Hello and welcome. This is Episode 30 of Yves Just
Chatting and today's topic is based on
user requests, based on some previous podcasts, and based on
some discussions on LinkedIn and other platforms lately and
the discussion or the topic for the day is how comdivision
became a global employer. And I
want to give you a bit of a background,
comdivision by itself is a professional services company.
And as such we have been operating primarily in EMEA
and in the US for the last couple of years, and
for those two territories, we primarily use,
besides employees, freelance
resources, but we were more or less limited
to people which we had either directly in
the US or which we had in Germany, Austria,
Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, so more or less just
around where our offices were located
Last year we started on a journey
to expand our team primarily for
Architects and Consultants, and we're looking for new people
to join us on the team, whether it was on freelance
whether it was as an FTE (full-time employee) or anything
in between, no matter what people were looking for. And
we were of the opinion that we would be primarily looking
in the US and actually find
some good resources in the US. So
we started campaigning on
social media and other platforms and
very soon we figured out that a lot of the candidates who
actually apply to us were not
necessarily coming out of the US primarily.
Back then we started to look into
different options, because trying to employ people
Globally is not as easy as it sounds. Several countries have
requirements that you need to have:
either a local subsidiary or
something else. One of the
things which we learned very soon is that
you can work around that scenario with
something which is called an employee of record.
There are several companies out there
globally who provide these types of
services and the advantage of working with
EoRs is also that they
do a lot of the local paperwork you can basically enter all
the information about the employees you want to hire --
from a salary, benefits, and everything else perspective.
They more or less give you the total cost for
the company and everything else.
So it's, in this modern day and age, actually much easier as
a company to make this work
based on the fact that we have been
running as
Multinational company for many
years with our US and EMEA operation,
we were already pretty used to having people work in
different time zones and in different geos.
So that was not necessarily anything new for us.
But the onboarding and hiring process
by itself became very interesting. The
good or, I would even say, the interesting part which we
learned out of this as a company was that
hiring people in all these different
territories gives you access to far more resources.
Sadly enough there were certain limitations which we had to
apply, which we couldn't actually work
around with, which is actually very sad,
and I can share a very good simple story out of that.
So for example, we had one very
very good candidate out of Iran.
But the challenge with that is, as we
have so many customers in the US, but also
security related customers here in EMEA,
having someone from Iran was more or less a no go. We even
evaluated if we could resettle
him and potentially move him to our
Dubai office or something like that,
but even that wouldn't have solved the problem that he still
has a passport from Iran, and based on that
we are not able to just actually quickly
get him to
joining our our team from that perspective.
But, besides tha,t we were able to get a good list of
candidates and actually had quite a few people
join our team from different countries and
primarily
around Northern Africa, the Middle East
and areas like that -- in real contrast to
what we expected, because we were expecting a much higher
amount of US candidates actually apply for us
especially due to the amount of projects we run in the US
and the customer base we have in the US, but
it seems like
people were looking for for something different than us and
to be realistic, at this day at age,
the biggest challenge we have in the US is that due to the
large tech companies like the big
hyperscales, like Google, Microsoft,
and people like that,
the salaries are in ranges, which are just not achievable.
I mean, even if I look at our freelance resources, which are
typically in a high higher rate
than the employed people...
even over there, it was completely unachievable to get to
these salaries and even if we did the just the basic math
and
calculated how much
would we need to raise or how much
would we need to charge our customers to be at a
reasonable rate perspective didn't work out. But in the end
it was just a handful of people from the US,
but we had far more candidates
from from from other countries.
I think that is something, as more and more
companies start talking about the fact that
they want to allow a remote work, they
want to allow home offices and everything else,
I have the feeling that many companies are still limiting
themselves with local resources.
So from that perspective,
it was an absolute
go for.
Challenges we faced, and as I said
before, I wanted to talk a bit about
challenges we faced and identified on this pathway as well is:
for those people which we had for the US,
hiring someone in the US is far more complex than I thought
it would be. I was used to German
complexities, and based on that I was expecting is like, "hey,
there is not much which can go worse."
