The Global Talent Tipping Point: Pivoting to Remote in Response to COVID-19

SUMMARY

The Coronavirus has required companies worldwide to switch to a remote work framework overnight. Even when the virus is no longer a looming threat, working and operating remotely during this time will have had permanent influence over employee and business structures, making it difficult to turn back to pre-COVID work environments. But that’s not a bad thing - prepared companies who embrace, hold onto, and further develop this extensive shift to remote work will be ahead of the competition and excel in efficiency, profitability and wellbeing.

• Workers feel safer and more productive working remotely and are less likely to want to return to a corporate office post-COVID
• Companies could save 15% or more in salary costs alone by switching to hiring remote talent
• Using remote talent frees your company from many geographic talent pool constraints
• Navigating the global, remote talent pool has its challenges – including knowing where, and how, to focus to find the right talent, and handling the increase in job applicants
• Implementing the right processes and platforms is crucial to successfully running a remote business

INTRODUCTION

“In the wake of the novel coronavirus, any company that could function remotely has been forced to do so, making remote work more of a viable career option.” -  Natalia Lusinski and Marguerite Ward for Business Insider

Companies abruptly thrust into being 100% remote, or nearly so: very few people could initially have had the insight that one of the biggest, potentially longest-lasting disruptors of COVID-19 would be associated with permanent changes to the corporate landscape. As unsettling and unexpected as COVID has been, this sudden shift can, however, be viewed as a blessing in disguise.

Some companies already had a foundation in using global remote talent, whereas others have had to take a giant leap to this next level only recently. In both cases, COVID is informing companies’ talent hiring strategy for both the present day and the future.

“Adaptability has become a benchmark for organizations and individuals to aspire to.” – Adi Gaskell for Forbes

As an owner of a 100% remote staffing and HR consulting company, COVID has a smaller impact on our business since we were already all working from home in places all over the world. Working closely with an array of Hiring Managers over the years, we have conducted searches and sourced remote talent from around the world. The feedback we have been hearing after COVID from these Hiring Managers is that it’s more effective for them to find remote talent for certain roles through either specialized outsourcing companies in countries where talent is less expensive or finding remote talent in countries like Spain and Latin America where talent is less expensive compared to the US. 

Now, in a pandemic environment, there’s also more pressure to work remotely from workers themselves - who are favoring moves out of densely populated cities - with the majority of office workers preferring to continue working remotely even after the peak of the crisis.

“Three in five US workers who have been doing their jobs from home during the coronavirus pandemic would prefer to continue to work remotely as much as possible, once public health restrictions are lifted.” - Gallup

Below, we outline further data, considerations and case studies to underscore both the benefits and complexities of this talent shift.

LET THE DATA GUIDE YOU

“Where will we turn for quick, trusted access to capability and skills if critical talent is unable or unwilling to return to the workplace or to resume working at all?” - Kevin Martin for The Financial Times

Whether your company is completely revamping its talent hiring strategy in reaction to COVID or continuing to build upon an existing strategy that already incorporated a shift to remote work, it’s important to analyze available data regarding the greater talent pool that’s now available to you when you remove geographic limitations.

The most common data that we at Capa analyze for our clients when assessing remote talent frequently surrounds the size of the talent pool for a specific role and the salary comparison for that role. These are two of the initial factors taken into consideration to both evaluate and narrow down the focus for a global talent search – whether that search is for a full-time remote employee, remote contractor or remote freelancer.

“It is vital that businesses understand their talent supply.” - Kevin Martin for The Financial Times

Let’s take the search for a Marketing Director as an example:

If your business were physically located in Philadelphia and you are seeking a Marketing Director to work in the office, you’ll be facing an initial talent pool of over 100,000 possible candidates. Capa considers this a very strong talent pool, keeping in mind that it’s not narrowed down by any further criteria such as years of experience or specific skills.

