How to Hire Overseas Employees - HoldCo Lecture Series

So maybe Hayden, just give a quick intro of who you are and what you do, and then we'll get going through the presentation and start the discussion.

For sure. Yeah, thank you to Ty and Michael for putting this together. My name is Hayden Cohen. I am Michael's co-founder. We started Near together along with our other co-founder Franco about 4 years ago. I'm the CEO of the business. And, uh, yeah, like Michael said, live and breathe this stuff every day, help our customers identify great talent overseas, specifically all over Latin America, uh, and bringing them into their businesses to help them grow. Um, and we kind of run the gamut offering a 360 solution from sourcing and finding talent, helping you hire, uh, compliantly to getting equipment, benefits, et cetera. So happy to. Be here and excited to answer questions that you guys prepared.

Nice. Um, and we're recording this, so it'll be on YouTube. So everybody who's either watching it live here or will be getting the link, um, that's what's going on. So awesome. All right, let's get moving. Uh, let me find my cursor here. Um, so really goal of today is if you spend, you know, we'll try to spend 45 to 50 minutes together. Uh, but the goal is you can come in hopefully knowing what you know, but then leave, you know, de-risking and demystifying what goes on with hiring globally rather than just locally. And you know, me personally, like I spent a lot of time early in my career just thinking like, okay, the people I would hire, the people just right in my city. And then COVID changed it to where I started not to just think about hiring elsewhere here in the United States, but like looking at the potential for colleagues and peers to come from countries all over the world. And I'm seeing just a ton of my small businesses, but then also of other small businesses and medium-sized businesses and large businesses are really adopting this trend. And it's working out well for a lot of people. Like some of my very favorite colleagues are folks in Buenos Aires or Toronto and all these different places. So pretty great. But yeah, that's what we're trying to hire today or handle today in this presentation and in discussion with y'all. So cool. So Hayden, maybe first question, like why is like nearshoring, offshoring like a global hiring like a thing now? Like, why are, why are people excited about it? Why, why are they talking about it?

Yeah, good question. I mean, you kind of answered it, uh, with, uh, with your comment on the last slide, but obviously as the world becomes more and more remote and you can hire people from anywhere and there's solutions that help you identify, uh, great talent, it makes sense to, to look for people, you know, just outside of your, your local area or the United States even, because you can find, you know, you, you increase your, your talent pool so you can find more qualified individuals. And then obviously there's a huge cost benefit when you hire people from lower cost of living, um, areas where salary demands are lower. And so it's, it's kind of obvious when you have access to really solid talent who's just as good as the people you can hire in the States, um, that kind of integrate great into your business and they're— it's cheaper. And, you know, like, as it's become more and more mainstream, um, I think people view it as a less risky, like, program for their businesses and realize that it's kind of like an obvious thing they need to do to stay competitive. Um, because if they're not gonna do it, their competitors are gonna do it and they're gonna improve their margins and grow faster and have access to, uh, operational leverage that they otherwise wouldn't.

All right, we have our first question. I'm gonna encourage more question asking by answering this question very quickly. Uh, Hayden, what would you say to a client that is not convinced about hiring overseas or in Latin America because the people have accents? When they speak English?

Yeah, I mean, uh, that's definitely something that comes up. So I'd say there's two sides to it. So one, in my opinion, if it, if they're not being hired for a customer-facing role, um, me personally and the vast majority of our clients really don't have an issue with that as long as the person has really solid English communication, both written and verbal, even if there's an accent. Case in point, almost the entirety of Near's team is from Latin America and we've grown very quickly and have really, really, you know, strong internal communications. Now, the place that we do see that become more of a sticking point for certain clients of ours are with customer-facing and specifically sales roles. And that is definitely a preference. Um, but we do have large businesses that are customers that hire sales positions in Latin America, um, account executive, customer-facing people that have, you know, mild accents and they do phenomenally well. I think we posted something in our wins channel the other day that like an AE that we, that we helped hire. Is breaking records and they're the only Latin American-based amongst, are there like maybe 4 or 5 US-based account executives at a large property management firm. So it's definitely preference. I think you can see, you know, proof in the pudding and our case studies online to see how, like, how common this is and how much of it is really not an issue when you actually employ those folks. But it is a good question. Yeah.