But, actually the US hiring process,
with all the different Taxes, insurances, and
local scenarios and everything else is far more complex
than I thought it would be. But
again looking at all of these
different scenarios we figured out that
working with these EOR companies and
HR companies to handle that externally
is actually taking a lot of the pressure away from us as a
company and making it a lot easier for us as well.
And by the way, if you have any questions in the meantime,
feel free to drop them in the chat window we
utilize different streams, so
people are actually following on different streams, so I
will read out the questions then if they show up.
One other thing which we have
figured out, especially here in Germany, was
by the point in time we changed our
campaigns and actually changed from having a German job
advertisement to an English speaking job advertisement,
we had a completely different
set of people applying for our jobs.
No matter the job,
advertising was going out via social media in form of a
video, text, a picture, whatever.
Changing just from German to
English actually made a huge difference
and
the last hires we had for example in the back office team
were both from English speaking campaigns and the lessons
which we learned from most of these people
were that they are no longer applying to... that they were
not applying to any local language
job advertising. It's not because they were not fluent in
German or anything else, it was
primarily because they have seen that,
especially local companies, whether it is in Germany and we
had similar stories about Spain and other territories...
they are looking for local people and if you
have people who actually come from abroad,
it's a bit of a different different story. So, for example
we have someone who joined our back office team, from
project management perspective. He's
living in Germany comes from the US
He explained to us that it was not
necessarily always that easy to find allocation.
We have someone who joined our
assistance team and
she basically came from Bolivia, was studying in Germany for
many years and stuff like that.
So all of them are not candidates, which are let's say...
typical scenarios where you would say it's like "they barely
speak German or anything else."
They are fully in the region and everything else.
So I think it's as a company, if you really want to live the
modern flexibility and everything else,
you should really look deeply into
becoming more open to hire people where they are and also
to allow people to work where they are.
Really if the job allows. One of the things which I have to
explain very often as a global company
to people when we have discussions
about a home office and stuff like that is...
that there are certain limitations:
limitations due to projects.
So for example, we have some customers which require that
any work is being done
inside the Eu or Northern
American territory, that needs to be
looked after and people need to
be sure that they apply for that.
We actually control that from a project management
perspective and where we can from an IT perspective,
so that we limit access to specific
projects with geographical limitations.
But that is just one step on how we make this work for
people in the different teams from that perspective.
So this is something you can easily deal with and you can
easily handle that from that perspective.
So, for us I can only say so far this has been hugely
effective
and a positive experience to utilize a really global workforce.
We could actually attract people in
different countries in different models,
and you need to start thinking outside of the standard box,
which is something which we also saw.
So for example, we had someone
in the Middle East territory, and
from that Middle East territory that specific person
actually said it's like "hey, I want to move to
Dubai I don't want to stay where
I'm living," and so we worked on a
short-term plan on how we could actually transition that
person to be in our Dubai office and that was
something we had to deal with from a visa,
work permit, and everything else perspective.
But again, don't be shy by these
things because from what our experience,
especially if you work with EOR
or HR companies which deal with that,
they can handle a lot of these scenarios on how you get
visas for people, work permits, and everything else.
This is nothing you as a company should actually deal with
yourself, because it's highly complex
It's highly differential in every
different country and from that perspective.
On the other part, I must say is like the good
part we have as of now is that
now within comdivision, we have
people from all over at least no longer just EU and the US,
but we have people from all this all over the globe and
This is actually helping us with customers and this is
something which we see with customers as
well. Initially when we thought it's like
okay, we're going to hire people in
Dubai, in Egypt, in other territories, and
how're our (especially US customers) going to react to that
or even our European customers react to it?
Many of them are used to working with us in
English. Anyway, I mean for North America
that's clear, but for even a lot of the European scenarios
then we should actually work with that.
But overall, the feedback from a lot of the customers was
actually pretty well received, because
the customer said is like look, "the people you're bringing
us are actually really solving our problems" and
having the diversity on the team also helps customers who
have a similar diversity on the team.
So for example, we have service providers in the US that
then again have teams in Europe or in Eastern Europe, and
the more different people you have on a project,
the more it people actually have to adjust to use a
standard wording, standard terms, etc.
And, not actually go that much into
Country specifics, but this actually helps all of us
to be more and more successful from
a company perspective.
