First Nearshore, then In-house hiring in LATAM

A strategy US tech companies are following in the post COVID-19 era.

A couple of months ago we all saw the news: Twitter decided that all their employees will be doing home office, their CEO even said that they might remain working from home “forever”. Then, followed by some other tech giants that started applying similar work policies, this became a trend well received given the Covid-19 situation. With everybody going home office during this period we asked ourselves a simple question: why are we still hiring our tech team in the same city, state or even country? all the good reasons for hiring local and having everyone within the same office have now disappeared, the situation has forced all of us to move into a complete digital working style.

Bringing talent to the US

Every tech company knows about the lack of software engineers in the US, in order to solve this a couple of years ago tech giants like Google and Microsoft, started campaigns all over the world to bring IT professionals to work at their offices in Palo Alto or Seattle. Now it doesn't make much sense for most tech companies (specially startups) to follow this model since your co-workers will be working from home even if they are in the same city. This is one of the main reasons why companies are starting to see in Latin America, a region that has been growing significantly during the past years, as a proven source of qualified engineers able to satisfied the high demand in the US market.

Quick LATAM facts

• The whole region has an estimated population of 652 million people, twice the one in the US
• Brazil and Mexico are the most crowded countries in the region

• Similar culture and language along the region
• Same or similar time zones than in the US (one or two hours different)
  

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Hiring Nearshore, then going in-house remotely

Hiring in Latin America could represent a huge opportunity for tech companies to find great talent but at the same time the unknown landscape could become a significant challenge. That is why during the last couple of months Simbiosis has helped our users to implement a cost-effective strategy for hiring talented engineers through nearshore outsourcing companies, reducing risks significantly while aiming for a short (3 or 6 months) or mid-term (12 or 18 months) projects, if it results in a positive engagement between the engineer and the company after this period, our partner nearshore company unlock the possibility for the engineer to be hired directly by the client company, following an in-house model. Some benefits of this:

• HR and Compliance. Nearshore companies take care about every paper work of the employee in the LATAM country and act as a HR department, taking care about the needs of the engineers.
• Hiring Flexibility. In most cases you can start engaging with a 3 – 6 months contract and then decide to continue afterwards or cancel any time, this is completely under your criteria and only require a month in advance notice.
• Specialized Tech Stack. Quite often nearshore software development companies focused on some specific technologies and become masters on them, developing highly specialized and experienced engineers on those technologies. Let’s also remember that most Software Dev companies have their own CTO helping their staff to face new challenges.
• Local Tech Landscape. Good partners are well involved into the local tech landscape, they often host meetups and other events for building their communities, meaning they can access and hire better engineers fast.
• Dev Community. Engineers are in constant communication with their co-workers, sharing knowledge about the technologies they are working on a daily basis, being able to solve problems faster.
• No Freelancers on your Project. Being a freelancer is not a bad thing, but if you want full-time commitment (140 – 160 hours per month) working exclusively in your project, they might not be the best option.
• Vetted Engineers. Even though you will be interviewing every candidate for joining your team under the nearshore model, most of these engineers already passed well-defined filters and interviews made by the software dev company, and in most cases they already worked in similar projects before with some other happy clients.

At Simbiosis, we have implemented and invited all our partners to join us with this "First nearshore, then in-house" strategy, reducing hiring risks and building cost-effective operations for our clients. If needed, your startup is able to make in-house hiring offers to each engineer successfully working with your team after a period of time.

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