Well, to me, like the bigger problem is not accent. It's when people who are offshore don't understand like North American work culture. And the further you get away from the US, the tougher, like all of that is like I've hired folks in the Philippines before. And like they just didn't understand how we would do stuff in the US and it was just, it was very difficult. Like I felt like I had to like change my behavior a ton to make that stuff work. So to me, I'm much more interested in like, and I like Latin America because its culture is much closer to the US culture. Like we're very Mexico, heavily Mexican influenced here in Texas and stuff like that. Like it's just, they seem to get it. Very well compared to folks who are in Eastern Europe or Pakistan or something like that.

Yeah. I mean, and like focusing on the positives of the talent in Latin America, especially in the big metropolitan areas, Mexico City, São Paulo, Brazil, Buenos Aires, there are large multinational firms that are headquartered in the US, think PwC, JP Morgan, that have big offices in these cities and employ tons of people there. Like, that kind of permeates their professional culture. And I'd say it's very, very closely aligned with what we expect with our teammates in the US. And it tends to be, yeah, like I said, more of a misconception. And when you actually work with folks from LATAM, it's Seamless. As long as you obviously, like, you just, you have to vet them the same way you would vet anyone that you hire in the States.

Super cool. All right. Like we've talked about why hiring globally. I think you asked that. What, well, how do you think about the different regions, right? Like we only do LATAM, then there's Eastern Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, Asia. Um, and Canada is another one that's super interesting. We have tons of teammates in my world from Canada. They're awesome cuz they understand American culture, especially in the Toronto area. So how do you kind of think about the different, different regions and how should people think about them, Hayden?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I'd say there's no obviously right or wrong, and there are pros and cons to hiring people from, from all over the world, specifically in Latin America, you can find people for basically any position that you could hire for remotely in the US that are like, that can be very good fits for your business and are extremely talented. Um, there are the, there are other regions where, um, it might be more popular to hire virtual assistants. Or engineers that are maybe cheaper, but we find that LATAM is like a really good sweet spot for really strong English communication and maybe roles that you would consider like higher level, um, individual contributors, managers, et cetera. And I think that it's a, it's a, it's a great place for, for US businesses, obviously, like obviously we promote that, but you have really aligned time zones and that's a huge consideration because it helps people from Latin America kind of be members of your team, not having to work different hours than the other people on your team. They can kind of have like a lot of overlap with your US-based folks. And like I said, like the cultural alignment that I alluded to in the last slide, I think is a super important piece there. Now, there are other regions to hire from. We don't focus on them. South Africa is a region that's English-speaking, obviously, and you can hire people from there that are very strong. And Philippines and India have kind of been like a more popular, popular regions to hire from. But we find that the sweet spot for us and where we promote because we find the best quality of talent is, is definitely not in America.

Uh, audience question, Hayden.

Um, what is the—

you just talked about the typical common job functions. Sounds like there's the whole gamut, right? Everybody from software engineering, data science to, um, different stuff like accounting. I mean, one of my companies has 25 accountants in South America. Um, so what are the typical job function? Sounds like it's everybody from sales to engineering. Then the second part of this question is, what are the typical educational backgrounds of Near and Offshore hires?

Yeah, um, good question. So Near specifically, our— the biggest kind of role categories that we place people into, I'd say like tier 1, where the majority of our roles come from are accounting, finance, marketing, and software engineering. But when people ask me, you know, where, like, what can you, what kind of roles can you hire for in Latin America? I basically say anything that can be done remotely in the US that's not like a regulated job can be hired for across Latin America. So it's customer support, sale, like, Sales reps, all types of marketing jobs, and I'm talking from more junior to really senior level folks. For example, we placed a CFO, uh, from Columbia for one of, um, a portfolio company of a private equity fund that we work with. And yeah, there's, there's not too many limitations on The talent that you can find. And then what was your second question, Michael?

Uh, what is the typical educational background?

Yeah, so pretty similar to here. The majority of the people that we place at least have a bachelor's degree, like when I'm talking 99%. Um, but there's plenty of people with master's, PhDs, and then kind of, uh, individual continued education, like certificates and stuff for for tools that they may want, perhaps like some engineers that have gone to coder bootcamps. But yeah, bachelor's and, and above, pretty similar to what you'd see here. And then a common question we get is for things like accounting, like, can I hire accountants? Like, does it make sense? Can they do tax? There is a standard called IFRS that's quite similar to US GAAP and The accounts that we place from Latin America basically understand US GAAP very strongly. And so education is quite similar to what you'd expect in the States. I wanted to—

Yeah, and like in Buenos Aires, like people don't realize how many like of kind of the global companies have big workforce teams there. It's kind of like Guadalajara in Mexico. Oracle has like 3,000 people in Guadalajara, Mexico. And then Buenos Aires, like, I've looked at so many resumes of folks who are like CPA or controller equivalents of in the US in terms of experience, but they all come out of like Exxon or any of these big companies that have these giant workforces, you know, 100% huge companies that hire in Buenos Aires.