There is a question how do you deal with different salaries
in all these different countries?
Clearly there is a salary
difference. As I said in the beginning, we had
quite a bit of a challenge with
the US, because the salaries were or the
expected salaries were completely outside of the range
of what we could apply to customers. So that
was a bit of a challenge from that perspective.
On the other side, in some of these other countries, we have
lower salaries, but we then try to make it
still very attractive for these people to join the team. So
only because the let's say standard
monthly salary would be like 5k
in that region, if a reasonable
salary and the people would actually
perform for it would be more in the 7 to 10 K area or
even higher depending on the specific job,
then we could apply that for that specific person.
So, we try to not be country specific with the salaries,
but actually be specific to the individual job, because
people might be moving, people might be switching countries
and roles, and it can't be that we
actually limited from that perspective.
What we try to avoid with that
is exactly the scenario that
many US tech companies had after the pandemic,
where during the pandemic people moved out of the Bay Area
and moved into cheaper areas of the US and
all of the sudden they had much more out of their salary.
So instead of having a very small apartment
They could afford having a house or anything else.
But now then the tech companies actually figured out is
like oh people moved into a
different scenario, and in the US
certain companies have
Regional bonuses depending on where you
are working you get a higher or lower salary.
So as the pandemic was over, as
everybody was actually really basically
rebasing and actually reporting where they are located,
because people said, "oh,
we can't actually come into the office, because I'm living
now in Michigan instead of California."
People had to adjust to that, and we try to avoid that.
So the idea is that on average and it depends on countries,
taxes, insurances, and a bunch of other things, but we try to
balance this so that it is actually
equal across the different countries, because
as we run pretty open books internally for many of our
scenarios within the companies,
people would rather quickly figure out that there is a huge
discrepancy between different
daily or monthly salaries, and that would
actually create a different motion in the team.
It would also cause other challenges, because
potentially a
Project manager or a Salesman position would
actually be more attracted to take the lower
rate
resources
and sell them as a senior resource to the higher
rate country and then actually try
to make this either as a
margin or give customers a specific
discount, and to avoid this we basically
try to balance this out as best we can.
Sure there are limitations and it
doesn't always work that perfectly,
but it is actually for us. It's working pretty well so far.
Another question coming in: "how
do you deal with people moving?"
The people moving for us is something clearly we need to
consider that, because there are all kinds of
tax and legal implications out of it,
but in general, as I explained with trying
to balance the salaries and everything else,
we figure that that is not necessarily so much of an issue.
The important part is we need to make sure that we are
legally and tax-wise and everything else in the green area,
which also by the way applies to remote workers?
So if someone is actually just for a
week or two weeks somewhere else to work,
it's typically not so much of an issue depending on the
type of work the location and everything else,
but if someone works, let's say from the holidays
it's relatively simple. If someone actually moves somewhere
or works there for multiple weeks or something else.
we need to consider this more
thoroughly, because in those specific areas we need to be
much more clear that we obey
local tax laws and everything else.
So for example, even though you can easily move around
within Europe from a job perspective,
but as you are working... for
example, if you're German and if you are actually
working for four weeks, eight weeks
or something like that from Spain
that can actually become an issue,
because you need to potentially pay local
taxes in Spain and stuff like that.
So this is something which I
said before: working with an EOR...
so an employee of record company can clearly help you,
because you can always raise the
question with them and say,
"we have this employee who is temporarily moving there or
actually working for this in that time period.
Do we need to actually migrate their contract or anything
else?" and they can work with it. So
As I said from that perspective,
working where you are is definitely going to help you.
So how do you deal with customers
who want to have a specific language?
So yeah, so that is an issue
So if I for example have a German
speaking customer, typically in our case
we have that problem, especially with German public sector
customers, and they require a German speaking resource.
Okay, then we are bound to the
resources which we have with that capability,
and then we need to know and
limit it down to these specific
resources and now we can only allow
these specific people to work on the project. On the other
side that means for the customer potentially
they have to wait longer for available resources with
the skill set, because all of
a sudden, by limiting the language
it becomes more rare.
