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Key Takeaways
- Latin America Offers a Strategic Talent Advantage. Businesses struggling to hire or retain top US talent due to rising costs can access highly skilled, culturally aligned professionals in Latin America for 30–70% less. These hires deliver equal or better performance across roles like finance, marketing, software development, and customer service—with the added benefit of minimal time zone differences.
- You Don’t Have to Compromise on Quality. LatAm candidates often have experience at global firms, strong English skills, and a desire for long-term career growth. Companies hiring from the region consistently report high engagement and skill levels—sometimes outperforming US counterparts—making this a sustainable talent solution, not a stopgap.
- Hiring Internationally Is Now Easier Than Ever. With tools like Deel and Slack, and support from partners like Near, hiring from Latin America can be fast, compliant, and low-risk. Businesses can choose between DIY hiring or full-service staffing, both enabling cost-effective team expansion without sacrificing quality or productivity.
Hiring has always been challenging, but today’s obstacles are particularly steep.
You’re looking for reliable talent, but the best candidates are being courted by big companies with deep pockets. You want to keep your existing team loyal, but competitors keep upping their offers, making retention increasingly difficult.
When you can’t match the salaries that larger companies offer, competing for top talent becomes nearly impossible.
The result? You’re effectively getting locked out of the traditional hiring game.
This isn’t just affecting startups or small businesses—even large established companies are concerned about the sustainability of these rising acquisition and retention costs.
But there’s a practical alternative: tapping into pools of highly skilled professionals attracted to salaries within your budget. Professionals who are eager to work with US companies and motivated to become long-term team members.
This isn’t theoretical—hundreds of companies are benefiting from this strategy already. They’re looking beyond the US talent market, where there are qualified candidates with the training, experience, and drive they need.
And they’re finding them in Latin America.
The region close enough to be culturally aligned but far enough to be guarded from the worst markers of our domestic hiring reality. So, if you’ve been feeling locked out of the hiring game—this is your key.
This isn’t about compromising on talent. It’s about finding an untapped source of skilled professionals who can help drive your business forward with the same quality you’d expect from US hires, just without the inflated price tag.
By the time you finish this guide, you’ll understand exactly how to find and hire these candidates, opening up possibilities that may have seemed out of reach in the current US talent market.
Why Latin America?
Latin America (LatAm) offers access to skilled professionals with impressive credentials and salary expectations 30–70% less than their US counterparts.
Here’s what makes LatAm talent a strategic advantage:
Affordability
The math is simple. LatAm professionals have lower salary expectations due to the region’s lower cost of living compared to the US. This creates a win-win situation where you reduce costs significantly while offering them competitive compensation by local standards.
We won’t go into all the numbers here; to get a better idea of how the cost of living varies within Latin America and how that translates into lower salary expectations, have a look at our comprehensive US vs. Latin America Salary Guide.
Skilled talent
The LatAm talent pool is impressive. They’re educated (with advanced degrees from reputable schools), and they’ve held stints at major powerhouses like JP Morgan, EY, PWC, and Amazon.
And they are savvy, too: they know that earning in USD means they are not hit as hard by the mind-blowing local inflation rates and that molding an international career path opens up doors they might never otherwise see. So they’re not just eager to secure higher salaries— they’re ready to prove themselves invaluable.
Cultural alignment
Teamwide morale is essential for great outcomes, and cultural cohesion plays a big part. Between LatAm and the US, there’s no discernible difference in workplace culture, particularly for professionals working in major cities (like São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City) where hard work and cooperative efforts are the name of the game.
Add that aligned cultural outlook to fluency in English and the ambition required to seek prestigious international roles, and you have candidates willing to put the work in to enhance your company’s environment for you—not detract from it.
Productivity
Running a business gets complicated when employees are in different time zones. While it’s increasingly popular for companies to hire talent from offshore locations, time differences can run up to more than 12 hours—making scheduling, coordinating, and meeting a pain and a half. But not with LatAm talent.
With no LatAm city running more than two hours ahead or behind EST, your team will be bolstered with professionals working with you, not behind you. No more chasing and no more sacrificing. Just the best of both worlds.
When you open up to international talent, you can easily meet your hiring goals. You amplify your talent pool and can leverage skill sets, determination, and productivity without falling into the pitfalls of limiting your team to US-based hires.
