As businesses grow their needs grow as well.
A start up company might be able to get away with a skeleton crew for a while but as they expand and their customer/consumer base grows this raises the need for departments to expand and sometimes for new departments to be created. Taking advantage of remote staffing allows you to compete and often, gain the upper hand versus your competition. Choosing not to avail of the service puts you at a financial disadvantage versus your competition.
With the advancements in technology it’s gotten easier to communicate with people all over the world. These advancements allow more jobs to be done remotely. Anything that doesn’t require being physically present is fair game. There are a couple of universal benefits of hiring remotely and just so they aren’t repeated too frequently, here’s a list: you save time, space, and capital by hiring remote employees. If you choose to go through a business process outsourcing company (BPO) then you also don’t have to worry about the day to day administrative tasks that come along with having an employee.
1. GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
In today’s world where online presence and brand reputation matter, having a graphic designer has gone from a luxury to a necessity. They create all of the graphic collateral for your company and help create a logo that is memorable. On top of the universal benefits of hiring remotely, being able to have them work on whatever schedule you’d like is an option, so you have a more flexible graphic designer. On top of that, while language barrier may be a concern, design doesn’t really have a language barrier, coupled with the fact that most if not all remote designers can speak English, there should be no communication problems. Possibly one of the bigger strengths of hiring remotely for this position is the different viewpoint that you get. Design wise it is refreshing to see new inspired designs and with a different cultural background that’s what you’ll find.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGERS
With branding being so important in the marketing world, having a strong social media presence is critical to your success. Social media has become such a powerful tool, being able to effectively manage it has become a fulltime job. Hiring a remote expert allows you the freedom to change the timeline on goals. Their prior experience with social media gives them an edge, which in turn gives your company a competitive edge. You are also able to pick specific skills as requirements, this detail is even more important if you didn’t have a prior social media manager, as you’d be able to use whatever applications they’re familiar with.
3. VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS
There’s no real way to avoid talking about saving time here as keeping you organized and making sure your time is used wisely and efficiently is the overall job of a virtual assistant. VA’s are jack of all trades, while some may view this as a negative, it is actually a strength in this case. Referring back to a VA’s original goal of keeping you organized and on schedule, the ability to be flexible and perform a multitude of tasks is what allows you to stay agile. That freedom won’t come at a high price either, you’ll be able to fit more important tasks into your day.
4. LEAD GENERATION SPECIALISTS
All sales teams need a dedicated lead generation team supporting them. A lead generation team allows your salespeople to do what they’re good at, closing deals and bringing in capital. No more being bogged down by having to find your own leads and no more wasting money buying leads that may or may not pan out for you. The best part of having a remote lead generation team is that you can cover different time zones at a fraction of the cost of hiring someone in your area.
5.CUSTOMER SERVICE SPECIALISTS
In a similar fashion to how Social Media Managers can expedite your social media presence, expert customer service agents are able to provide top quality service from the get go. Working remotely gives them the ability to work any shift you need, which means you can provide round the clock customer service if you build the team correctly or just hire a high volume of agents. Scaling both up and down is easy to do with remote agents, if you experience sudden growth in your company and require much more customer service specialists to cover your expanding customer/consumer base, you’re able to hire in a much quicker manner as there are different processes in other countries that allow rapid hirings.
6.ACCOUNTANTS AND BOOKKEEPERS
Having remote accountants and bookkeepers allows you to be at ease in terms of security. Most security breaches aren’t caused by hackers getting into computer systems, it’s by disgruntled employees with intimate knowledge of your financial information. Hiring remotely, even more so if they’re in another country, takes out this risk. With creation of more advanced financial software, remote accounting has become standard practice for businesses across the globe. Due to the increasing number of people hiring remote financial positions, it is considerably easier to find someone who specializes in financial services for a specific region or country in the world.
7. WEB AND SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS
This is another job where I have to refer to the universal benefits as it impacts these job positions to a much greater extent. You could hire a team of remote developers for the price of one local dev. Their schedule can be customized to your needs. For example, if you needed round the clock maintenance on a web server/site, you could hire 2 or 3 developers who work different shifts where there is some overlap so there is no chance of extended downtime. For any of you also in an agile development setting, you don’t need to worry about being late during sprints, finding suitable candidates who have sprint experience is far easier than you’d think.
Remote staffing opens up a whole new candidate pool you didn’t have access to before. Being able to pick the right people for the job and succeed is easier than ever now that you aren’t limited by geography. Being able to rapidly scale up and down to match your needs means that your chances of success are greatly improved, especially if your competition isn’t taking advantage of remote staffing.