Bosses hiring more white-collar workers based overseas
Employers are hiring people in the Philippines, India, Brazil and parts of Africa to overcome skills shortages in everything from software engineering and digital marketing to accounting and graphic design, global recruiters say.
The trend of hiring white-collar workers based overseas to fill vacancies and reduce costs is not new, but has gained momentum since the pandemic forced companies to adopt more remote and distributed working.
Deel’s Shannon Karaka says companies are hiring more overseas workers to help plug skills gaps.
Shannon Karaka, country leader for Australia and New Zealand at US-based human resources company Deel, which helps companies hire abroad, said the company had increased its Australian customer base by 55 per cent over the 12 months to November, as employers sought to overcome local labour shortages.
“Cost is a factor, but really [employers] are looking for the best talent regardless of location,” Mr Karaka said. “That’s more of a trend that we’ve seen, versus it being a cost-cutting exercise.”
Mr Karaka said employers also engaged Deel’s services when testing a new market before embarking on an overseas expansion, or when relocating an Australian employee overseas.
The company’s clients include ASX-listed ecommerce platform Siteminder, crypto platform Immutable, online health start-up Eucalyptus, and equity management provider Cake.
Not all companies that facilitate global hiring have observed a similar uptick. “Our data does not corroborate the claim that companies have ramped up their offshoring activities since COVID-19,” Employment Hero chief executive Ben Thompson said.
The two roles that local companies most use Deel to help fill are software engineers and software developers. According to Deel, mid-level professionals in these occupations earn a median annual salary of $169,000 in Australia, compared with $161,000 in the US, $98,000 in Brazil, $88,000 in the UK, $75,000 in India and $38,000 in the Philippines.
Customer support specialists, sales and business development professionals and content editors round out the top five most popular roles, while the most popular countries for Australian companies to hire from are the Philippines, the US, India, Brazil and the UK. Africa is an emerging recruitment market as well, said tech entrepreneur Gerard Holland.
Pandemic WFH a key driver
Upon realising the shift to remote working after the pandemic would be permanent, Mr Holland set up the employment matching service Global Employment Challenge in 2021 to help connect Western employers to tertiary-educated workers in Rwanda, Kenya and South Africa. The service helps source a range of white-collar professionals, including software developers, digital marketers, accountants and graphic designers.
Global Employment Challenge director Gerard Holland said the shift to remote working during the pandemic made companies more comfortable about hiring workers based overseas. Eamon Gallagher
Mr Holland told The Australian Financial Review that the pandemic had not only made business leaders more accepting of hiring remote workers overseas, but had also exacerbated Australia’s shortage of tech skills by forcing many companies to upgrade their digital presence.
“You’ve got this gap where businesses need digital skills around the world and we don’t yet have the workforce for it,” Mr Holland said, adding that his clients save an average of 70 per cent on labour costs when hiring a skilled worker in Africa.
“Our model would not have worked in 2019 or before then. It just wouldn’t have worked. It’s only because of the pandemic.”
In 2022, Global Employment Challenge placed 20 African workers into businesses across the UK, US, Australia and Canada. It has placed another 130 workers this year and is committed to placing another 850 in 2024.
“Nearly every company we talk to has some resourcing that’s done offshore now,” Mr Holland said.
‘It’s not all about cost’
Melbourne-based ICT and cybersecurity services company OneStep, which employs about 150 people globally after growing its headcount by about 50 per cent in the past 15 months, is one of GEC’s clients.
Chief executive Ben Fothergill said OneStep employed one person in Kenya and one person in the Philippines.
He told the Financial Review that OneStep was taking a cautious approach to its global hiring to ensure it hired leaders overseas who could coach others and build the right culture, but it hoped to have a team of about 10 employees in Kenya next year as the workers there were loyal and experienced.
“If you talk about a digital marketer, then normally they’ve got a degree in marketing and then generally up to two years of experience,” Mr Fothergill said.
“It’s not all about cost; it’s actually about trying to build a strategic advantage.”
The company turned to Global Employment Challenge to help source digital marketers, executive assistants and so-called “solutions engineers” who are responsible for configuring a company’s enterprise networks.
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