Founder and CEO of Syndesus, Marc Pavlopoulos, was recently featured on the HR-themed podcast, HRchat. The podcast is part of HR Gazette, a media website publishing fresh perspectives on topics connected to Human Resources and improving the ways we work. Marc and host Tim Baker chatted about the founding of Syndesus, coordinating a workforce across the US-Canadian border, and changes to the US H-1B visa policy.
Give the full podcast a listen.
Prior to forming Syndesus, Marc recognized a problem in the increasingly competitive domestic market for attracting engineering talent to startups. His background includes time spent living in Canada, so when Marc began to develop a solution, he realized connecting Canadian engineers to US-based startups could be the key:
“I just realized, wait a minute, there’s a great opportunity here…Originally it was a recruiting company. I build software engineering teams in Canada for VC-backed startups in the US.. These were young companies growing. They didn’t have time to figure out operations in Canada. One of the best services I could offer them is building a professional employment organization.”
The professional employment organization (PEO) model that Syndesus utilizes has advantages compared with other methods of employing workers from outside the US, as Marc explains:
“The PEO model is unique because what it allows the US company to have a greater say in the employment of the person. . .the model I have is not a staffing agency. It’s more of letting the company in the US have the choice of who they employ. Then when that decision has been made, Syndesus Canada as a PEO can help them with legal employment of that worker in Canada.”
With changes in Washington, more and more H-1B worker visas are being denied to tech employees, so Syndesus is poised to help companies who want to retain capable employees whom cannot stay in the US:
“It’s the idea of moving displaced workers on H-1Bs who can’t stay in the US…to Canada. There’s a model to do that, or just outright building new operations up there for those workers.”
These ideas and more on the unique services Syndesus can provide are discussed in-depth on the HRcast recording.