And there are tons of really great universities there. Um, and it may change, but for like the past several decades, they've been offering free education to people all over Latin America. People go there. to study and they get great jobs after studying, uh, the university's MBA.

So Bob asks, are these workers allowed to visit the USA for business on occasion?

Um, we have assisted, um, clients with bringing people to the US for, um, maybe offsites or team meetings. And we have a capability through, through our partners to help get visas for folks. So it is possible.

Yeah, I think some of it depends on the country as well, where it's easier or more difficult. Like our Argentinian teammates have come up multiple times. Our Canadian teammates have come up multiple times. It's, it's relatively easy to do.

There's combined work and tourism visas. That you can get. I forgot the exact name of it. Awesome.

All right, let's move on. Okay, so how does hiring someone overseas work? Like, how does it all, how do, how do I, how do I do that if like I'm a company and I want to go from no overseas workers to like hire my first one?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, like, I think a way to answer this is you can either do it on your own or through an agency, right? Um, so when you do it on your own, you have to think about the different phases. So you have to attract talent and source talent that you want. You have to figure out what jobs that you're looking to hire for, create that job description, identify what the salary expectation should be, what regions you should look into, um, maybe companies where you want candidates to have past experience from that you can help source like improve your sourcing efforts and then run them through an interview process, run reference checks, just like you would with any US-based person, and then figure out how you're going to hire them. And there are tools to onboard and pay people. Like Deal is a partner of ours. And if you kind of source talent on your own, you can hire and pay them through Deal. Or you can work with an agency like ours that basically takes all of that extra work and is effectively like a done-for-you service where we work with you to build out the job description that you need. We identify all the regions and areas that you should hire from, look into our candidate database, source additional candidates, kind of filter through tons of resumes that you may get, and then kind of identify the best people for you. And then when you are And they work with you to create your interview process, make sure that you identify the person that you want to hire, and then help you onboard them. Um, so there are tons of different phases to it. And working with an agency is often, um, a popular route to go because it de-risks the odds of you having a bad hire or a bad experience or messing up something in the process where you feel like you wasted time. And this might not be the best thing for you. We've had customers come to us and, you know, try to do it on their own and either have trouble attracting candidates or they feel like the resume quality is not good because maybe some, a bunch of them that they're getting are in Spanish and not English and they have issues filtering or at different parts of the process and then really enjoy working with a company like ours because it, you, we, you get like a result delivered. You get a really good candidate in front of you.

All right, another audience question, and this is actually one of our later questions, so I will just jump to it because somebody asked it, and it's the confidentiality question. And basically the question is, how do I keep somebody from stealing like company confidential information, financial information, Social Security numbers, addresses, account numbers, et cetera? Like, how do I keep those from being stolen and have more security in that than maybe you would think at first glance?

Yeah, so this is a question I get all the time. So the first thing that I think about when, you know, think about this topic is like, how do you do that with remote people in the States? So your employees in the US are held to data security laws. And the other thing that companies do is they provision equipment and they put software on or use virtual machines or limit access to certain information to make sure that, you know, there aren't huge single points of failure for data security concerns with their US-based teammates. And the exact same things apply with overseas talent. So, you know, if the talent is using their own equipment, perhaps you have them download a certain software, uh, when accessing, you know, yours or clients' files, ensuring that you think about what level of information or access that your teammates are getting and ensure that, that they don't have a level of access that is, you know, that, that poses a huge risk to your business. And there are times where I think there's a, there's, it's a, it's a business decision at the end of the day of what kind of access that you, you, you want your team to have and who you trust. But typically it's solved through provisioning equipment with software and limiting access. And then each country does have, uh, you know, similar data security laws that we keep in, uh, the agreements that we have, the employment agreements that we have with, uh, near talent and they're held to that. But at the end of the day, they're, you know, the, the access that you give people is, is what they're beholden to. Uh, Michael, how do you think about that? With your team?

