In the USA right now, it is challenging to find tech talent for your business. That’s not because there’s a shortage — far from it. The problem is that you’re competing with some of the richest and most prestigious firms in the world.
Companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook can easily double the salaries offered smaller by companies. Holding onto a talented employee can be near impossible for this reason, which makes it extremely challenging to build an effective and lasting engineering team.
It isn’t at all surprising why talented workers would be drawn to these monolithic companies. According to some estimates, Google and Facebook offer more than $150,000 per year to entry-level engineers. That’s on top of the signing-on bonus, a common practice with tech firms that can sometimes be as high as $100,000.
With this in mind, it’s easy to appreciate the mountain that smaller organizations have to climb when it comes to recruiting and retaining talent. Imagine spending months, and thousands of dollars, hiring a new worker, only to have a recruiter from one of the big players swoop in and whisk your new superstar away.
It’s incredibly frustrating, and a real obstacle to building a long-lasting and skilled team. There could, however, be a solution, and it can be found less than a thousand miles to the north of Silicon Valley.
Canada is home to a wealth of talent, but it doesn’t have the same astronomically high salary ceiling as the US And to take advantage of this, you don’t have to uproot your company and move to the Great White North. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly easy to employ workers entirely remotely.
According to a study by Flexjobs, remote work has grown by 91% in the last decade and by 159% since 2005. This is a very real possibility and helps address many of the issues mentioned above. Let’s take a deeper dive into the benefits of extending your recruiting range to Canada.
The Benefits of Extending your Recruiting Range
Canada doesn’t have the issue of giant tech behemoths competing for your best workers. Turnover for Canadian companies is generally less than in the US, with dizzying sign-on bonuses and sky-high entry-level salaries far less common.
However, it does share a lot of the benefits of the US employment market, making it an excellent recruiting ground.
These include:
- More or less the same culture as the US Canadians speak the same language and have a fairly similar work culture.
- Shared time zones with the US, making collaboration and communication easy
- The same quality of engineering schools and overall education
- Ease of travel between the two countries
This makes the Canadian recruiting pool essentially identical to the American one. Canadians are able to adapt to life in US companies with no effort at all. As a result, hiring remote Canadian workers is a simple and highly effective solution to the current challenges in the US recruitment market.
The remaining problem, then, is how to bring that talent on board legally. It’s entirely possible to hire Canadian workers for your US company on a remote basis and take care of all the associated admin, completely legally. There are several steps to go through, however, and a number of associated challenges.
This is where a PEO (Professional Employer Organization) comes in.
How a PEO Can Help
When looking to recruit talent from Canada, you have two options. The first is to continue using your own recruiters, and the second is to work with a Canadian recruiting firm that specializes in tech startups. Either route will lead to a similar outcome: interviewing potential candidates for your team.
After this stage, you’ll need to be focused on legality. A PEO can help you ensure that the hiring process is compliant with laws in both Canada and the US While you direct the work from the US, your PEO will take care of the HR and legal issues in Canada, ensuring the employment is above board and compliant.
Working with a PEO also benefits your employee. They’ll be able to hold stock options in your US-based company and be eligible for benefits like healthcare and a 401k plan. Another important area is taxation. The PEO model allows your remote workers to have all their taxes remitted to the Canadian Revenue Agency.
A good PEO will, simply put, provide the legal structure for a Canadian worker working remotely for a US company. They can make the entire process smoother, more compliant, and stress-free.
Extending your recruiting range overseas is a fantastic way to tap into wider pools of talent without being forced to compete with astronomically rich and influential tech firms at home. A PEO can help make that goal a reality.
To find out how Syndesus can help you recruit workers in Canada, and how Syndesus can help you employ these workers (via a PEO) schedule a free PEO consultation today.
