By Magdalena Panońko, IT recruitment manager and Kacper Jankowski, league partnership manager, GS Services
Nowadays, many businesses are struggling to make quality hires, especially in IT. Thanks to rapid improvements in communication technology over the past decade and a shift in perspective brought about by the pandemic, more and more companies are no longer considering location as a key factor in their hiring decisions. This helps a business to potentially expand internationally with new contacts, and it allows businesses to increase their pool of qualified engineers.
Here are some of the top benefits to be aware of if you choose to hire internationally instead of sticking to candidates in your local area.
- Access to a wider talent pool
The best talent isn’t necessarily located where you are, so why limit yourself to a local talent pool? Looking globally widens your pool of potential recruits. You’ll have a far greater number of candidates to choose from than if you focused on recruitment in your local region, city or town.
This point is especially beneficial because the UK seriously lacks programmers and many other specialists, but you could find the skills your business needs abroad.
This is also important for companies located in densely populated urban areas where the top talent has many options to choose from — and can command high salaries.
- Creativity and innovation
Another advantage that comes from hiring people of different nationalities, cultures and backgrounds is the ability of international candidates to usher in new perspectives and ideas. Hiring people from diverse backgrounds will allow your team to grow and thrive.
Candidates who are open and willing to work for clients from other countries, especially those who are seniors, often have extensive experience working for companies from different part of the world as well as working with international teams. This gives them a broader perspective and diverse viewpoints in finding solution and solving problems.
The potential for innovation is far greater in companies with diverse teams than in homogenous ones. In fact, a recent Forbes article suggests that companies with above-average diversity produce a 19% greater proportion of their revenue from innovation than those with below-average diversity.
- Improved access to international markets
Are you planning to expand overseas? Having employees in multiple countries can give you an advantage over other companies when it comes to accessing those markets. Your employees can give you access to a nuanced understanding of their own country, including its culture, customs, language, and connotations — so you can avoid embarrassing marketing blunders and make your expansion a success.
- Potential cost-saving
Through outsourcing you can reduce costs to a great extent. Have you ever compared the average earnings of programmers from your country with those of Polish programmers? It’s no wonder so many companies have good reason to seek support, especially in high-quality development with lower rates. With IT outsourcing, you don’t have to compare price with quality – outsourcing allows you to equalise the two.
When analysing costs, it is worth noting that outsourcing allows for more savings than just employee salaries. You can also consider much lower operating costs, such as the cost of the recruitment process, employee benefits and office space rental.
IT outsourcing also helps manage IT tasks and workload spikes quickly and efficiently. It is an advantageous solution when a specific skill is needed for a short period of time. By choosing to outsource IT, you don’t have to recruit, hire and fire your own employees. This gives you a great deal of flexibility and allows you to adjust the number of programmers involved in a project according to your current needs.
While hiring international employees can bring a wide array of benefits to your business, it can be a bit of an administrative headache if you want to hire them directly in your company. When you’re hiring overseas, you need to make sure you’re doing so in a way that’s legal, compliant, and fair — and doesn’t put your company at risk in terms of tax liability or other issues.
There are a few different routes you can take if you want to hire staff members who live and work abroad.
- The traditional way to engage employees abroad is to open a subsidiary company in the country where the employees are based. A subsidiary is a legally independent business entity that can be wholly owned by your main company, but which must comply with the employment laws and tax obligations of the country it operates in. This is a good route to take if you only want to hire in one country, you need to set up a physical location there, and you’re familiar with the laws and hiring customs of the country. However, it can also be a costly and time-consuming undertaking, and is often not worth it to just hire one or two remote employees.
- Hire foreign independent contractors using a company that specialises in outsourcing IT professionals. In some circumstances, you may be able to engage foreign nationals as independent contractors instead of hiring new employees. This is an attractive option as it doesn’t usually require you to get to know the laws, tax regulations and other particularities of the countries where your contractors are located. It can also be a financially prudent option, as you’ll only pay the fee negotiated with the contracting company rather than the numerous other costs associated with hiring a foreign worker.
If you have already identified a candidate and qualifications you need and who will benefit your workplace culture, don’t let a lack of it in your country stand in your way.