Get offshore leverage
You’ve heard the sayings:
- Stepping over dollars to pick up nickels
- Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
This will be a theme in this newsletter.
Here is what we’ll cover this week:
- Contingent Recruiting models short-change you on talent.
- Platforms like UpWork are penny wise, pound foolish at scale.
- My view on the ethical side of offshoring.
Contingent Recruiting models short-change you on talent.
Are you familiar with the concept of Active vs. Passive candidates? If not, here is a great article from Randstad to help.
Active – talent that is seeking you to push them into a new role.
Passive – talent that you need to pull into a new role.
Obviously, one requires many more calories burned than the other.
Take a guess which model is very natural for offshore contingent recruiting firms, who by the way, will NOT be paid until you accept a candidate…
Yep, you guessed it.
This is the underlying challenge of partnering with a contingent recruiting firm. You literally get what you pay for… which is to say that you paid nothing upfront.
You get a candidate that has raised their hands as “low hanging fruit” looking to be placed:
- out of work
- problem child
- moonlighters
In contrast, when you work with a recruiting firm that is paid a subscription, that recruiting firm already has you as a paid customer, and in their best interest to create value Month-over-Month. They need to help recruit, secure the talent, co-onboard the talent, and be there to ensure future roles are filled. This is a partnership. They are incentivized to pull PASSIVE candidates because the better the candidates, the more “sticky” a candidate is within a customer, and the more likely that customer will keep the recurring revenue relationship moving forward.
The choice is yours. Pay nothing now, and pay a lot in time and headache later.
Platforms like UpWork are penny wise, pound foolish at scale.
Back to our theme of focusing on $5/hr tasks, not $500/hr value creation – platforms like UpWork, Fiverr, and OnlineJobs.PH is TIME VAMPIRES.
Sure, you might leverage it in a panic to get a. PPT presentation completed. But to actually support your sales & marketing efforts, there is no scalability here.
- You waste so much time searching
- You have to screen all these candidates
- You have to test and vet these candidates
You’re a Founder worth $500/hr… don’t get caught doing $5/hr tasks.
Get outcomes.
All this same talent is available outside the UpWork and Fiverr ecosystem; now you just need a partner to identify, screen, test, and present your talent that can execute today, not tomorrow.
If you want the best ROI sales & marketing support talent on planet Earth, I recommend you think about Bangladesh here.
My view on the ethical side of offshoring.
I was asked about the ethical side of offshoring the other day by a customer. This isn’t the first time (or last time) I’ve been asked, but I have noticed a pattern:
When I’m asked about the ethical side of offshoring, it’s rarely from a Founder. It’s usually from an employee of a company.
My theory – Founders know the labor costs in North America are (for the most part) too high for the ROI. Employees on the other hand see an existential threat to their ‘busy work’.
In my opinion, offshoring done right is a beautiful Win/Win:
For you, the Founder – your corporation flourishes. That’s the point. The more profit a company has, the more opportunities. You can use these profits to:
- Pay down debt
- Buy another company
- Produce more dividends for investors
- Reduce prices to choke out the competition
- Start a new product line
Endless opportunities.
For the Offshore Talent – There is a net positive impact on their economic situation and career opportunities. Generally, you will be paying more than their local market, and allowing working concessions like “work from home”.
The ethical side of offshoring I think really people sharing their own guilt or fear, but not structured in objective decision-making.
Don’t Forget – Benchmark where your internal talent is spending time on $5/hr Tasks, and how you can Centralize Offshore.