Yeah, it's always a risk. I think the other thing, just to reiterate your point, is you want to try to create systems where you have the minimum level of vulnerability. And, you know, I would tend to treat overseas colleagues just like I would my US colleagues. Like, I would treat them as peers. I would give them an appropriate level of trust, but I would do trust but verify. And I would, you know, not just like you do smart stuff with your wiring, stuff, right? Like, you know, yeah.

So I mean, it's, it's, it's a great point. Like an example that we use and some of our customers use who use Mercury for banking is we have an accounts payable person on our team employed from Latin America. And in order to make wire transfers, they can submit the, the order, but all of it has to go through approval and I have to approve all of our wires. So there's no like single point of failure for money leaving the business. That doesn't get approved by someone on our executive team. And those are kind of the fail-safes that you need to have, not only for having teammates remote, but just for having a remote, like offshore, but having a remote team in general. And I'd say a lot of those same principles apply to the folks that you have nearshore or offshore.

Someone asked, we previously tried and failed to implement stateside remote work suggestions to maintain accountability.

That's interesting. I'd be interested to know what happened specifically because there's lots of, there's lots of ways that like remote work can fail. I think that there's enough proof. With tons of successful companies being fully remote, that there are ways to do it successfully. And there's all types of, you know, like lenses to look through. One, do you have the tooling? Which is like a pretty basic starting point that you need to have, whether you have a remote team in the States or offshore, like you need to have a messaging tool like Slack. You need to make sure that there's processes and wikis that your team can access to understand how stuff works at your company. You need to make sure that people have equipment and internet and all that good stuff that you need to think through. And it's, uh, yeah, it's tough to answer that question without more specifics. But if you can, I, I do believe that if you can have a successful remote team in the States, there's no reason that teammates abroad wouldn't be just as successful.

Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing to, my two cents on this question is the mindset you should have when you're doing remote management or remote hiring of anybody is you have to be active as a manager or a leader to replace all the things that you would get for free. When you were working in office. So if you're working in office, like, think about it. Like, you show up in the morning, you see somebody in the break room, you see they're looking down that day, or maybe they look sick, right? Like, so they're physically ill, right? That's a data point that you don't get that data point if you are managing somebody remotely, or you have a hallway conversation with somebody, right? Or you ask how their weekend was, right? And those things all just happen organically when you're in an office. They don't happen when you have somebody that's remote. So your job as a manager is you have to go try to replace all of that by doing a ton more outreach, both scheduled and unscheduled, to your people that you're managing and supervising to understand what's really going on with them, to be supportive as a boss, to help unlock stuff. So like you have to do one-on-ones, you have to like do just pulse checks with them. You have to travel to go see them. And where people fall down is by expecting all that stuff that you get for free without thinking. In in-office situations to just happen when somebody's working remotely and it doesn't work that way. So that's the thing I would add to that question.

It's a good tweet for you. All the stuff you get for free in office, yeah.

Nobody likes my smart tweets. They just wanna see me talk about chilies. Sorry, just kidding. All right, okay, let's go on this. Let's go for how do I know what to pay and stuff like that? That's a question here. Here's a question from the audience member. By the way, Audience, you guys are doing a fantastic job today. 10 out of 10. How do you make sure that— Hayden, how do you make sure that you're not being gouged for labor? With the trend of offshoring, there is a lot of price elasticity that is sometimes overblown. What's the best way to determine the right pay rate?

