IT leaders expand high-value talent search across globe

Treasure Data’s Khan is impressed by the candidates she has found abroad. “We are in Silicon Valley, and the perception for years has been that this is where all the top tech talent is,” Khan says. “That is no longer the case. I’m seeing exceptional IT talent in Canada, Japan, the UK, the Philippines, Vietnam. It’s incredible.”

That’s made it easier to source historically hard-to-fill positions such as IT operations analysts while still managing costs. It also offers the bonus of coverage across time zones for responding to emergencies.

“This approach has truly been a game-changer,” says Khan. “If you want to find the people you need to fill your open IT roles, you’d better be willing to look abroad.”

Making global hiring work

Recruiting and managing employees in other countries won’t work for everyone. There are significant issues to consider, including labor laws, tax and compliance issues, administrative overhead, cybersecurity considerations, and cultural challenges. Seven in ten organizations that perform borderless hiring say it’s critical to factor in the specific needs of borderless tech workers into their workplace strategy, according to Gartner.

Often consolidating these efforts can make more sense than one-off hiring. “Whether global or domestic, establishing centers of excellence focused on ubiquitous IT areas like CRM and cybersecurity is another good idea,” says Scott duFour, global CIO of business payments company Fleetcor, which has a Prague center for IT infrastructure and cloud (serving Western and Central Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) and another in Atlanta (serving North America). The company also operates a virtual Salesforce center of excellence for North America, Western and Central Europe, and India.

“[Centers of excellence] provide the flexibility of on-site and remote working for staff managing teams serving lines of business while also acting as a satellite location for engineers, coders, and others who can work independently from anywhere,” duFour says.

MSC’s Hill, who’s done this in the past, emphasizes the ability to develop the employees for the company’s future benefit. “These employees will build a deeper understanding of the business model and operations,” Hill says. “This, in turn, will reduce cycle time and improve quality for both projects and operations.”

Other IT leaders see benefits in working with IT professionals abroad in a more targeted fashion. “Borderless workers, such as freelancers and remote workers, can offer organizations access to specialized skills and provide greater flexibility and scalability,” says Gartner vice president and analyst Monika Sinha. “These individuals can work on a project-by-project basis, allowing organizations to tap into specific expertise as needed.”

Best practices for hiring abroad

For CIOs considering hiring IT professionals in other countries for the first time, the following emerging best practices are worth keeping in mind:

Determine which skills are the best targets. “Borderless hiring does not mean hiring anyone from everywhere,” Gartner reports. Where your organization has a medium to low supply of skills with medium to high business importance is the best opportunity for going global.

Identify regions or cities with a potential supply of talent. CIOs can review some established and emerging hubs of IT talent, but with an eye toward those with the skills identified above.

Consider and calculate the costs and challenges of global hiring. Many CIOs meet significant resistance from HR and legal when pursuing a borderless workforce strategy, according to Gartner, so it’s important to understand the challenges, discuss them with the appropriate stakeholders, and factor them into the business case for hiring abroad.

Look out for language, cultural, and distance barriers. “With global organizations, a language barrier is definitely a big challenge, as it’s important to be able to communicate quickly with your team in real-time. And while we get more 24/7 coverage by hiring globally, managing people in different time zones poses its own challenges,” says Treasure Data’s Khan, adding that language and cultural issues can also make performance management of global teams more challenging and complex.

Invest in onboarding and retention targeted to global hires. The expanded global talent base gives IT leaders access to many more hiring options, but it doesn’t solve attrition problems. Employees in another country are just as — or even more — likely to walk out the door if they’re not happy. That means making sure faraway hires feel welcome and engaged, and ensuring that they have a career path in the organization.

“If the structure of hiring in another country focuses on the bottom rungs of the career ladder, there will be higher attrition as those associates see lack of career progression as an issue,” says MSC’s Hill. “The other challenge is that companies need to understand the infrastructure around these remote employees. Hiring remote employees without a sense of belonging to an organization will also likely lead to higher attrition rates.”