign schools implement recruitment and selection practices.
Adopting an interpretivist perspective and inductive multi-case study design, the research draws on semi-structured interviews with key organisational actors involved in recruitment and selection, complemented by documentary analysis. Thematic analysis was employed to identify patterns in talent recruitment and selection logics across cases.
This research applies Person–Organisation Fit theory to analyse the talent recruitment and selection practice. Findings reveal that those Sino-foreign schools’ talent recruitment and selection criteria involve professional competence and holistic performance, with strong emphasis on communication capability, cultural alignment, professional disposition, international orientation, and values congruence. Talent recruitment and selection processes are characterised by multi-stage assessments, in which the demonstration lesson functions as a central evaluative mechanism that generates behavioural evidence beyond formal qualifications and prior experience. By foregrounding the contextual construction of talent in hybrid educational settings, the study extends talent management theory beyond corporate and Western-dominated paradigms. It contributes a context-sensitive account of how recruitment strategies and selection mechanisms are socially and institutionally embedded, and offers practical implications for enhancing procedural coherence, fairness, and effectiveness in internationalised schooling environments.