That is a very good question. And I'll start by adding like some, some background information. So The first thing that a lot of, you know, prospective customers do when they come to us that don't have a pulse on what to pay overseas is they go on Glassdoor and they look for, you know, the equivalent role that they're looking for, for example, in Buenos Aires. And they come to us and they say, why did you quote us X, but it says Y, and that's way lower on Glassdoor, um, for people in Buenos Aires who are accountants, for example. And what's interesting is there are, like, and it's really developed over the past few years since COVID basically two different labor markets in Latin America. There's like the local labor market that's done in Spanish or in Portuguese in Brazil. And wages are typically a bit lower and they're denominated in the country's currency. They do come with benefits. Kind of like employment would be in the States. And then there's the second market that's effectively like outsourced labor specifically to the United States, but also to maybe companies in Canada, the UK, Australia, et cetera. And in that market, which is what we're talking about here, people are paid a good bit more. They're paid in dollars and they're typically paid as contractors. And The salary demands in that market are, I mean, they're significantly lower than the equivalent compensation for the same role in the States, but they are rising a little bit over time. Like there's inflation effectively on those salary expectations. And there are, there are places where you can identify this. One, a partner will tell you what a competitive, um, compensation, uh, range is. Like, uh, you know, we, we kind of quote the ranges that, um, we can, our customers can expect to find talent at, you know, say like, hey, you want, you want a junior controller that may be, you know, $3,000 a month or $4,000 a month, depending on the years of experience. Or the location that you're hiring from. We do have a salary guide on our website for Latin America. We can include a link to that on the follow-up email for the webinar. That might be really helpful for people to take a look at. We update that either quarterly or every 6 months depending on the changes. And then the other thing that's important to note is that the economies, I mean, obviously the American economy is pretty interesting right now, but the economies in, like, let's take Argentina for example, like, change a lot more than maybe we are used to. And the cost of living in Argentina specifically over the past year has risen by, like, extreme amounts. And the salary demands for folks in Argentina, even in the second, in that, like, secondary labor market, are increasing for a variety of reasons, not just the cost of living, but as a result of the cost of living increases, local companies are paying significantly more. And so the salaries that people can get in their countries that also include benefits, and now like that the peso is not rapidly devaluing against the dollar, become a lot more attractive to people. And so in order to identify and get the best talent to work for your company in Argentina remotely, the, the The expectations increase a bit. So I know that's not, that's kind of a roundabout answer to just say, how do you do it? But, and how do you know whether you're getting gouged? Um, but that's kind of context behind it. But there is no one central place for it, but our salary guide is pretty accurate. And we do that, we, we develop, um, and update that every few months through looking at all of the jobs that we are opening and placing for customers and see which candidates accept what. And so it's based on real-world data.

Yeah. So I think it's one of the reasons to go with a partner agency. Like there's a bunch of just pitfalls here. Yeah.

I think I actually got an important pitfall to talk about with that is that when you do, um, underpay. You're opening yourself up to attrition that is way more expensive, um, over time than if you just paid a little bit more and knew like what to pay. And that, that's, that is a common pitfall that customers who do it on their own experience. They try to underpay because they think that maybe an agency is quoting them more and then lose that talent pretty quickly. And yeah, I think this is something that we've talked about, Girdley, that it's all, it's actually better to pay a little bit above even the market. Rate that you're quoted or think is like attractive at the beginning because you can still achieve a significant cost savings, uh, compared to a US hire, but you're much likely, likelier to retain someone that feels like they're, you know, earning a great wage. And so because when you, when you create win-win scenarios for your company and the talent that you're hiring, it helps with retention big time.

A couple questions about reference checking. So how do I check references for overseas employees? But then our question from our attendee is, at what point in the hiring process do you do reference checks? Um, like the kind of the core second part of this question is, okay, how do you do reference checking? But then second, like where in the process do I actually do that reference check? Is it later, middle? How do, how do you see people doing it?

Yeah. So in terms of, I'd say there's a couple parts here. So the first thing is identifying references, um, like how and when do you identify those references? How do you do the checks and like, uh, yeah. And when, and, and when do you actually do them? So I learned this from Michael is that throughout the interview process, um, when we hire people for our team and what we encourage our customers to do is in interviews, like, and especially in like later stage interviews, identify peers, managers, you know, key people that you would want to use as references in the conversations with your, you know, the, the prospective hire. So for example, someone mentions, yeah, I got promoted at this company. You would ask them, you know, who's your manager there? And you get a name and then you can, you know, later follow up and, and ask if that person can serve as a reference for them at the reference check stage. So you want to try to collect potential references throughout the interview process. So that's number one. Number two, it actually does get a little hairy, I guess, for when you, when you're hiring in LATAM, because the majority of the people that you are going, that, that the candidates that are working with you are going to provide as references, they're not necessarily English-speaking people. And so it kind of removes your ability if you don't have someone who's Spanish-speaking on your team or Portuguese-speaking for Brazil, it removes the ability to call people and kind of have more of a dynamic conversation. And the reference check stage is super important because you can glean a lot of information about the person that you're going to hire. How do they work? Like what makes them tick? You get a lot, you get that third, you know, all the reasons that references are so important, you want to do it on the phone typically. And so if you end up using like Translate and talking with them over text or over email, you can kind of lose important context that you wouldn't otherwise. So that, that's something that our clients really value is that our recruiting team, when it's time to do references, does them for them and kind of develops the questions and, uh, you know, takes the time off their plate, but also is able to do references live over the phone. When to do them? We basically do them right after the last interview with, with candidates. And we do them only for candidates that, uh, our customers are ready to hire from, or they want to hire. They're, they're going to decide between 1 or 2 people and they run references as a, as a way to kind of help make that decision. And so I would say immediately after the final round interview, or if the final round interview is one person, potentially right before it as well. And it's important to, in my opinion, stack those. And that's how we run it so that you can move as fast as possible because you don't want to lose out on great candidates. And the other reason that, like, one tip that Girdley has given me that we encourage all our customers to do and kind of run this way is We ask people to identify their references right before the final interview and ensure they get permission beforehand so that if we're ready to go, we're not like wasting tons of time, um, after that stage that could potentially, you know, create days of delay for no reason because you're going from one person to the next, trying to get in contact, get answers, schedule something. And so we typically try to schedule them beforehand, but do them immediately after. Would you agree with that, Michael?

