OSREC

When making a decision on whether recruiting from overseas is the right thing to do you need to consider the following points:

• which country you should recruit from?
• which is the right type of visa?
• what your obligations are as an employer?
• how to source the employees? and,
• what the costs will be?

A lot of advice is freely available on immigration but very little is available about how and where to source the best applicants, which countries will have people with the skill level you are looking for and how you can assess these skills and compare them to those required.

After an initial meeting or telephone conversation to understand your business and requirements, some good specialist recruiters will offer you a free consultation on these matters and may submit a full report to you.   If you are unsure on any points, this is a good way to go as they will be experts with several years experience and may have learned from previous recruitment of the same type of workers what the pros and cons are likely to be.

The main demographic areas of recruiting from overseas are:

• Asia
• Eastern Europe
• South & Central America

If you are looking for high numbers of skilled tradesmen, parts of Asia will have the advantage of Language skills.  For example, countries such as the Philippines would offer a higher number of English speaking people than Eastern Europe or South America, but may not offer other desired/desirable attributes. Eastern Europe for example is very industrial whilst countries like the Philippines would be stronger for hospitality.

Here are some key points you should consider.

1. Be very clear about what is being offered in terms of working hours, salary, overtime, and future prospects.
2. Be open to communication from applicants, as will be a very big decision for them to choose to leave home, and they will have many questions (as you would yourself in the same situation).  They will want to know if they can bring their families over, (we always recommend this is not a good option until an employee has got started in the job and both employer and applicant is settled), but an option to bring their loved ones over at a later date is appealing should all be going well.
3. Take into account that you may have to help them with things like; opening a bank account.  A good agent would also offer them a SIM card with credit so that their families can contact them upon arrival – but if using an agent and they do not offer this, then it would be worth thinking about.  They will be in a completely different culture and will not know basic things that will be important for them such as how to post a letter, where to buy stamps, where the post office is etc. 

   Osrec has a free eBook [need to link here] explaining a lot of these things for America, with others coming soon for Canada, Australia and the UK.  The eBook [need to link here] can be downloaded from this site.

4. Treat them with the same respect as you would a local worker, they have made a life-changing decision to come and work for you, and are not looking to be treated any better or worse than anyone else working for you, but they will start to resent the situation very quickly if they are being paid less, working more hours unpaid or being used to do jobs that they were not employed to do.  If there is a training period where the salary will be less or where they will start in a different department until they acclimatize then make it clear from the outset and before they travel.  They will probably want to work more hours as long as they are being paid for it – overtime is a big attraction to them.
5. A good agent will offer to translate any health and safety and/or hygiene signs (if you are in food production for example this could be useful), job contracts or any other relevant documents or information.  This should not cost any more for the service and will help the employee settle quicker, and help to avoid any misunderstandings.
6. Accommodation is another major issue to take into consideration.  If the applicants are paying their own immigration costs then it is unlikely that they will have money to pay for accommodation deposits, in many cases they will be happy to have this money deducted from their salary to pay it back to the employer, but unlikely that they will have the money to pay it up front upon their arrival.  Typically they are happy to share a room with another person in a rented house to keep the costs down.  One of their main motivations for working abroad is financial and the sooner they can recoup their own costs and start saving or sending their money home the better.
7. Travel to and from work is another issue which too often is left until the last minute.  If employing large numbers of people from abroad it may be worthwhile looking into providing transport to and from work and making sure the accommodation is not too far away.
8. Pay competitive wages!  We recently had an employer who was looking to recruit over 150 linesmen and cable joiners, they were offering a basic salary of $25,000 and there was another job offer from another country paying $40,000.  Competitive wages are usually beyond the minimum salary (within the immigration guidelines) that is allowed to bring people into the country, with more governments insisting that employers pay them what the going rate is for the skills they have and the job that they are doing.  In the UK employers have to pay the “minimum wage” rate for any profession when hiring foreign workers; and applications that are offering a minimum or lower salary would not be approved.
9. If your salary structure is likely to be lower than in other countries, but you have a lower cost of living, the employee needs to understand this and you should emphasize the positive points (as mentioned above) that employers in other countries may not be doing.

How To Evaluate their Skills:

Skills in one country may differ from another.  It is therefore important to know how to evaluate them properly in order to find the most suitable employees for your company.  To rely on resumes and qualification certificates alone has proved many times in the recent past to be a mistake that often leads to disappointment.  There are two main options that a good recruiter should offer you:

1. Skills assessment videos – which is a good option if you do not have time to travel and see the people in their own country, or only need a small amount of employees from overseas.  This worked very well recently with a Canadian employer who only required four people and was planning to take more later on, if they worked out well.
2. Travel to their country and do face to face interviews as well as have skills assessments set up for you. This is only suitable if you are looking to employ enough people to make the trip viable.

We have recently had satisfied clients from both methods, but by far the best way is to make time to go to their country, get an understanding of their culture and why they want to work abroad and see firsthand their skill level, how modern the equipment is in their country as well as their English language ability.  You should be able to have these costs reimbursed from the agent if taking enough people.