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But wait … isn’t it complicated?
At first glance, hiring from another country might seem daunting. But the truth is, it’s far more straightforward than most people think—especially if you work with a partner who knows the landscape.
You have two options: tackle it yourself or get expert help. Going the DIY route is completely doable, and we’ll give you the roadmap to get started.
But you will need to decide whether you have the time to invest in learning where to find the best talent, how to source effectively, how to screen properly, how to read resumes in formats unfamiliar to you, and the ins and outs of hiring from abroad.
But don’t worry; we will spell out both options for you later on so you can decide if this is something you want to do on your own or with some help.
Who Can Benefit from Hiring from Latin America?
This strategy isn’t limited to any particular type of business—it works for companies across various industries and growth stages.
Companies hiring from Latin America typically fall into three categories:
- Growth-focused businesses seeking cost-effective talent: If you need highly skilled professionals but can’t justify US salary levels, Latin American talent offers the perfect solution. You get expertise comparable to US candidates at 30–70% less cost, allowing you to reinvest those savings into other areas of your business.
- Startups and scale-ups needing to move quickly: When you need to build teams rapidly without burning through your funding, LatAm hiring becomes a strategic advantage. Companies can assemble high-performing teams in weeks rather than months, accelerating their growth trajectory without the compromise typically associated with fast hiring.
- Companies with overburdened HR teams: For organizations where recruitment has become a bottleneck, partnering with specialists in Latin American hiring streamlines the process. Your internal team focuses on strategic priorities while ensuring compliance and maintaining quality standards.
We’ve seen companies ranging from early-stage startups to established mid-market firms successfully implement this approach. The roles they’ve filled span from entry-level positions to senior leadership, proving the versatility of this strategy.
What’s particularly noteworthy is that these businesses aren’t making compromises—they’re consistently impressed by the quality and commitment of their LatAm team members. Many report that these hires outperform their US-based counterparts in terms of both skills and engagement.
Positions Ideal for Filling With Latin American Talent
If a role can be performed remotely, you’ll find qualified talent in Latin America to handle it.
While virtually any remote position can be filled with LatAm professionals, according to our recent data across 2,000+ placements, certain roles have proven particularly successful, with LatAm professionals delivering exceptional performance and significant cost savings.
Accountants
You know, the role that’s nearly impossible to reasonably hire for—and retain—in the US.
Luckily, it can take less than two weeks to find and secure a LatAm accountant (with comprehensive US GAAP experience).
This is the role that we see the most companies hiring for while typically saving 55–64% over US salaries.
Bookkeepers
Bookkeepers from Latin America come with comprehensive experience and can be hired for 40–58% less than their US counterparts, saving businesses $20,000–$25,000 annually per hire.
Argentina leads as the primary source for accounting and bookkeeping talent, followed by Peru and Mexico, with placement typically taking 11–21 days.
Marketing Specialists
Marketing departments account for 17% of all LatAm hires we place, with Brazilian professionals leading this category.
Companies are seeing typical savings of 75% compared to US-based marketing talent, while gaining access to professionals who are well-versed in digital marketing strategies, data analytics, and creative campaign development.
The combination of technical skills, creativity, and cost-effectiveness makes LatAm marketing talent particularly valuable for growth-stage companies.
Executive Assistants
Executive assistants from Latin America (primarily Argentina) save companies 79-84% ($35,000-$59,000 annually) while providing excellent organizational support.
These roles can be filled quickly (7–14 days) and typically come with professionals who are bilingual, highly organized, and accustomed to supporting executives across different time zones.
Financial Analysts
Latin America produces exceptional finance talent, many with experience at global firms like JP Morgan, Deloitte, and EY. These professionals bring the same rigorous training and expertise you’d find in US candidates.
With the shift toward remote work in financial roles, even companies that previously required in-office analysts have successfully transitioned to LatAm talent—finding they get equal or better performance at significantly lower costs.
Software Developers
Technical talent is perhaps the most established category for hiring in Latin America. The region produces highly qualified developers across all major programming languages and frameworks. And these LatAm candidates don’t expect the inflated salaries their US counterparts do.
A salary of 36–56% of a corresponding US market-rate developer salary will get you developers with greater work satisfaction, engagement, and retention over time.