I do. I think it's great. Um, cool. All right. We have two questions. Um, we're got about 10, 12 minutes left. So we had two questions around this kind of topic of where do people work from remotely? Like, do they work from their house? Like, how does internet connectivity work and all that kind of stuff in these places? And then equipment, like how do they get laptops and stuff like that? If you're going to send them a company laptop, like, How, how does that, how does that typically get done by people? Yeah. Those two things.

Okay. So for, yeah, first question. So peop— people who are comfortable or, or, or under, like familiar with hiring the Philippines, like internet connection, making sure that, um, you know, people have like a good, good space to work from or a private workspace. Like those are really legitimate concerns. Make sure that there's not like, there are like, uh, rooster noises in the background. It's like a really common. Thing. Like in Latin America, people typically have private workspaces when they work from home and so, and that have really good internet connection. Like we really don't run into that issue often. We obviously, we run a checklist, um, of, yeah, of requirements and things that we want to look into for every candidate before they even get, um, they have a first round interview with one of our customers and some of those things that we check are like, do you have a strong internet connection? Send us like an internet speed check test. We ensure that their English is really strong, so on and so forth. Um, but that is not a common issue. And so, but where do they work from? Because they have like good internet, like the vast majority of people that, um, we place just work from home. Um, we do have customers that want people to either work in an office or have the opportunity to work in an office. And we can figure that out. So we can do it through coworking memberships or a private workspace where maybe a manager and their team goes or can go. And so those things are possible, but the majority of our customers are totally cool with their team working from home. The second piece of that, Michael, was what?

Equipment. Like let's say you want to have a company laptop shipped to somebody, or are they using their own equipment typically? Like, how does this work?

Yeah, I'd say I think the, the distribution's like 60/40. 60% people that we place just use their own equipment. Um, and sometimes they're, you know, required to download certain software, use a VM, virtual machine. And then the other 40% of our customers procure equipment, uh, for their team. And they do that through us. And we have partners that you can buy equipment from, but also where we can kind of provision them with any security measures, software, et cetera, before they actually get sent to the candidate. So all that's possible and we make it pretty seamless for our customers.

So questions around the— Alhassan, I am going to brutalize your name. Apologize for being stupid American, but Alhassan Osman asked, what legal tax and compliance considerations should companies address to ensure secure and legitimate overseas hiring? So it kind of ties into this, like, how does payroll, HR, compliance, all that kind of stuff, how does this work, um, with people hiring offshore?

Yeah, the majority of the people that we place are placed as contractors and they typically prefer that because they end up making more, they pay their taxes on their own. We do advise in certain cases to hire people either through an agent of record or actually as an employee through an employer of record and kind of help our customers understand what like the risks and pros and cons are of each of those decisions. And Michael, I think you have a good way of of talking about this where there is a semblance of risk when you hire people as contractors, but there's risk when you hire anybody anywhere and there are business decisions to be had. But the vast majority of people in Latin America specifically with the way we work are hired as contractors. And then how payroll and all that stuff works is, well, if you do it on your own, you can find a payroll provider. Figure that out. There's, you know, there's, there's lots of things that you can research of like how to pay remote talent on Google. When you work with an agency like us, um, we have two models. So we have a managed service model where we kind of COVID all that contracts, onboarding, monthly payroll. You get an invoice that's like broken out between our fee and the compensation that's paid to the person. It's fully transparent and we handle paying them and make sure they get paid on time and all that stuff. Or we also have a direct hire model where companies can pay on their own if they already have that infrastructure in place or prefer it for a specific reason.

