How international teams will accelerate your company's success
By Ariel Camus, founder & CEO of Microverse
Companies with an inclusive culture are three times as likely to be high performing and eight times more likely to produce better business results. So, in the modern world, your company's capacity to innovate and succeed depends on your ability to hire an international workforce by tapping into the global talent pool.
Moreover, the growing need for specialised tech talent in an increasingly competitive market, alongside a need for more qualified candidates in a given country, is pushing organisations to broaden their search. Therefore companies can advance in the global talent competition by expanding their recruiting scope beyond their traditional geographies.
However, hiring distributed teams does come with challenges that must be navigated. Companies should implement best practices, tools, and well-defined collaboration dynamics to do so. Once the challenges have been understood and managed, organisations can create more robust and successful teams that benefit from the wide range of worldwide talent.
The opportunity: a global, capable, and driven talent pool
With international talent and remote work emergence, organisations have even more access to a new generation of global talent ready to tackle the modern world challenges. As there are estimated to be more than 31 million active software developers across the globe, employers must understand the best ways to find, recruit, pay, and manage a remote, diverse team of global experts. These developers are located across every continent, with regions with the fastest-growing populations anticipated to help fill the global demand for tech talent worldwide.
The fastest-growing global population is in Africa. While the continent has only contributed a small number of software developers so far, with just over 700,000 software developers, many future developers are expected to come from Africa. A further opportunity for the region is that many African countries have a high proficiency in English, making integration into and hiring by, global teams smoother.
Other emerging economies in Asia and Latin America also have the potential to help fill the rising demand for tech talent. Based on a recent Deel report, the growth rate of hiring tech talent in LatAm was nearly 300% in 2021, with software development being the critical area. Due to the time zone, developers in LatAm are often seen as an attractive option for US-based companies, and this trend has grown in recent years.
Benefits of international teams
One of the key benefits of international hiring is that it allows companies to tap into a larger pool of potential candidates and increase the diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives that employees bring to the workplace. By having a more diverse workforce, companies can gain a competitive edge by having employees equipped to understand and navigate global markets and better serve a broader range of customers.
A growing body of research supports the benefits of a diverse workplace. A study by McKinsey & Company found that companies with diverse management teams were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry median. This further highlights the importance of diversity in the workplace and its positive impact on an organisation's bottom line.
Diverse teams also lead to increased creativity and innovation. By tapping into a wider pool of experiences and perspectives, companies benefit from new ideas and approaches that can help to drive growth and success. In fact, research has shown that diverse teams are more likely to engage in constructive conflict, resulting in better problem-solving and decision-making.
Additionally, remote work and international hiring can provide access to a larger pool of highly skilled candidates who may be unable to relocate. This means that companies can take advantage of the skills and experiences of individuals who may have been previously overlooked due to location restrictions.
International hiring can also help to build stronger relationships and partnerships between countries, promoting cross-cultural collaboration and understanding. This helps advance the world and societies as we know them and can lead to many more benefits in years to come.
Overall, international hiring helps to address the current global tech talent shortage as companies can access the skills and expertise they need, regardless of location, to help drive their businesses forward.
How to hire globally
Organisations may consider partnering with experts to source talent, hiring global recruiters, or leveraging international and remote job boards to find top workers in new markets quickly. When interviewing international candidates, organisations must keep in mind a few best practices.
First and foremost, an inclusive approach to the interview process is essential. Ask yourself, what's the purpose of this role? Why is this job important to your organisation? Make sure your questions focus on their skills, capabilities, and experience. Showing candidates, you are invested in them and understanding their cultural and language nuances can demonstrate your commitment.
At Microverse, we lean on remote, asynchronous tools to help us hire and grow our global team. We leverage remote hiring boards, gender decoders to fight bias, tools like Hireflix to optimise video interviews, and transparently sharing salary ranges across geographies in our job posts.
Gender decoders work by helping identify the masculine or feminine coded words in a job description to make it more appealing to all genders, resulting in a more diverse applicant pool. Tools like Hireflix enable candidates and us to have a faster and more seamless initial async interview by cutting out scheduling. These remote work hiring best practices allow us to attract top talent worldwide and give candidates a sense of our asynchronous first environment.
The challenges of hiring internationally
With international hiring comes many potential challenges, including navigating different cultural, legal, and regulatory environments. Companies need to be mindful of the differences in labour laws, employment contracts, and other legal requirements between countries and take steps to ensure that they comply with these regulations.
Additionally, companies must be aware of cultural differences and take steps to ensure that their international employees feel valued and respected in the workplace. Solutions to these challenges exist today, but there are different ways to approach them.
To address these challenges, companies can work with global HR and recruitment agencies to help navigate these complexities and ensure they are hiring in compliance with local laws and regulations.
Depending on the size, organisations may familiarise themselves with their global compliance laws, taxation, and currency conversions to fully understand and appreciate the various forms of payments, currencies, and local employment regulations.
Other organisations may work with platforms like Rippling and Deel, which we use at Microverse, to reduce the global financial and legal barriers and regulations of hiring. Setting clear payment guidelines and establishing a dependable HR management platform is also vital to avoid misunderstandings.
Further, companies can invest in diversity and inclusion training to help employees understand and appreciate their international colleagues' cultural differences and perspectives. This can foster a more inclusive and welcoming workplace and ensure international employees feel supported and valued.
At Microverse, we also include reading The Culture Map as part of our onboarding process, and at a past team retreat, we discussed the differences between cultures based on it to help team members understand each other better. We also prioritise many company-wide best practices to manage a remote team successfully.
Conclusion
Taking advantage of the global talent pool is becoming crucial for businesses today. The global talent pool opportunity is vast, and organisations must tap into it to fill the tech talent shortage. Further, the benefits of hiring from a global talent pool are that companies have a wider candidate pool and create a diverse, multicultural, and more efficient team and environment.
Moreover, organisations can create a competitive edge with a global talent approach and help promote a fairer and more equitable work culture. With the proper planning, training, and the use of modern tech solutions, businesses can benefit significantly from remote and international hiring and teams. However, companies must comply with all local regulations regarding taxes and payments to comply with international laws.
We embrace the potential of international hiring that breaks down geographical barriers and promotes diversity, and we hope you do too from now on!
About the author: Ariel Camus is the founder and CEO of Microverse, a groundbreaking online school that provides web development training and life-changing opportunities to students worldwide. With a mission to break down barriers to education and employment, Microverse offers students access to high-quality training at no upfront cost, with tuition only payable upon successfully landing a job. Ariel's unique background, including upbringing in Argentina, education in Europe, business experience in San Francisco, and teaching in Africa, gives him a diverse perspective that influences Microverse's mission-driven approach.
