Most small business owners think that international recruitment is only for larger businesses. When you’re a small business, you may not think you have the resources necessary to attract someone who lives abroad. You might think that you will have to pay a large salary to anyone who’s willing to relocate countries. Or you might think that you’ll have to provide them with a lot of benefits. And what if that person finds that they’re not able to adjust to the new country after all? What if they up and leave within six months? Then all the work you put into bringing them over will go waste.

This is the type of thinking that keeps most small business owners from recruiting internationally. However, a lot of this is just pessimistic thinking. There are many great reasons why small businesses, as well as large ones, should recruit internationally.

1. Qualifications: When you recruit internationally, you’re going to get a larger pool of candidates. So you might even find someone who’s more qualified than the candidates you’re able to find locally. For example, if you’re an IT company in the U.S. recruiting from India, you’ll find that there are a lot more computer engineers to choose from because many people in India go in for this field.
2. Salary/Benefits: You might imagine that you’re going to need to pay a high salary to someone who’s moving to your country from abroad. But this is not necessarily true. To take the above example, a computer engineer who gets a job in India is going to be paid less than a computer engineer who gets a job in the U.S. Even a salary which is just at the market rate in the U.S. will be higher than a salary which is at the market rate in India. So you won’t have to pay over the market rate to attract someone from this country.
3. Retention: Another concern that small business owners have involves retention. What if the employee ups and leaves within six months? Maybe they’ll be stolen by another company or maybe they just won’t be able to adjust to the new country? Well, there’s not much you can do to help a person to adjust to a new country but most people know that they’ll have to go through a process of adjustment and are mentally prepared for it. As far as being stolen by another company, you can employ them on a contractual basis—the contract being for one or two years minimum. Plus, if you’re paying them at the market rate, there’s no reason why they’ll want to leave.
4. Company Culture: Another concern that many small business owners have is whether an employee from another country will fit in with their company culture. But as long as you don’t expect your employees to work too many overtime hours or produce a lot more than what’s reasonable, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t fit in. Many computer engineers from India actually find that working hours are fewer and more flexible in the U.S. or Europe. So they have no trouble fitting in.
5. Paperwork: One of the main things which deters small business owners from hiring people from abroad is the paperwork involved. They don’t know about the different types of visas. And people keep hearing about how visa requirements are becoming more and more stringent all the time. However, if you hire a good lawyer, they’ll tell you everything that needs to be done. On your part, there won’t be much paperwork. The lawyer should be able to take care of everything for a moderate fee.

So keep in mind that you don’t need to be resistant to international recruitment, even if you’re a small business owner. If you can find someone better qualified abroad, then why not go for it? It will only help your company to grow.

This article was originally posted on our website at www.the-network.com/spotlight.