Brazil leads as the primary source for software engineering talent, with typical hiring timelines of 12-21 days.
Sales Development Reps
Sales development representatives (SDRs) have a long list of responsibilities, including prospecting, appointment setting, and running outbound email campaigns—and LatAm talent is proficient at all of them.
As one of the most popular roles to hire for in Latin America, US companies have been taking advantage of the high skill sets and quick-to-hire journeys.
Customer Support Reps
Companies in any service or software niche view their customer support representatives (CSRs) like they’re their lifeblood. Because they are.
Customer relations are everything, and that means you need professionals in your corner who are:
- bilingual in English and Spanish
- available during US work hours
- filled with genuine care about the customers they’re interacting with.
LatAm CSRs check all those boxes while still giving you immense cost savings. And that’s why customer support is an increasingly popular category for LatAm hiring, especially in Honduras and Jamaica.
While these roles represent the most common positions US companies fill with Latin American talent, we’re seeing the trend expand into virtually every remote-capable function. As more companies discover this strategy, the diversity of roles continues to grow.
Success Stories
Latin American talent acquisition isn’t just a promising idea—it’s a proven approach that’s already delivering measurable results for businesses across various industries.
While some companies navigate this process independently, these examples show the transformative outcomes that become possible when working with a specialized hiring partner:
FinanceWithin
This fast-growing CFO services firm struggled with high turnover from their offshore team in India and slow in-house recruitment. After switching to Latin American talent, they:
- Cut their hiring time from three weeks to as little as seven days
- Saved 64% on hiring costs (approximately $535,000 annually)
- Streamlined their recruitment process
- Rapidly scaled their team to keep pace with client growth, hiring multiple bookkeepers in days instead of weeks
LifeSource Water Systems
This established water filtration company in California needed to test a new sales assistant role but found local hiring too expensive and risky. With LatAm talent, they:
- Reduced hiring costs by 60%, saving $82,000 annually
- Cut their hiring timeline to just nine days
- Saw immediate results—one sales assistant booked eight meetings in their first eight days
- Gained skilled bilingual talent to better serve their diverse customer base
Propensity
This SaaS company delivering ABM solutions needed to switch to growth mode after securing funding but struggled to find top marketing talent in the US.
Their Latin American marketing hires:
- Doubled lead generation in just two quarters
- Offered skill levels four times higher than comparable US candidates
- Saved the company approximately 48% in annual payroll costs
- Helped position them as a leader in their industry
Verbatim
This digital marketing agency wanted to expand from content creation to full-stack services including design, but found US-based hiring prohibitively expensive.
By recruiting designers from Latin America, they:
- Reduced hiring costs by 73%, saving $100,000 annually
- Decreased recruitment time by 4x
- Saved approximately 80 hours in recruitment processes
- Successfully expanded their service offerings while maintaining high quality
These companies represent diverse industries and needs, but they share common results: significant cost savings, faster hiring, and high-quality talent that performs at or above the level of US-based alternatives.
The key to their success wasn’t compromising on quality—it was finding a smarter approach to talent acquisition.
How to Hire from Latin America on Your Own
After seeing how companies are achieving impressive results with Latin American talent, you’re probably wondering exactly how to make this happen for your business.
Let’s start with the basics: As a US business, you need to stay compliant with US law.
When it comes to international talent, that means you have two options for hiring candidates:
- Hiring as an independent contractor: You pay an agreed-upon rate, and the contractor handles their own taxes, healthcare, and benefits (unless you choose to provide these). This arrangement offers flexibility and simplicity for both parties.
- Hiring as an employee: The candidate joins your payroll. You provide salary, benefits, and protections required by their country of residence, including health insurance and social security equivalents.
While you’re considering those options, you’ll also need to consider this: As a legally compliant US company, you have the option to hire international candidates as employees yourself or to hire them through an Employer of Record (EOR).
Hiring directly: If choosing the employee route, this requires establishing a legal entity in their country—a complex and resource-intensive process.
Using an Employer of Record (EOR): An EOR serves as the official employer of your international hires, handling compliance, payroll, and legal requirements while you maintain day-to-day management. This approach eliminates the need for a foreign office.
Our recommendation for most businesses: Hire Latin American candidates as contractors, but extend benefits similar to what your US employees receive.
