How to Search for Talent on a Global Scale

The rise of flexible working conditions means many organizations now have a greater pool of potential talent from which to choose. However, organizing a search for talent that spans countries or even continents means having a well thought-out strategy.

Setting up a global talent search naturally requires the participation of human resources execs, as well as technology officers to ensure the right tools and security standards in place.

Part of that preparation means accounting for the fact that company data will now be spread across multiple continents, which must be done in a responsible way that doesn’t put customers or data at risk.

Dave Walters, CTO at Hired, explains that HR department executives will help lead the charge to choreograph talent searches cross-country and globally, but adds that an organization’s tech heads will also have a major role to play.

“For myself, as the head of technology of an organization, I see myself equally responsible, working with our HR executives to set that strategy, define the approach and open myself up and my team up to be the opportunity to work with remote talent, within the U.S. and then beyond the US,” he says. “It's something the entire executive suite needs to get on board with.”

Investment in HR Services and Tools

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This includes a deeper investment in HR services and tools, including putting services in place to help find global talent, which will not necessarily be the same tools the organization was using previously to locate IT engineers in the home market or even the home country.

“If you're a very large company with a global presence and offices already in those foreign countries, you might have an advantage, but it’s a challenge for lots of smaller and mid-sized companies that don't operate that way already,” Walters says.

This includes considering all the legal and financial considerations that need to be given to those respective areas.

Walters says particular attention must be paid when it comes to effective onboarding of remote employees onto teams and into workflows.

“It forces you to think about the processes and tools you have in place,” he says. “Are they fostering enough of an asynchronous communication flow, with the understanding that if you have a global team, you have resources across Europe, resources in on the East Coast and West Coast in the US?”

That means the timeframe by which you have all your team together operating in the same hours is significantly minimized.

He pointed to widely used platforms like Slack and Loom, which help improve and record communication flows. These tools can better connect global teams and provide remote workers with dedicated communication channels.

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Sachin Gupta, CEO of HackerEarth, says companies must have a top-down and bottom-up approach to talent acquisition, with role-specific leaders and co-workers both involved to ensure teams are built with the right fit.

“For example, when hiring developers, engineering teams should align with recruiting teams, and even be involved in interviewing them, in order to find the right candidates,” he said. “With remote working becoming more mainstream, expanding teams in different regions has become more of a strategic topic for the larger C-suite team.”

Virtual Interviewing and Skills Assessment

Technology that enables virtual interviewing and skills assessment of candidates regardless of where they are located is key, especially for developers and other skills-based tech talent.

For global hiring, Employer of Record (EOR) solutions are also important. EOR software and services take the burden of managing the onboarding, benefits, payroll, and compliance issues that come with a global talent search and international expansion.

The broad search for talent requires companies to leverage unconventional job networks and communities where talent might be available.

“Naturally, there are no centralized platforms where specialized workers congregate and one has to leverage different channels for different functions,” Gupta points out. “One needs to create role-specific sourcing strategies.”

For instance, when it comes to technology hiring, there are plenty of unconventional platforms like Github or Stackoverflow that can be a relevant source of talent.

Gupta also points out there is a need to create a very robust analytics framework internally.

“As they say, what doesn’t get measured doesn’t improve. It’s important to have a system that measures metrics related to recruiting like efficiency of different sources, points of candidate drop-offs, patterns in rejection and interviewer efficiency,” he said. “For organizations hiring at scale, measuring these metrics will help in identifying gaps that can sometimes result in non-linear benefits.”

Like Walters, Gupta notes there are several challenges around the hiring process and specifically onboarding/integration of global employees that work under regional specific laws around taxes and benefits.

While there are platforms today that can help in setting up payroll and other formalities specific to the corresponding laws and regulations, the biggest challenge continues to be the assimilation and integration of teams located all over the world.

Gupta points out that to ensure remote teams are fully integrated, one needs to ensure that all touchpoints with employees, starting from recruiting and going all the way to exit, are designed keeping remote teams in mind.

“Teams that have traditionally been centrally located and are now moving towards a hybrid work environment need to specially make sure that they integrate remote team members as well as the other team members,” Gupta says.