Super good. All right, so we're coming up kind of on the last 6 or 7 minutes here. Let me— so people are asking some questions, Hayden, that's not really in here. It's about kind of success rates for placement when you go with an agency, you know, like us versus like just on your own? Like, what is, what is the typical success rate like? And then how does it work? Like if somebody's not a fit, like a culture or skill fit, like how do they get replaced quickly? Like how does that typically work? And I guess that depends on the, the managed service staffing model versus kind of the recruiting model. So you want to talk a little bit about that? Those two topics?

Yeah, I mean, I could, and I can talk about like obviously our company specifically, um, you know, there's, there's comparable agencies and models out there, but the way we work, um, we have a really high success rate. So, um, about 70% of all the roles that, that come in get placed within 3 to 4 weeks. And, um, companies that have been working with us for, you know, a year or more, like they're, they're placing like almost all of their roles, right? So, so we do occasionally get that new customers who may decide not to move forward with, with one person here or there, depending on the role, but our customers who hire consistently through us find it to be like, you know, really successful and really, really important for their business. In terms of replacements, um, we offer some pretty strong guarantees. Like on our managed service, there's no commitment at all. So you, you pay month to month, and if someone leaves or quits or gets fired for any reason, um, that payment basically pauses. And then when you get a replacement, then we kind of like immediately search for it. And like I said, typically takes about 3 weeks, and it can, you know, goes up or down depending on The, you know, whether it's a really niche role or if it's a longer hiring process, but like 3 weeks is kind of like a 3 or 4 weeks is safe bet. And, uh, when that person gets on, then kind of like the payment resumes. And then on our direct hire model, I don't remember what the exact number of days are, but it's like a minimum of 3 months, um, kind of, uh, free replacement. Um, And if that person leaves or quits for any reason during that timeframe, then you get a free replacement.

Cool. All right, let's, we have a question from Mide or M-I-D-E. I'm sorry, it's like, it's a bad day to be an American. Does Near have a training module that onboards new hires and just kind of this, if you wanna talk a little bit about anything special for offshore hiring that you do people should do for onboarding and training people?

Yeah. So what we, we do not, um, put ourselves in the middle of work being done at the company and, uh, like, yeah, the company and the, the talent in terms of like what's actually being done on a day-to-day basis in terms of managing people. Um, but we do handle all for, for the managed service model, handle all of the onboarding. For maturing contracts are in place, equipment is procured, or we kind of like check that off, that they know when their start date is and what they're going to use for their computer, that their payroll is all set up, that, um, invoicing is all set up, making sure that people are success— like ready to go for their first day. Um, and yeah, I mean, we inter— like what the You had a kind of a follow-up on that, Michael?

Um, well, the question disappeared, but I think I was just kind of asking about what do people do for onboarding and training special BAs of, because of nearshoring or offshoring.

Um, but I think like in terms of just like, uh, like tactical advice for having a remote team is that like any type of internal company onboarding and training that you have for US-based hires, you should treat your teammates in Latin America the exact same way and you'll be way more successful. So if you consider them true teammates of the business and you, and you treat them as such and offer them those resources, you'll get way more out of this initiative than if you think of them, uh, the people that you're hiring is kind of either like lower cost labor or, you know, less skilled. And if you But I think like if you hone the mindset of that, these are just teammates that I happen to be hiring from a different country, then you'll find way more success hiring remotely and offshore.

It's, if you take away that, I want to reiterate that if you take away anything from all of this, like the superpower you can use is don't treat these people that you hire offshore as second-class citizens in your company. Treat them like first-class citizens, like they're just like everybody else. You don't care what country you're from, what citizenship you have, where you're living. Like, if you do that, like, I've just seen like the loyalty and effectiveness and just like profitability like skyrocket when you go down that path. And I think that's the thing that's changed the most for me in terms of my mindset going into like hiring. Like I no longer look at just my people or my community as people that live here in San Antonio. Like they're people that I develop personal relationships with no matter where they live. And then if you have that mindset, like it's just a huge unlock to make this stuff all go so much better. So anyway, soapbox. So Hayden, we have 2 more questions. I'll go through real quick and that way I was shooting for answering 100% of questions except for the person that asked us how to make a business to compete with us.

