This article provides thoughts and learnings from opening up / establishing operations and hiring in new countries under one unified ATS system. We have gathered some best practices and items to ponder as you work to establish new processes and procedures. A key item to keep in mind is that these are purely suggestions; each company will be different and should follow the advice of your Legal team.

The Golden Rule: Get Involved Early

Without exception, the most essential point is this: Get involved early. Opening a new country will require substantive work between Legal, People Operations, Talent Acquisition, and other stakeholders across a company. These partnerships will ensure everyone has the correct information, is legally compliant, and understands what is necessary to hire in another country. To be aligned, getting RecOps a seat at the table is vital. This will ensure that recruiting and hiring are infused into necessary processes and not forced to design workarounds to hit goals because of process oversights.

RecOps can also serve as gatekeepers for the process and its implementation. Often, getting headcount is exciting, and hiring managers want to push forward as quickly as possible. By involving RecOps early in the process, the team can build out a minimum viable process (MVP) before hiring. Though it appears slow initially, this systematic approach will lead to faster hiring and better onboarding. 

In the sections below, we’ll cover the following:

• Employer of Record - What is it and why is it used?

• Key questions you’ll want to ask and address before speaking with candidates

• Toolings

• Job Postings

• Offers

• Onboarding

What is an Employer of Record (EOR)?

Establishing a presence in a country is expensive and resource-intensive, so one topic often discussed around global hiring is how to classify hired employees. To hire, some companies choose not to establish a formal entity and instead hire through an Employer of Record (EOR).  An EOR is an entity used to legally hire a candidate regardless of where they live. The EOR acts as the worker’s employer on paper, handling their employment contract, payroll, and benefits on behalf of your company, except that your hire works for your business just like anyone else on your team. This differs from an employer-contractor relationship as the employees hired through the EOR may lack the same restrictions or controls as contractors. Additionally, EORs can help your company achieve benefit provider minimums that may require you to have a certain number of employees (i.e., 10) to sign contracts.

If your company wants to move fast and hire before all new systems are in place, consider using an Employer of Record vendor, , like Deel, as an interim solution so you can hire and start work without having everything up and running and then switch the contracted employees to your company.

Key Questions You’ll Want to Address and Why

What is the local notice period for those transitioning jobs? 

• This is important in determining when to start recruiting for a role, setting expectations with hiring managers, laying the foundations for reporting, and maintaining relationships with Accepted Not Started Candidates. 

Will you offer visa support, and who is preparing the guidelines if so?

• If the company is establishing an entity, the topic of visa and visa support will arise. During these conversations, it is important to understand first if the answer is yes/no and two who will be responsible for monitoring the visa support process. This responsibility can fall to the People Operations team or the RecOps team. Having a clear understanding and go-to people will ensure smooth handoffs.

• EOR may also offer visa support - you will need to coordinate with them and their timing if it is something you select to offer

Are specific vendors ready to operate in the new country? Do you need to expand your vendor contracts? What are the laws around these tools? Do you have the proper tools to vet candidates on initial calls? 

• Going international can present unforeseen issues with certain parts of your recruiting tech stack, including problems around posting limitations, ATS functionality, data protections, and more. For example, does your ATS support GDPR guidelines, or can you use transcription software in interviews? You will be prepared if questions arise by addressing taking the initiative to understand local tech requirements.

How much lead time does your onboarding team need for shipping technology/new hire swag?

• Addressing this question will make you a friend to recruiters, hiring managers, candidates, and your onboarding team because everyone will clearly understand a realistic start date.

Are there any gray areas in this process, and if so, what is your legal team’s level of comfort with risk?

• As technology changes, so do the laws and governance around them. Some legal teams are risk-averse, opting for a wait-and-see approach until competitors start making changes. Other legal teams are ok with being trendsetters. By understanding this risk tolerance, you can address questions better as they come in or recommend new technology.

Initial ATS Settings

We mentioned the tooling above but let's dive deeper into a key tool of any Recruiting team: the ATS. Carefully reviewing your ATS settings is critical as many times the data in your ATS is the source data for dashboards and critical KPI information. 

Steps you should take:

• Review your data fields - Are any new ones required?

• Data Deletion rules - Do any new data retention rules need to be set (for example, how long is the personal data of candidates kept in your systems?)

• Reporting - A new country means new data to report; however, it is necessary to contextualize that data. Some examples include:

• Diversity: Diversity is defined differently in different countries. Will you report diversity differently depending on how the specific geo defines it?

• Time to Fill: How will a long notice period impact the roll-up data?

• Email Templates - Do you need country-specific email templates for communication, scheduling, offer extension, etc…

• Offer Templates - Do these need to be loaded into the ATS, and do they need to be native language specific? We’ll dive more into this later.

Job Postings

While a job posting may seem simple, the information included in it, and the application will often require review.