If it were not necessary for your Marketing Director to go into the office, however, your search could be opened up to the entire United States, where there are over 5 million Marketing Directors with all levels of experience. That’s an increase of 4,900%! That equates to 4,900% more possibilities in finding an exceptional Marketing Director – but also a much larger challenge in vetting and selecting the Marketing Director for your company.

And just to further highlight the greater possibilities out there when your company is able to use global remote talent, worldwide there are over 11 million Marketing Directors!

While in this example for a Marketing Director in Philadelphia there is a good-sized base candidate pool in the geographic region, for businesses not located in a major metropolis, opening up the candidate pool to other geographic regions by capitalizing on remote work makes a much greater difference in access to talent. It’s also important to keep in mind that, although it will be a much more obvious difference over time, with the combination of the technological ability these days to work from anywhere with an internet connection and the long-lasting impact of the coronavirus pandemic, workers have less incentive to stay in cities, since, with remote work, decent work opportunities can be had from anywhere.

Now that you have a better idea of just how much more choice of talent your company could have by using remote employees, remote contractors or remote freelancers, let’s consider the salary differentials of opening your talent base to include widespread remote talent:

Per talent giant Indeed.com, a Marketing Director position in the Philadelphia area averages an annual base salary of $118K. However, were this hypothetical Philadelphia-based company to instead utilize remote talent elsewhere in the United States, that salary average drops to a Marketing Director’s United States annual average of just shy of $100K – a potential 15% immediate savings to your business.

The major takeaway from this data is that hiring budgets that have been impacted by COVID don’t necessarily mean that you have to compromise on the level of talent you can hire. If you open up your talent search to include remote workers in different geographic regions, your company can win big time by both saving money and by still hiring the most qualified, ideal individual for the job at hand. This conclusion can be equally applied to new positions and to skills that are already in-house but could be optimized by being outsourced to a remote worker or vendor.

HOTSPOT REGIONS FOR EXCEPTIONAL REMOTE TALENT

Capa itself has remote workers in the United States, Germany, Portugal, Croatia and Pakistan. But when the whole world is your talent pool - and if your company doesn’t have ties to specific countries or regions of the world - most Hiring Managers find themselves unsure of where to even start their remote talent search. Fortunately, Capa Talent has insight into which locations have high conglomerations of specific skillsets – and how to reach them.

Here, we’ll share some of our knowledge when it comes to Engineers, Programmers, and SEO Specialists.

Engineers:

“To make something, whether digital or tangible, the first step lies in gathering the talent that can make things happen.” -  Joel Kotkin for Forbes

Over the years, Engineering has become a go-to field of study across the globe and one of the most in-demand professions across industries. Most countries these days have multiple universities offering a variety of Engineering degrees. While the graphic below illustrates that Russia leads the pack in terms of countries with the most engineering graduates (India and China not included), Capa has found that Germany, India and Israel are three countries that have large demographics of educated, internationally-oriented, and English-speaking Engineers. Within the United States, Houston and Silicon Valley are two areas with some of the highest concentrations of Engineers.

Programmers:

“Japan is growing exponentially; Russia and China have a huge culture of programming…and India, Southeast Asian countries (Singapore and Indonesia), and South Korea (Seoul) are other popular and growing markets.” -  Arpit Mishra for HackerEarth

The rise and prevalence of the internet and corresponding technology and devices have made programming a vital skill for almost every business. There’s hardly a corner of the world these days that doesn’t have a Programmer, but certain areas are more renowned for their programming talent than others, as shown in this HackerRank infographic:

SEO Specialists:

“Going global is a massive opportunity for SEOs.” - Christian Sculthorp for searchengineland.com

Rankings and web traffic have become an essential requirement for businesses to be able to increase their profitability in our modern world. If your company is seeking to become more competitive in attracting and growing business, you’ve likely considered hiring an SEO Specialist.

