Turn uncertainty into opportunity: Hiring remote global tech talent during the economic slowdown

In recent months, news of layoffs, hiring pauses, and inflationary measures have been dominating headlines and clogging feeds.

The tech sector has found itself cutting back costs, making adjustments to headcount, and pumping the brakes on growth initiatives. For many companies, the focus has shifted towards conserving cash, implementing cost-saving measures, and doubling down on profitability in order to extend their runway.

Employers have been using this time to reassess their organizational structure and strategically identify the essential hires needed to build and ship innovative features that show value and move the company forward.

It remains to be said that while the economic slowdown and recent layoffs may have cooled the hiring market temporarily and freed up local tech talent for hire, 1/5th of organizations worldwide are still struggling to meet their tech hiring needs.

The shortage of tech talent continues to be an issue and employers will need to explore alternative hiring solutions that make sense for their budget during these uncertain times.

In a recent webinar, Hiring Remote Tech Talent 101, VanHack’s hiring experts were joined by Remote, and client JobGet to provide an overview and insights into how North American tech companies can easily hire, manage, and onboard global remote tech talent. Tune in for the full webinar here.

3 key takeaways to walk away with

1. Global remote hiring can make sense for teams with tighter hiring budgets

Although budgets are being pared down, companies still need to remain competitive by developing key products and features, fast.

Why hire remote tech talent?:

• 💰 Cost savings: Hiring remote global tech talent simply makes sense when factoring in the tech talent shortage in local markets, and the need to save on hiring costs.

It has become the norm for employers to tap into a global tech talent pool outside of their geographies to source and hire experienced, skilled remote engineering talent at a fraction of local market rates.

Take these examples:

Average full stack engineer salary - global talent (relocated to canada) vs. Global tech talent (working remotely)

*Verified salary and recruitment data based on hires made via VanHack.

Hire Relocated to Canada

Remote Hire

Full Stack Engineer (Avg. Annual Salary in CAD)

$94,385 CAD

$61,600 CAD

Average backend engineer salary - global talent (relocated to canada) vs. Global tech talent (working remotely)

*Verified salary and recruitment data based on hires made via VanHack.

Hire Relocated to Canada

Remote Hire

Backend Engineer (Avg. Annual Salary in CAD)

$98,073 CAD

$67,480 CAD

📊Dive into VanHack’s salary calculator for full benchmark data and market insights into the average salary by role, location, and contract type (remote or relocate).

• 🌏 Diverse viewpoints, creativity, and product innovation: In addition to unlocking a wider talent pool, hiring global tech talent offers the opportunity to inject fresh, diverse perspectives that drive your product, team, and culture forward.

💡 VanHack Tip - keep your talent pipeline warm and engaged: Between resume screening, interviews, and code tests, building a talent pipeline is expensive and labour intensive.

During uncertain times, talent acquisition teams should continue engaging with candidates rather than scrapping the talent pipeline developed over the past year, and starting from ground zero.

Keeping the line of communication open allows your team to have a healthy supply of warm applicants to re-engage when it comes time to resume hiring at full throttle.

1. Making the smart play: work with a global tech recruitment expert and onboarding partner

Making your first global tech, remote hire can be daunting.

There is the worry of risk, and concerns around what to do, how to set up an entity, manage global payroll and classify employees. Not to mention, the added pressure to stay on top of and abide by multiple sets of employment and local tax laws.

The list goes on and it’s no surprise that companies are reluctant to make the jump.

To navigate through staffing intricacies, having the right sourcing and onboarding partners in your corner makes a world of difference.

👉 For sourcing tech talent: Finding vetted tech talent when there’s an increased demand and short supply is tough. A great starting point to target exterior countries is to partner with a recruitment service. VanHack has helped over 1000+ tech companies source and hire pre-vetted, experienced global tech talent from its 400K+ talent pool, with deep experience in a wide range of programming languages and technologies.

👉 For hiring, paying and onboarding global hires: Now that you’ve successfully interviewed and selected your ideal candidate, consider outsourcing and leaning on a global HR solution like Remote to take on the risk around hiring, compliance, onboarding, and other HR responsibilities.

When working with VanHack and Remote, the end-to-end process from sourcing to hiring to onboarding is seamless. Having experts in your corner takes the heavy lifting off your plate and provides your team the assurance needed to employ global teams legally and compliantly.

Watch the webinar on demand here: Hiring Remote Talent 101

1. Hiring for technical fit and culture add

🎊 Congrats, your candidate has met all baseline and technical requirements. The next hurdle is assessing the potential newcomer’s shared goals and alignment with your company values.

It’s time to leave the screening for cultural fit at the door. While there is comfort in working with like-minded individuals, hiring for fit can lead to a homogenous workforce, lack of innovation, and pitfalls of conformity.

During the screening process, unconscious bias tends to creep in, influencing how you filter and shortlist candidates based on similarities and shared interests or if it’s someone you’d likely have a beer with. It hinders your ability to objectively screen candidates and selects the best person for the job.

💡 VanHack Tip: Take on a values-focused approach, and move from screening for ‘cultural fit’ to ‘culture add’: Your new hire can bring fresh, diverse perspectives and solutions your team may be missing out on. Injecting diversity ripples over to product design and build. Diversity in ideas fuels the growth of your company while also enabling the team to approach and solve problems in a new way, in addition to building an inclusive product and/or feature set that truly resonates with your customer, and addresses your users’ needs.

Traits and qualities to screen for:

• Empathy: Does the candidate demonstrate emotional intelligence (ie. healthy communication, and active listening), and an interest in understanding varying perspectives and positions?

• Curiosity: Does the candidate show a curiosity for problem-solving, a desire to learn, and a level of comfort when presented with new situations?

• Potential: Does the candidate demonstrate adaptability, and the willingness to learn and grow?

Build your diverse tech team: start hiring global remote tech talent

VanHack helps connect companies to a diverse global talent pool of close to 400,000 software engineers. Our team does the hard work of vetting and ensuring they have certified English skills, and shortlists candidates best suited to your open roles.

Whether you’re looking to relocate software engineers or adopt a remote-first working culture, VanHack can assist. Having processed over 800 successful relocation applications, we take care of all the immigration and visa application paperwork. We also offer partner solutions that cover foreign compliance and payroll services for remote employees, saving you valuable time and resources.

​​💻Watch the webinar: How to Hire Remote Tech Talent 101

🤝Get in touch with VanHack hiring experts today.