The way we work has changed – and so too has the way we hire

If organizations have learned anything over the past couple of years, it’s that our capabilities – both in work and life – are no longer limited by our physical surroundings. The rapid adoption of hybrid working in response to the pandemic, coupled with advancements in technology, has enabled businesses to improve efficiency, reduce downtime and expand their reach.

This includes their capacity to now hire staff from all corners of the globe. This phenomenon – known as borderless hiring – means businesses can tap into a much larger talent pool, one that is both diverse and skilled, at a fraction of the cost of hiring locally.

Now while the benefits of borderless hiring are obvious, there are also some potential drawbacks to consider – such as language barriers and cultural differences. In this article, GDS Group Presenter and Content Creator Alex Wood explores both the pros and cons associated with borderless hiring and its impact on the data and analytics landscape.

In brief:

• Borderless hiring is on the rise, with 84% of companies already hiring remote workers and 67% willing to hire internationally.
• Businesses that adopt borderless hiring have access to a larger talent pool, with 55% of job seekers willing to work remotely.
• Despite the benefits of borderless hiring, companies need to be mindful of legal and cultural differences that may affect the hiring process and employee experience.

What is borderless hiring?

Borderless hiring refers to the practice of hiring employees who work remotely from different locations, often across international borders and time zones. This means employers are no longer limited to hiring workers who live in the same city, region, or even country as they do. From an employee’s perspective, this presents a number of career opportunities as they’re no longer bound or shackled by their local job market.

Abhi Shrikhande, who is VP and GM of Technology Services, at Toptal – a leading global recruitment firm specializing in freelance talent – recently spoke about the rise of borderless hiring at GDS Group’s European Data and Analytics Summit, which was attended by senior executives at some of the world’s biggest firms.

“Companies and good managers are looking to figure out how to connect talent and skills to their various projects in more frictionless ways – and the solution, if you will, is borderless hiring,” he told the audience.

“Borderless hiring means your business can hire the right person, [with] the right skill set for a given job no matter where they live.

“Every company can tap into an international talent pool thanks to the mass adoption of remote work.

“A borderless hiring ethos really helps companies find the right talent for their needs, regardless of where these workers call home – whether that’s Silicon Valley or London or Denmark or any place else.”

“If you don’t embrace remote work at this point and really think about your hiring pool, your competitors are going to outpace you.”
Abhi Shrikhande, VP and GM of Technology Services, Toptal

The advantages of borderless hiring

Since the start of the year, it is estimated more than 160,000 people working in the tech industry have been laid off. The headlines have focused on job losses at Meta (10,000), Amazon (27,000), and Google (12,000) but the layoffs have been widespread – affecting companies worldwide.  

The reasons for this are varied. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg called 2023 a “year of efficiency” while Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai said something similar during a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal.  

It’s clear the current economic landscape has had an impact – the rapid growth and hiring seen during the pandemic now stalling in response to inflation and higher interest rates. And with a recession looming, it seems most companies are shrinking their employee base.  

But that is precisely why borderless hiring is so advantageous. It offers:  

• Access to a larger talent pool 
• Increased diversity and inclusion 
• Cost-savings

“World class talent simply doesn’t exist in one specific place,” Abhi explained during his keynote presentation.  

“We know companies shouldn’t be restricting themselves to local talent pools, and the best talent really has chosen to go remote.  

“Skilled workers live in every country around the globe, and remote work now gives us access to all of them. It’s that idea I mentioned earlier about hyper-flexibility.   

“Skilled workers really want that flexibility of being able to work on good projects, good engagements, good companies without all the other restrictions that come along with it.  

“We know that the demand for specialized talent hasn’t really slowed, even though we see the current negative news about tech industry layoffs.” 

Research suggests there will be a potential tech talent gap of almost 4 million in Europe by 2027 (source: McKinsey Global Institute) 

The disadvantages of borderless hiring

Of course, the concept of borderless hiring isn’t new. Some companies have operated on a remote basis since they were founded – like enterprise software start-up GitLab – while others adopted it in response to the pandemic in 2020.  

Today, most companies are hybrid – meaning they offer both in-office and work-from-home options. And studies have shown this type of offering has the most appeal among employees – PwC, for example, found more than 70% of employees want to work remotely at least two days a week while a ground-breaking study by Harvard Business School suggested remote workers are more productive, take fewer breaks and require less sick days than their office counterparts.  

But while productivity may not have been hindered among the remote workforce, connectivity, and collaboration certainly have. Replicating ‘watercooler’ chats – or moments of serendipity – in a virtual environment is a major challenge facing businesses today, as is fostering a culture of togetherness among distributed teams. 

Tech-savvy versus business-savvy

The biggest talent-related challenge facing our audience of C-suite executives at the GDS Group Data & Analytics Summit, however, was finding candidates with both the necessary technical and business skills. 

“When companies start adopting the idea of borderless hiring and remote work, typically they start by thinking about individual experts to fill a particular skills gap,” Abhi said.

“Sometimes that skills gap is in a technical area where they need to get an expert in – say, a data scientist in a very specific and particular area. Sometimes that gap is in business. Maybe it is somebody looking at how I should change my go-to-market strategy? Or how I think about a SaaS pricing model?

“That’s where it usually starts.”

Abhi suggested organizations that engage in borderless hiring need to consider the operating model of how they work and bring in additional resources when required to create “almost full-stack teams”.

“The need for business-savvy resources and technical talent is equally important,” he added.

Aside from the cultural differences, borderless hiring also poses challenges with:

• Legal compliance
• Time-zone differences