Hi Andrew, I have no experience with hiring overseas staff... but why not use http://www.oDesk.com and take all the pain and overhead out of it? This has worked really well for us.
Cheers, Bart -----Original Message----- From: silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com [mailto:silicon-beach-austra...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rogers Andrew Sent: Friday, 23 April 2010 1:40 PM To: silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com Subject: [SiliconBeach] Employing staff in overseas countries Hi all, I'm hoping that perhaps someone on the list has had some experience with employing people overseas that may be able to point me in the right direction. We're considering putting on some systems administrators in UK/Europe and potentially the US to assist us with covering a 24 x 7 support load. To a large degree we're trying to identify what we don't know that would be useful to know in order to make this a smooth process, so I'm not sure I have all the right questions to ask at this stage. I guess I'm mostly interested in things others may have done that made the remote staff arrangement work well which deviated from what you needed to do when only working with a local team. Importantly we're not so interested in offshoring to lower labour cost environments as seems to be the more common requirement for offshoring. Rather we're interested in having a few talented staff looking after the after hours events that our local team currently take care of and potentially offer the ability to continue on urgent projects overnight to improve turnaround times. A few questions that do come to mind: 1) Any advice in dealing with the international nature of the employment in terms of keeping everything above board, meeting any local legal requirements/obligations (eg tax reporting, superannuation, insurances etc). 2) Any tips on the recruitment process. In Australia we rely heavily on a local knowledge of the market, people, forums etc to help us recruit. Any techniques that you found useful in replacing a lack of local knowledge? 3) Were there any steps you found you needed to implement to promote team interaction? 4) Have you found any timezones that work better than others, have you found it important to have the people in the remote timezones having an overlap with the hours being worked by staff in Sydney at the edges of the shifts? 5) Remuneration - any tips for getting a feel as to what local market values are for wages? 6) A few other people have mentioned the importance of bringing new staff over to Australia for a month or so to begin with to get some face to face time. Have you tried this and if so has it been useful? 7) Any tips on keeping people productive and motivated or keeping tabs on their level of productivity in the remote environment? 8) Have you found any additional challenges being faced by the locally based staff as a result of bringing on the overseas staff? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Regards, -- Andrew Rogers - Managing Director Hosting ruminations : http://anchor.com.au/blog We did the thinking for you : http://anchor.com.au/wiki Anchor Systems Pty Ltd - Hosting Heavyweights Level 4, 81 York Street, Sydney NSW 2000 andrew.rog...@anchor.com.au - http://www.anchor.com.au Phone: 1300 883 979 - Direct: 02 8296 5100 - Fax: 8296 5199 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://tr.im/ujKF No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself: http://tr.im/ujMm To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://tr.im/ujKF No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself: http://tr.im/ujMm To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