We're not gonna tear up the sheets.

It's good try though. Uh, but anyway, uh, this, uh, this one question here is what's the best way to vet and find companies rather than individual hires that has workers available at all times? Like, it's kind of like somebody's asking, like, do you have, like, the concept I think this person's looking for is a BPO, business process outsourcing. Somebody like you go hire for a specific process and they run that for you and the company does it. So, I, you know, I don't really think that's what we do because, you know, we're not in the way of, we're not managing your people for you. Like, that's your job. So as, as a business owner, so I don't know if you have any thoughts about that, but I think this, this is, this person should go find a BPO or an outsourced task kind of, kind of situation.

Yeah. Yeah. If you're looking for like a specific service or jobs to be done, done, then, then it makes sense to go to the BPO or, you know, some sort of like outsourced agency that can help you with those like specific tasks or, you know, set of tasks. And the way to think about Near is basically a partner that will help you identify great teammates for your business, kind of across different job functions and areas of the business that like will come on as kind of like full-time teammates.

100%. Okay. Last question is kind of asked about Near and it was from early on, so I left it up 'cause this is the one slide where we like get a little salesy. So my job is to get you to consider coming to my conference, oldcodeconference.com. Check it out if you want to practice kind of multi-company conference or multi-company entrepreneurship like I do. Old Code Conference is for you. We have 15 or 20 seats left, so we're gonna sell out, so please come. But it—

Be there. Yeah, let's go.

And they're skiing, so. So Hayden, there's a question specifically about Near that I think's an interesting proof point about how big our company's become. How many companies do we currently work with? How many hires have we made overall? And I think that somebody's just trying to understand how established are we as a vendor.

Yeah, I wanna say we've done close to like 2,000 placements. And we have worked with a few hundred companies. So, and we grew a lot last year and we are, you know, able to service companies kind of across the board in terms of size. So we have startups that work with us, um, you know, agencies, law firms, you know, 10 to 100 people. And then we have customers like over 500 or 1,000 employees, um, that, you know, look to us to be like a core competency for their recruiting efforts. and kind of like their go-to partner for offshore Latin hiring.

Oh, that's cool.

So been a fun journey.

Uh, you guys are killing it. Well, and you know, you speak Spanish fluently. Franco grew up in Argentina, who's our third business partner, speaks Spanish fluently. Like, it's such a cheat code. 'Cause I remember when, when we first hired Franco, I was like, hey, uh, like, I think it was in the interview process. Like, I asked him like, hey Franco, like, how do I check your do a criminal background check on you? Because it was the first time, like, I'd ever hired somebody offshore. And he's like, oh, well, it's different than in the States. You, like, go to the government and you go to this specific office and they do it for you. And I'm like, what? So, like, he just clued me into how, like, having a partner was, like, so worth the money and all this. And I had come into all this having hired somebody who I later discovered was charging me like they were working full-time for me and were actually working 3 jobs and doing a terrible job for all 3 of us. So like having a partner to kind of de-risk it for me was just enormous. So anyway, but people should do whatever they feel. Cool. So if people are interested in working with you, they can go to hirewithnear.com and then slash my last name and you get 5% off your first hire.

So please, next time we do it, yeah, definitely go hirewithnear.com/girdley, get 5% off or we'll send that link. I also think Michael, we should, We should talk next time we do this, talk about how we started this thing.

Yeah.

Because it is interesting and like was super organ— super organic, like hiring Franco, um, from Argentina randomly and then growing from there.

Uh, I wanted to do a job board, but the customers didn't want a job board. I think that's the TL;DR.

Yeah. We listened to Girdley for a year and then started learning about what our customers wanted. 6 months. Yeah, it was like 6 months.

Awesome. All right, so Ty, anything else we need to cover? I, I think we got through all the questions. We'll wrap it up here and we'll get this uploaded and the recording sent out to everyone. And thanks for being here. Hopefully it was helpful to you. Uh, I love talking to Hayden and I had a good time. So if nothing else, we got to do that.

Yeah. Send out links and everything here in a few hours once we get it all cleaned up, but appreciate everybody joining.