It's the same but like by limiting it for example with a
specific security clearance for a
specific country or NATO or something else.
In that specific scenario, we need to basically
fulfil specific requirements and those requirements need
to be fulfilled in the specific country.
So limits the amount of resources we can do.
But let's face it what we see in many many projects, even
when it comes down to military projects
across at least the NATO territory. It's much easier than
you think. Maybe I cannot actually
take someone out of an Arabic country,
which is not part of the NATO and
actually have that work on a NATO project.
But that is more or less the exception. We have enough
people who can actually deal with these specific scenarios.
When it comes down to service providers and even very large
ones in the US up to hyperscalers,
and when it comes down to
infrastructure projects, this is typically not an issue. It
needs to be announced. We need to make always
specific security clearance and not security clearance like
for military purposes, but especially in the US
there are certain requirements we have to go through for
employees to allow them to... even if they work remotely.
So if they work remotely and do not
actually touch base on US soil,
they do not need to have a US work visa from that
perspective in most cases. There
are exceptions for that as well.
But we still need to get through specific
reviews of these people, so
there needs to be a checkup that there is no criminal
record and all of these scenarios.
But we typically do this on a regular basis for all of our
employees anyway, because this applies more less the
background check and stuff like that
applies to let's say 95% of our projects. So
This is nothing we can just actually
avoid or we can go from that specific perspective.
Okay, so that was quite a bit of questions,
if you have any other questions feel free to
drop them in the
comments section whether it is on
TikTok on LinkedIn on YouTube or anything else.
Also again, we are running this as a
Podcast recording so you can find it on
different on the different podcast platforms whether it's
Apple Podcast or any of the other ones.
Spotify for example. Just search for
my name and you will find it over there.
Thanks, by the way for all the likes
and everything else in all the platforms.
Allso it would be great if you give us a bit of
feedback on how you like that
we split the content formats now a bit more clearly.
Yves Just Chatting is really more,
from a business perspective, talking and
clearly separating the VMware by Broadcom
pieces out from that
perspective. So for example on Thursday (July 4),
we have the recording of the next VCD
Roundtable, which is purely technically focused
from that perspective and
just let us know if you like that, and if
you enjoy that, and if we should continue.
Yeah, and
We have already covered 25 minutes 30 minutes
depending on when you look at the starting time. If there
are no further questions, let
me wrap up today's session.
This was Episode 30: How comdivision
Became a Global Employer.
So this is the topic of the day.
It's episode 30 of Yves Just Chatting.
We covered more or less how we move from trying to hire
people primarily in the EU and the US
into opening it up completely globally,
how we worked around the different
challenges by utilizing EORs
(employer of record companies), etc. If you search a bit on the
internet, there are different ones
I don't want to do advertising for any one of them, because
there are all kinds of different advantages and
disadvantages between them. Talk to them. You need to work
with them a lot. So you need to get along with the people.
That's important
Trying to figure out how to deal with visas, etc. Again,
the EORs are a good help with that.
It's much easier than you think; you need
to be open for it from a company perspective.
You need to also clearly communicate your expectation, only
because someone is sitting in a different country.
You also need to make clear which other territories they
are working in. For example if I have someone
who is actually applying for a job from, let's say,
Romania and I know that he is
going to work primarily on US projects,
I need to make clear in the hiring
process that they know which time zones etc
they are most likely going to work most of the time, and
whether that's fine or not with them, because
That is the challenge of participating in a global company
that you might actually work in different time zones that
you need to be fine with it or not.
And if you tell me no
You're not fine with one of our EU time zones, then we
just need to look at how many
projects and how much can we do?
So I hope you enjoyed today's
session. Our session for next week
I can tell you already is going to be
how to deal with criticism versus feedback
and how you differentiate with that and how I learned all
the time to actually deal with that. I hope that
We get even more viewers and listeners next week. If you
couldn't actually attend the full session,
the recording is going to be on YouTube and the podcast is
going to come up in a couple of days on
the different podcast platforms.
Hope to see you again next week,
and if you are not doing so already, follow me on social
media. The tag is Yves Sandfort as it is on all the platforms.
Hope to see you there, and I
hope you enjoyed the show! See you, bye!