Can Hiring Internationally Help You Meet Talent Shortages?

Many markets were already suffering a skills shortage before the Pandemic in areas with economic growth. Even with things slowing down now, we are probably past the peak of post-pandemic job vacancy growth rates, and even with that, we are seeing sizeable structural supply and demand pressures. In many countries, unemployment is low and there are fewer people actively available for roles than there have been in the past. Many of the candidates that are looking for work don’t have the skills the market wants, and job vacancies are also at historic highs – There is increased hiring competition in a smaller talent pool.

There are four tactics for dealing with skills shortages, and the right strategy for you may be one of them or a mix.

The war for talent

You can offer a far better package than competitors to win talent away from the competition aggressively, combined with direct head-hunting. You will get skilled staff ready to hit the ground running, but it can be expensive to maintain, and your competition may do the same in retaliation leading to a feedback loop of spiralling costs. You might be able to win talent away for the same, or even slight drop, in pay if you can work with people’s values elsewhere with flexibility, ethos and employer brand.

Transferable skills

You can hire for transferable skills. As we mentioned earlier, many people are looking to change careers when they move. Identify types of skills – for example, creative, maths based etc. that would give people a head start with training, then target those abilities rather than specific industry experience. Or even better, develop your existing staff in easier replaced roles. An example of this is the shortage of Forklift drivers. Some employers are taking the strategy that instead of hiring forklift drivers, they train their warehouse operatives to be forklift drivers, then hire to replace the warehouse operatives. This can be a strong tactic – you are investing in your current staff, offering progression can make you more of an employer of choice, and staff are more likely to be loyal.

The Wider Net

Find the skills in a wider geographic area, and bring them to you, including internationally. 42% of recruiters told us that a candidate living outside of a company’s geographic area had become less of a red flag than it used to be. Skill shortages are a crucial driver of this – companies need to cast a wider net and are facing increased hiring competition while the Pandemic has made it far more common for us to hire, onboard and work remotely. This could mean finding people to relocate – that can carry risk and expense with visas and relocation costs. Or take the job to the skills Broadly, we might consider there are two types of international hiring –

Traditional International Hiring

Traditional international hiring might be seen as finding talent abroad and relocating it to the job. If the skills you are hiring for are recognised by the government’s skilled worker visa list it may make it easier to get visas sorted, but it can still be a complicated process, with additional support required on setting up bank accounts and accommodation and plans for if it doesn’t work out.

Remote international Hiring

Remote work has opened up hiring offshore, either to work for your domestic market or to expand into new markets. In the UK, Brexit has exacerbated the skills shortages with over 1 million foreign-born workers leaving the UK. However, if a job can be done remotely, then it can be done anywhere.

That’s a double-edged sword. The availability of more remote opportunities allows you to hire from a much bigger pool of candidates – but it also opens up your current workers to a lot more hiring opportunities.

Case Study

For firms that are prepared to think outside the box, it opens up some interesting possibilities. One UK-based 24-hour tech support firm was struggling to get skilled people to work overnight in the UK. They would need to pay a premium to do so – and we know in terms of worker health and work-life balance, working nights can be unpopular. They took advantage of hiring two day-shifts to cover the UK market – one in the UK and the night shift based in New Zealand. Overall their workers were happier, their night-time support calls were a better experience for customers, they also enabled UK staff the opportunity to go and work in New Zealand for 6 months at a time and train staff there.

If you would like to find out more about hiring internationally, you can download Monster’s “Distant Demands” international hiring ebook here. If you are interested in how to quickly & compliantly employ a remote employee somewhere that you don’t have an entity then speak to our partner Workmotion.