Steps you should take:

• Determine country-specific legal requirements - for example, do jobs need to be posted in the native language of the country? Are there any specifics that need to be included (ex. Salary, etc…)

• Does your Privacy Policy need to be updated?

• Standardized intro and conclusion text: Many ATS’ allow you to set baked-in intros and conclusions for job posts. If you have these, is the info relevant to all candidates, or does it change by country? If so, can you alter your boilerplate templates to be global and have geo-specific info in editable portions of the JD?

• Job Post questions: 

• Are there questions that you can and can’t ask? More importantly, what questions are safe to ask (e.g. for some countries, you may not want to collect gender pronouns)

• Remove any US-centric questions, such as EEO 

Creating Interview Kits

Structured interviewing works at a global scale. However, the questions may differ from country to country, and what should be captured may change (i.e., candidates may be required to provide specific salary information or disclose health conditions in interviews). If your US-based recruiters are conducting interviews, it can be beneficial to prep them for specific types of answers. In order to ensure you are providing the best information to your interviews, work with your legal team to ensure the process and questions you have are compliant. 

Offer Details and Letters

Offers are where you will spend much of your time when setting up a new country. Every country has different nuances, so it will be imperative to consult with your legal team, especially when it comes to offer letters.

• Analyze the offer letter requirements before jumping into adding a number of new fields to your offer details form. Can all the information be derived from your current offer details form, what kind of dependencies for fields can you add, and how can you hide and reveal fields? 

• Local Language Fields - One of the most challenging items can be creating bilingual offer letters. When creating a bilingual offer letter, it is best not to think country by country but rather in a global sense - how can you minimize the total number of fields? Think about patterns, common information, etc…

• Local Language Fields: Instead of creating a unique field for each language, create local language fields. For example, don't create both Job Title in French and Job Title in German fields; rather create Local Language Job Title. This field can be used for an unlimited number of countries.

• Translation - Many contracts require the use of the local language in offer letters as this will take precedence if there is ever litigation.

• Be aware of what should and should not be in the offer letter - For example, push back if personal information like Social Security Number or equivalent is in the offer letter - you don’t want that type of info in an ATS where access is less strict than an HR System that stores personal information.

Offer Letters

• Start early - Using the work from above, work with the Legal team to ensure you have a compliant offer letter. This is especially important since you can’t close a candidate until you have worked out the offer letter. To partner better with your Legal team, if you hear that your company is thinking about ramping up in another country, do research and bring that to your meetings.

• Determine the offer extension and offer letter signing process - Are there any specific country nuances? If so, will these nuances fit into your current process, or will you need to design additional new processes to remain compliant? Properly documenting and representing them visually will significantly increase the organization of your team.

• Are there other documents that need to be signed? - Some countries may require additional documents as part of their offer letters. For example, in the UK, there is both an offer letter and an employment contract.

• Can all portions of the offer be extended at the same time? For example, in some countries, an offer letter can be signed before employment starts, but equity grants must be extended on the first day of employment.

• How do offer letters need to be signed? - Not all countries allow for e-signatures and require the offer documents to be signed in person or by hand (often known as a wet signature). If wet signatures are required, how will this be done in country before there is a Talent or People Operations presence? If there are notary costs, are they the responsibility of the candidate or your company?

Onboarding

Welcoming a new member to the team is a lot of fun, especially when they bring new ideas informed by their local culture. Ensuring that they feel welcome and set up for success is important. 

If RecOps own onboarding, make sure you can address the following:

• How much time will onboarding need to get a new hire their equipment?

• If there is a long notice period, who will own maintaining the relationship with the candidate?

• Is there any change to the Background Check process?

• If visas are required, what is the process, and who will make introductions between the new hire and the proper parties (e.g. immigration, legal, etc)?

By addressing these questions, you help smooth out the onboarding process for your new hire.

Playbooks and Retrospectives

Opening a new country is complex because each country will have its nuances and challenges. Once the process is complete, it is important to create the following documents:

• A country-specific playbook - By having all the information organized and accessible in one place, you can share it with recruiters, hiring managers, and executives who are looking to hire in that country.

• A retrospective - This document should capture what went well and what didn’t. You can’t get everything right the first time. By capturing your learnings, though, you can ensure you don’t make the same mistake twice. You can also include a section that covers iterations you would make for the next time. Remember that you just created an entire process that must evolve as the times and laws change.

In Conclusion

The process of opening a new country is both exciting and a lot of work. Every country will be different and pose unique challenges. Being involved early, analyzing the information, and communicating with your team will all make the process easier and ensure everyone is on the same page. When in doubt, seek clarification, whether that is from your in-house legal, immigration, and HR teams. Having the clarity you need to get things done right the first time will prevent pain in the future.

The opinions and processes mentioned in this article are those of the authors and do not represent their respective employers.