Yves: just chatting

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!