Here are some key points about choosing a recruiter to help you resource suitable foreign employees.

Please keep in mind that recruiters who specialize in bringing people from overseas have a different remit from local recruiters.  Below is a list that may be helpful in your discussions with them:

1. A good recruiter will offer you a lot of advice and help you to plan not only your immediate needs, but also future needs at the same time.  In Australia for example you can have nominations approved for up to two years, so if your immediate needs are for 10 people but in the next 2 years it is likely to be 50 or 60, they will help you with this both in terms of planning and sourcing the right people for the right time.  Nominations can be applied for in bulk and cost $55 each, but can be paid as and when you use them.  You would not have to pay for all 60 nominations at the outset, if you want 10 people immediately then only the ten nominations used need to be paid for.  These are the type of things you need to be told, and is also a sign that the recruiter is aware of the options that you have.
2. They should offer to speak with you for at least 30 – 40 minutes initially to fully understand what you are looking for, and this will be followed up several times as more details are needed.
3. A report should then be submitted to you after the initial conversation, and may possibly include details which may have been in question but not able to be answered at the time.  Typically a report will be done for companies looking to employ several people and will consist of details of where they recommend the applicants are sourced from, why.  And also what the advantages and disadvantages of different countries may be.
4. The report should also include details about the right type of visa that should be applied for and again then reasons given, the costs of this and the immigration process should be outlined in a step-by-step easy to understand format.
5. Your chosen recruiter should offer you either skills assessment videos, or to reimburse travel costs for a recruitment trip if looking to employ enough people.  They should make every effort to make you aware of the skill level available, and the need for any training upon the employee’s arrival.  An example of this may be welders who are professional and experienced but may not have the modern equipment that is used in your country, or may be used to working in metric measurements and not imperial.
6. Employees from Eastern Europe, Asia and South America will all have a good work ethic; however there will be major differences in their mentality and skill levels.  The recruiter should be able to advise you in detail of this, what to expect and help you to make the right decision based on their previous experience.  However this would happen only if your recruiter is able to source workers from several countries.
7. It is advisable to know the background and history of the agent recruiting from overseas, which countries and types of companies they have been supplying etc.  Overseas recruiters can range from the sublime to the ridiculous.  Going for the cheapest option can be a mistake, this does not mean that a good overseas recruiter will be the most expensive but just to watch out for those offering a deal that is free or very low cost, unless the reasons for doing so are explained in detail.  What may be free and low cost to you now could be very expensive for the applicant and bring you unwanted publicity later.
8. Experience is very important in overseas recruiting, you should look for someone who has been doing it for several years and is of good reputation.  Ask for client testimonials and case studies, and if they can provide these without delays then you can be sure of their background and knowledge to be able to give you the best advice and service.  They should also be aware of the laws of the countries they are recruiting from, as this can avoid delays in getting the workers to your country after the visa is issued.  The Philippines for example has the POEA  which is set up to protect Philippine workers, and if their rules and documentation requirements are not correctly followed there will be problems getting the people out of the country to start their job in a new country.  Similar federations are in process in Eastern Europe too.
9. Recruiters offering overseas workers need to be able to guarantee you the quality of the employees, so ask what guarantees they provide.  They should also offer an unrestricted ‘after sales’ service.  They should follow up to make sure that the employees have all arrived safely, have settled and that their families can contact them.  Upon arrival, applicants may be a little demanding as they try to get accustomed to their new way of life.  They will have many questions and the agent should be available on a daily basis to deal with as many of their enquiries as possible.  This can be done by telephone by calling them on a daily basis.
10. There are many middle men appearing in the overseas recruitment business, they may be in the form of a local recruiter dealing with overseas agents, or overseas agents dealing with other overseas agents. This is often where applicants get charged extortionate fees.
11. You should be sure that whoever you are dealing with understands the local markets they are recruiting from. We recently did a trip to Moldova where we were working for the first time with a local Moldovan agent, we had 45 people to interview and from that only 5 people were suitable, many were not at the level of English their resume had stated, many had no idea about the jobs they were supposed to be professionals in and the agents had adjusted the resumes to suit the jobs we were recruiting for.  It is very easy these days to have certificates made up which are not real, and to take enough information from the internet to make an impressive resume.  If we had not physically gone there to do face-to-face interviews and a proper screening process then it could easily have ended in disappointment.  Any middle man whether local or overseas needs to know the territory and local languages to be ensure a proper screening process.  Unfortunately some agents will try to push forward people who are not suitable just to try and make a sale.  They will be charging the applicants money, and if there is no guarantee clause they do not always have the employer’s needs as a priority.
12. The simple way to avoid a bad result is meeting the applicants face to face.  This is such an important point that it should not be ignored, and is the best advice we could give to any employer thinking of recruiting from overseas.

Using an agent is essential… but using the ‘right’ agent is the tricky part.

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