Building a global team has become a competitive advantage. Fortune 500 companies have known this for a long time and have had global teams in places like India, China and the Philippines for decades. However, thanks to growing comfort with remote work after COVID-19 and the massive improvement in the software tools we have to work remotely, increasingly mid-market companies and SMBs are starting to build global teams with huge success.
Hiring offshore talent gives you a huge competitive advantage in your market. Expanding your hiring pipeline to include global talent makes it possible for you to hire exceptional talent at affordable rates. More importantly, global talent is easier to retain then your onshore talent in the US where recruiters are constantly poaching great talent by offering promotions and pay raises. In contrast, globally competition for talent is far lower and American companies typically pay their global talent salaries that are 50-100% higher than what local companies can offer (for more information on great countries to hire accountants from check out our blog post).
However, hiring global talent is a different ballgame than hiring talent in the US. Hiring global talent brings its own unique challenges. So what criteria should you evaluate when interviewing global talent to see if they’ll be a good addition to your team?
What Criteria Should You Analyze When Vetting Global Talent?
We’ve been hiring global talent for a while and over time we’ve learned that there are five criteria that you have to evaluate when you’re looking to fill a finance or accounting role:
- Education
- Experience
- Cultural Fit
- Skill Testing
- Logistics
Education
It’s no big surprise that someone’s educational background is an important component of evaluating how strong of a candidate they are. In fact, when hiring globally it can be an even more consideration, especially if they have primarily worked at companies that aren’t recognizable names and where there is limited information available on them.
At a high-level you want to evaluate what area of study they pursued and whether it’s a good fit for the role (in this case they should probably have studied accounting in university). From there you want to evaluate their academic performance. A high GPA is always a good indication of discipline and understanding of the subject area. But a lower GPA shouldn’t scare you away. In fact, sometimes foreign universities are far more challenging than universities in the US.
Besides their academic performance you want to evaluate the reputation of the university in detail. For example, you can use the QS World University Rankings to evaluate if it is a top 500 global university. Besides looking at its global ranking you should look at where it ranks in its home country. Attending a top 10 university in your home country is an achievement no matter which country you’re from.
Experience
After studying their educational background, the next most important variable to evaluate their fit for the role is their professional experience. Obviously there is a tradeoff between experience and affordability that in our experience most companies neglect to consider. Candidates with more years of work experience and/or richer professional experience working with global companies are going to cost you more. If on the other hand, you’re just trying to hire an affordable extra pair of hands to help with your workflow, then it’s safe to hire someone with more limited professional experience.
When it comes to finance and accounting talent, it’s quite possible to find global talent that has worked at one of the big four accounting firms. Both PWC and Deloittee for example, have offices in over 150 countries. Alternatively, a good thing to evaluate is whether the candidate has worked at a coveted local enterprise with a big brand. These companies are always competitive so it’s a good sign if they’ve worked at a well respected local company.
In our experience one of the most important variables to consider is the candidate’s tenure and how quickly they change roles. Candidates that frequently jump around usually don’t last long, especially if they have to work late evenings or night hours to match US hours.
Something that is often a huge green flag is finding candidates that have previously worked with global companies (but not necessarily American ones). Especially when it comes to finance and accounting talent, if they’ve worked on teams that manage the books for multiple subsidiaries across different countries, they usually can transition well to working for an American company. There’s a very specific learning curve when it comes to managing the books in a new country so finding talent that has done this before is very strong.
Cultural Fit
The biggest mistake American companies make when hiring global talent is assuming that someone who grew up in a different country thousands of miles away will naturally understand and fit into American work culture. Every country has a different work culture and the biggest problem with American work culture is there are a lot of unspoken rules on what hard work actually looks like. For example, Americans are more than twice as likely as any other country to go more than a year without taking a vacation. In fact, 46% of American workers don’t use all their paid time off. Besides time off, American work culture prioritizes very direct communication, something which is often considered rude in most countries. Even something as small as work culture and building rapport can catch global talent by surprise. Americans always start every meeting with 5-10 meetings of small talk to break the ice and build some rapport before jumping into the content of the meeting.
Overall, during the interview process it is critical that you are explicitly clear on what your work culture is like and what your expectations are. Prior to onboarding talent we always send clients a survey to evaluate their ways of working and expectations so that these things don’t catch their new global team member by surprise.
During the interview you should evaluate what a candidate thinks hard work looks like, what their time off expectations are, whether they celebrate special religious or national holidays and more. A great candidate with an amazing background but who isn’t a cultural fit will inevitably churn out quickly. Trust us, failing to properly evaluate cultural fit is a recipe for disaster when hiring global talent.
Skills Test
A critical part of our hiring process is a variety of skills and personality tests, depending on the role. For a role as technical as accounting and bookkeeping properly evaluating candidates accounting and financial knowledge is critical to seeing if they can actually do the work correctly!
However, if you do plan to build out a skills test make sure it isn’t too specific to your unique company. If the test is too bespoke and requires too much context on your company’s specific operations it is likely that you won’t really see how strong candidates’ general skillsets are.
Skill tests aren’t required when hiring global talent, but they are a useful step.
Logistics
The last thing you want to consider are the logistics of hiring that person which include:
- Timezone: What timezone do they live in and how much does it overlap with US time (Eastern or Pacific)?
- Working Hours: What number of hours do you expect them to work in US time / overlap with your US team?
- Laptop & Equipment: Do they have their own laptop, monitor and other equipment? Or are they expecting you to provide them (standard practice for many remote employers)?
- Data Security: What plan do you have in place to protect company data and customer information during and after their potential employment?
- Compliance: Do you plan to hire them as a full-time employee or contractor? What local regulations do you need to comply with?
- Benefits: What benefits package do you plan to offer as part of your retention strategy and how will you offer it?
Conclusion
Building global teams has been a competitive advantage for Fortune 500 for decades now. But now thanks to improved tools and increased comfort with remote work, mid-sized companies and SMBs are joining this wave and hiring global talent to increase their output while taking advantage of meaningful cost savings.
However, hiring global talent requires a different approach than hiring talent in the US and these five criteria are some of the things you should consider when evaluating global talent. But vetting and hiring great talent is only half of the battle. Learning how to effectively manage offshore teams is critical for making the most of your global team and ensuring it is a success.
Offshore talent can drive huge value to your business but only if it is done right.
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