One of the many benefits of using a remote, international SEO Specialist is capitalizing on his or her foreign language comprehension in order to rank your company’s website in other geographic regions, thereby reaching a larger, global market. Where there is demand for your products or services might influence from which region of the world you ultimately hire a remote SEO Specialist, but, in general, there is an abundance of SEO talent in Ukraine, Poland and Serbia, to name a few.

Aside from the availability of talent with the skillset you’re looking for, when selecting a remote worker from another world region, keep in mind the time zone they are in (Capa recommends a 5-hour time difference maximum) and the robustness of that region’s internet infrastructure.

CONSIDERATIONS

It’s convincing that turning to global remote talent is of great benefit to most companies. Using a remote workforce, in whole or in part:

• Opens up access to a greater talent pool, whether domestically or internationally
• Allows for the retention of, and prevents loss of access to, talent who have had enough of over-populated cities
• Can be much more favorable in terms of hiring budgets, without compromising on skillset
• Limits exposure to COVID, keeping employees, employers and collaborators all safer
• Allows your business to continuing operating seamlessly regardless of regulatory restrictions such as county, state or country border closures, thanks to the elimination of a physical commute

Although the advantages are numerous, transitioning to working with and managing remote talent isn’t without its challenges – and if your company isn’t setup to work remotely or with remote talent, it won’t fully reap the aforementioned benefits.

Having helped a number of businesses get established as far as remote infrastructure - and in operating as a remote business ourselves - Capa Talent has identified four key remote workforce considerations that shouldn’t be overlooked:

1.   Identifying which roles will have success in a remote capacity

Not all job functions are able to be done remotely – or be done best remotely. Some positions that are easily handled remotely and successfully converted from being in-office surround digital marketing, social media management, software and app development, web design, education, human resources, copywriting and copyediting, customer support, and administrative assistance.

2.   Knowing which roles are important to maintain in-person

Client-facing positions and positions that are critical to maintaining client relationships are sometimes better kept locally or in-person, depending on the nature of your business. Factors that may be important to your clients – but not necessarily as crucial to your internal organization – are interacting with a native-speaker and the ability to physically meet their point-of-contact.

3.   Having remote-friendly processes and platforms in place

One of, if not the, most crucial aspects of incorporating remote work into your everyday business is the ability to onboard, train, communicate with, and manage a remote team or team member. If your company hasn’t yet embraced aspects of remote work, adapting your existing workflows, procedures and processes to allow for the integration of remote workers is the essential first step. Without this, success will not follow.

Fortunately, in our modern, remote-friendly world, there are many tools already in existence that are designed specifically with remote collaboration and oversight in mind, such as Slack. Other tools exist for employee monitoring, if that is of concern, and vendor management.

4.   Planning for the impact of using remote talent on your hiring process

Our fourth point highlights something that many Hiring Managers don’t think about when seeking to hire someone for a remote individual: the increase in applicants.

It’s 2020 and remote positions are more competitive than ever to get. Many people apply for remote positions that they don’t have directly-related previous experience in, simply in an attempt to pivot into working remotely.

When facing a global talent pool for a job search, rather than a talent pool restricted to a geographic location, the flood of resumes received for remote job openings – the quantity of which is currently compounded by the increased levels of unemployment as a result of the impact of coronavirus is exponentially higher than for non-remote jobs. Many companies have limited resources to comb through such a dearth of candidates. If that’s the case for your business, Capa Talent can help.

CONCLUSION

The future of talent after COVID is clearly in a remote workforce, pushing a trend that has been already escalating over the past decade. Whether your company has already pivoted to incorporating more global remote talent or is only starting to consider doing so, be aware that there are as many challenges as there are benefits.

Capa Talent is a uniquely-positioned staffing and HR consulting agency when it comes to remote talent - knowing firsthand where and how to find top-tier workers around the globe and understanding all of the complexities associated with operating a remote company and managing remote teams.

Contact us now for a free assessment of which roles in your organization could best be converted to global remote positions and for corresponding salary comparisons.