Would you hire cheap staff from another country?

Hello digitalpoint,
I have a dilemma regarding my business. I have a web design company based in Bulgaria for more than 3 years now. Everything is going great so far, I have a lot of work, a lot of clients and I have expanded in a big office with some people working for me ... but here is the thing ...
In the last year some of my clients from Australia and Switzerland started asking me if they can hire staff to work for them from my office. For example they need programmers, designers or live support to look after their sites. They are prepared to pay the salaries and taxes and additional fee for me of course.
I am thinking in investing and making a new office and offer this kind of service. I still cant decide and I think It will be helpful If I get some advices and opinions from other people.

 

Hello, Victor!

I am from Bulgaria as well. First of all, congrats for your successful web design business. As you already know, the situation in Bulgaria and especially the unemployment can provide benefits for entrepreneurs. You can hire lots of cheap workers and can provide the services globally. Do a proper research for the new service you plan to offer. There is demand for virtual assistants right now but I am not aware of the programming and design markets.

 

I have among other endeavors a small translation service and at present I have 2 people working *with* me. I prefer to write this as opposed to "working for me". One is from Japan, the other from the U.S.A.
As I become too busy and my service continues to grow, I will be looking for others to work with and chances are they may be from other countries. The only issues I've experienced thus far are the time differences. We are not always available for each other at premium times.

 

I have hired numerous individuals and companies providing services. Most are from Asia. I bought content creation services and 9 times out of 10 the stuff sucked. Only a handful panned out. Now I just spend the money to have it done right the first time.

 

Yes I would, but only for short-term or per project work. But it there is a company that wants to hire you, you shouldn't say "no" to them. Congratz and best of luck!
But I must agree with polarcat, I too did have some problems in the past with unprofessional people. So awesome referrences are must have.

 

Before hiring technical professionals you have to contact a company not freelancers. Because the companies can provide you trustworthy services with true value of money, where as there will be no bondage to freelancers.

 

I have been working as a freelancer for over 2 years. Many people were asking for more and more work that I could no longer handle alone. I decided to hire other freelancers to help me. Here's the feedback:

1- Getting a committed freelancer to work with you and not leave you in the middle of a task is not a very easy task. You should dig very deep and really notice even small patterns of behavior that shows whether the freelancer that you are working with is committed or not, because if a freelancer left you in the middle of a project then it would be a big problem for your company.

2- I would start with getting someone to do small tasks in the beginning and test them before moving into larger tasks.

Choosing the right person is not that easy but it is worthwhile because you would be saving a lot of money, time and effort.
I really recommend you try it and start with small personal tasks to see how it goes then you would be able to let them work for you clients when you are sure that you can depend on them.

 

In my opinion, as long as they can speak fluent English (as well as whatever language your clients speak) and are knowledgeable in the position, then why not.

 

It doesn't matter if it is cheap or expensive. The most important thing is if they are qualified to the work you want to offer them. This is very important otherwise your business will get affected by bad support.

 

I think you need t take a step back here and ask yourself, "How much value is this worth to me?" and, "Is that worth the effort and stress involved?"

 

Yep, this is exactly the question I am asking myself. Because If I decide to get in to this kind of business I`ll have to hire a lot of new staff and I`ll need to control them for at least a couple of months before I can trust them. But the idea of getting passive income in the future is really making me think about it.

 

Tell me about it ... When I decide to hire a new programmer or designer ... I usually try about 5 or 6 incompetent people before I meet the right one.
Thank you for the good tips and for the reply Cheers !

 

It would depend on the project, but most definitely! They would need to be extremely qualified and motivated though, as mentioned before Freelancers can sometimes be unreliable.

 

Welcome to the world of freelancing, although your endeavours seem to be taking that one step further!

Personally, I think its a great idea. However, It comes with both reward and risk. If you'll be basing the 'freelancers' within your office, then I believe you're less likely to see a freelancer go AWOL on you. A face to face relationship is powerful.

Here's an idea you might consider;

If you're able to attract web design work and have no problems selling these services to prospective clients, you could take a multi-faceted approach.

Firstly, you could hire freelancers as part of your business and sub-contract them out to those clients in Australia and Switzerland. They'd be your employees, however would be paid for and would work on your clients projects. You could also write a clause in to the contracts (employment and other law dependant) that allow you to have them perform work for other clients (i.e. part of your design studio) when the other clients are short of work. This will keep the freelancers busy and not become bored and seek other work, or as others have mentioned up and walk.

Another way might be to create a 'hub' for freelancers. If you're good at selling (which some tech/dev types aren't), you could sell the services and assign work to the freelancers and say, split the revenue/profit with them. Some of these freelancers may already have clients they look after, however may not have enough work to fill their day. They won't necessarily worry about where the work is coming from and they're more likley to stick around if they know there is work. To appease your clients in AU and Switzerland, you could simply assign the same freelancers for the work that comes from those clients. This would still allow the Freelancer to operate autonomously and do their own thing, but helps you in that you get resources you split the revenue/profit with, you get the job done, your clients are happy.

Of course, these suggestions are subject to the relevant employment laws in your country. I do believe that bringing in Freelancers into an office environment makes them more accountable and harder to up and walk away, if the situation is right for them. You can minimise the damage of that by putting probation periods in for new freelancers so you both get a feel for how its all working out.

I love the idea Victor - please do let us know how you get on, and don't hesitate to ask any questions here.

P.S; Congratulations on doing so well. It's great to a like minded business making a go of it and succeeding!

 

Thank you for the great post with a lot of good advices. I have been considering some of the things you said. I`ll let you all know how it goes when I start. Have a great day !