This content was created by Omar Zenhom. This content was uploaded by Omar Zenhom. This is a YouTube episode titled "Should You Hire Locally or Overseas? Here’s the Real Answer" (created 2025-05-21) featuring Omar Zenhom delivering a solo advice-style talk for entrepreneurs about hiring strategy. Omar outlines pros and cons of hiring overseas (lower costs, access to senior talent, global perspective, 24-hour coverage) and of hiring locally (easier communication, stronger in-person culture), and discusses challenges like time zones, cultural differences, and the need for strong documentation and tooling. He recommends matching hiring approach to your market (local hires for local products; diverse international teams for global products), cites his experience building Webinar Ninja with a distributed team, and closes with calls-to-action to submit questions (100mba.net) and subscribe to his "Three Things" newsletter at 100-MBA.NET.
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Should I hire locally or overseas? And here's my take. If your product, your service, serves a global market, you're trying to impact the world, your team should reflect that. Who you hire shapes the quality of your product, how well you understand your customers, and how fast or slow your business grows. It's not just about cost, it's about capability, it's about communication, it's about culture. So let's go over the pros of hiring overseas. Number one, I found that your costs are generally lower. You can often hire amazing talent at a fraction of what your local rates are, especially if you're living in a western country like us, Canada, the uk, Australia, whatever it might be. I also see they get more for your money. So you might get a senior, you know, developer engineer at the cost of maybe an entry level engineer. This allows you to build your team earlier and even on a budget. Number two, global perspective. And I believe this is more important, more valuable than the cost pro of hiring overseas. If your customers are in different time zones, they speak different languages, have different cultures, are from different regions, then a team member that is international in that world, in that culture can serve them better. Third one I absolutely love is 24 hour coverage. If you are a champion of customer support in your business, if you want to make sure that your company synonymous with amazing support, then 24 hour coverage is something that you want to think about. And if you want to have people working in regular hours or daytime hours, you need to have a global team. That way they could support your product and services while you sleep. That's a huge advantage. And offering 24 hour support allows you to be a global business. That means doesn't matter where they are in the world, they can always get support from your business, but it's all roses. What are the cons of hiring overseas? Well, time zone challenges. Collaboration can be slower if your team is spread out. Meaning that if you have a team across six continents like I had at one time, you will have to use asynchronous communication a lot. This means that when your team members are posting something on your team collaboration application, like Asana or Basecamp or whatever it might be, somebody might be sleeping and then they'll wake up in the morning and they'll see that post and then they'll respond to it and then when they wake up, they'll see it. So you could see everything's kind of taking 24 hours. Number two, this is something that a lot of people talk about, but it needs to be talked about. And that is Cultural differences. This isn't always bad, but it can affect how you communicate, give feedback or build relationships. What you might consider to be friendly might be rude and vice versa. Number three, hiring takes more intention. You need strong documentation when you're hiring internationally. Clear SOPs. You need the tools to support a distributed team, like a great project management tool like Basecamp or Asana or whatever it might be. The point here is, is that you need to be streamlined. You just can't use Google Chat or Slack and just hope everything's going to work out. You need to have systems in place to make sure nothing falls between the cracks. So let's talk about hiring locally. What are some of the pros? One, generally easier communication and collaboration, especially if you're building fast, especially when you're in the beginning or the early stages of your business. Number two, easier to build a strong company culture in person if you're in the same office. With real communication, your team members will trust you faster if you're seeing them every single day. Now, I know this is like the age of remote work and not a lot of people want to go into an office, but a lot of startups and a lot of new businesses benefit a lot by being in the same office at least a couple or three times a week so that they can build those bonds, build that trust, communicate what they need to communicate with each other so they have some momentum and they could build faster. But what are the cons of hiring locally? Well, cost, plain and simple. So like I said, if you're in a western country or a high earning per capita country, hiring locally can be expensive, especially in major cities. You also have a limited talent pool. The best person for the job might not live near you. And of course, inflexible schedules, especially if you're trying to cover multiple time zones. You know, it's hard to get a hire to wake up in the middle of the night to do a night shift or a graveyard shift for customer support. So what's the right move? In my opinion, if your product is local, then hiring locally may give you cultural nuances in person. Collaboration that matters for your business. But if your business is global, your customers are everywhere, let's say for example, then your team should be too. So if you have an online business, an online digital product that's serving the world, I recommend you diversify because that diversity will give you better products, because you're going to get better feedback from your team, smarter marketing decisions, and a company that reflects the world it's selling to, that's what we did with Webinar Ninja, our software company that we grew for 10 years. We had team members across six different continents and it made for a better product. No doubt about it. Here's the truth. It's not local versus overseas. It's about the right person for the role. Sometimes they're down the street and sometimes they're across the ocean. What matters is building a team that helps you serve your customers better. Your customers are the most important thing. They allow you to grow. And when you have a team, you move faster and you bring your vision to life, no matter where they're based. Thanks, Barry for your Q and A question today on Q and A Wednesday. If you got a question you want to ask and you want it answered right here on the show, just go to 100mba.netq. Submit your question there and we got your back. If you want more help building your business the smart way, subscribe to my Three Things newsletter at 1-00-mba.net. just sign up for any of our freebies, any of our guides, and you'll be part of our newsletter. Every week I'm going to send you three things. Something to think about, something that's going to change your mindset. Number two, something to do so that you are moving forward every week. And number three, something to learn so you are growing as an entrepreneur. It's my way to coach you from afar. It's no fluff, just practical help for entrepreneurs just like you. Again, 100- MBA. NET sign up for any of our guides and you'll be added to our newsletter automatically. Thank you so much for listening for consuming today's podcast episode. You are a doer. You're an action taker. You're my kind of person. You're my people. I can't wait to see you in the next episode. So I'll see you then. Take.
