Checklist
Offshore Hiring Checklist
A practical, step-by-step list for hiring offshore: define the role, choose the route, vet for judgment, price it fully and onboard. Print it, or work through it before your first call with any provider.
Define the role
Most offshore hires that fail were never defined. Write it down before you talk to anyone.
- List the outcomes the person owns, not just the tasks: "inbox at zero by noon", "every ticket answered within a working day".
- Write what they will never do or touch (payments, certain accounts, customer refunds above a limit).
- Decide full-time or part-time, and whether the role is ongoing or a project with an end date.
- Set the hours you need covered, in your time zone, and how many must overlap with yours.
- Name the tools they will use and who they report to.
- Write the budget as an all-in monthly figure.
Choose the route and the region
The role decides the route; the hours decide the region.
- Ongoing and full-time: a managed staffing hire. Project or a few hours a week: a freelance marketplace. A person already found: an EOR.
- Check the route against the six criteria: cost transparency, vetting, compliance, continuity, lock-in, control.
- Pick the region by the overlap the role needs: Latin America for live hours, Africa for East Coast mornings, the Philippines or Southeast Asia for handoffs and overnight work.
- Ask the provider for its terms in writing: price, guarantee, replacement, notice and buyout.
Vet for judgment, not just skills
Skills show up on a CV. Judgment and communication are what decide whether the hire works.
- Give a paid work sample from your real work, with an ambiguous detail left in, and see whether they ask.
- Test written English with a task they will actually do: a reply to a customer, a summary of a meeting.
- Ask about a time they disagreed with a manager, and what they did.
- Interview at least two finalists yourself, on video, in the hours they will work.
- Check references from previous clients or employers, ideally ones in the US.
- Confirm their internet, power backup and workspace.
Price it fully
Compare the real monthly cost, not the hourly rate.
- Add the worker's pay, the provider's or platform's fee, payment and currency fees, equipment and software.
- Count your own hours: recruiting, managing and, if no one replaces the hire, recruiting again.
- Add the cost of a gap: what goes undone for the weeks the seat is empty.
- Compare the total with the US cost of the same seat: salary, benefits, payroll taxes and overhead.
- Get the final figure in writing before you sign.
Sign the paperwork
Settle who holds the contract, and what it says, before day one.
- A contract that suits the worker's country, with IP assignment and confidentiality.
- Payment currency, date and who pays the fees.
- The US tax form your accountant asks for (often a W-8BEN for non-US contractors working abroad).
- Notice period and how either side ends the engagement.
Onboard well
The first two weeks decide most of what follows.
- Have accounts, tools and access ready on day one, starting with the least sensitive.
- Write a 30-day plan: what they learn in week one, own by week two, and are measured on by day 30.
- Hold a short daily check-in for the first two weeks, then move to weekly.
- Name one person they can ask anything, in their working hours.
- Review the first pieces of real work together before they go out.
- At day 30, decide honestly: keep, adjust, or replace while any guarantee still applies.
Prefer to hand most of this off?
A managed staffing firm covers the vetting, paperwork, payroll and replacement steps for you. Hire Overseas, the top-ranked option, runs the search from a brief of role, budget and time zone, and you interview the finalists.