This approach gives you the simplicity of contractor relationships with the loyalty-building advantages of employee benefits. It’s how companies build lasting relationships with top LatAm talent.
Here’s how to find and hire these candidates on your own:
- Attract talent
Start by posting your open role where verified talent actually looks.
Here’s what doesn’t work:
- General job boards that flood you with unqualified applications, poor English skills, and generic cover letters.
- Freelance platforms that attract short-term contractors juggling multiple clients rather than dedicated team members.
- Vague job posts that fail to attract quality candidates.
Instead, follow this approach:
- Find the right pool. Nothing matters more for the quality of your hires (and the efficiency of your hiring process) than being in the right place.
You could be making the most attractive offer LatAm talent has ever seen—but if you’re not exposing the right talent to it, you’ll wind up disappointed with your options. Target platforms and communities where Latin American professionals actively look for US opportunities. The quality of your candidate pool directly impacts your hiring results.
- Craft the right post. Once you find the right place, it’s time to introduce yourself to the candidates you’re trying to reach—that is, the impressive candidates. They don’t waste time on generic or confusing posts; they gravitate toward detailed ones.
The best posts contain information on the company, the role, the duties, and the candidate’s requirements. Getting specific at this stage doesn’t just secure you the right bites; it also saves you from having to speak to a wide array of non-qualified applicants later on—since they’ve already been weeded out.
- Emphasize the right aspects. Even in the LatAm talent pool, you’re still facing competition from other companies looking to make their ideal hires. Introducing yourself and the role matters, but pitching the value behind the opportunity matters more. That includes being clear about salary expectations, but it also includes being clear about company perks.
Do you offer bonuses based on performance? Is the team small, granting hires the opportunity to learn a lot and feel their impact? Do they have direct access to the executive team? By emphasizing clear-cut advantages, you’ll distinguish yourself from the other companies hoping to seek out top LatAm talent—and walk away the victor.
Hiring tip: When stating the salary you are offering, we recommend stating a range instead of an exact figure so you don’t scare anyone off and have room to negotiate.
- Screen candidates effectively
Once applications start flowing in, you need an efficient screening process to whittle them down, including assessment tests.
LatAm resumes typically differ from US formats—they often run longer (4-5 pages for experienced candidates) and include more details. Don’t let these differences discourage you; the essential information is still there.
You may encounter unfamiliar credentials and qualifications. Before dismissing candidates, research equivalent certifications in their country—many have comparable training under different names.
For shortlisted candidates, don’t forget to check references and run background checks, depending on the role. We know this might seem daunting with the language difference, but it is possible. Ask the candidates if they can supply any references in English (if not, Google Translate may come in handy).
- Carry out your interviews
You know that the candidates who’ve made it to this round are qualified, but here’s where you get to see their personalities shine. Are they personable and easy to converse with? Do they talk about their line of work with passion? Can you get a feel for what they’d be like to work with? And if you can, does it feel like a fit?
Beyond just checking off boxes for certifications and language fluency, interviews allow you to see the people behind the resumes. So use them that way. Ask questions that speak to their professional character; get to know their aspirations and strengths. Make sure to explicitly ask about their most significant accomplishment in each relevant role.
You’re not just looking for an anonymous worker to execute tasks—you’re looking for a teammate. That means things like operational alignment, vision for the future, and overall demeanor matter. So let your interview process illuminate them.
Hiring tip: Make sure you consider time zone differences when scheduling your interview, and ideally, you would have wanted to verify the candidate’s English level before hopping on a call to ensure communication won’t be an issue. Using platforms like Videoask or MyInterview allows you to ask some screening questions asynchronously beforehand to evaluate candidates’ English levels.
- Make an attractive offer
After identifying your ideal candidate, it’s time to formalize the relationship with an offer letter.
More formal than a verbal offer, the offer letter is a contract and an assurance for both parties. It should cover details on the role, the duties, the hours, the compensation (including salary, bonuses and their conditions, payment frequency, and payment method), the contract type, the start date, and the permitted holiday/vacation time.
While most aspects would have been discussed and agreed on in the interview process, the offer letter is where they’re all set in stone—leaving you and your candidate with the peace of mind that comes with knowing interest has been replaced by commitment.
Hiring tip: Make sure before you make your offer that you have determined what a fair salary would be based on the candidate’s location and what benefits they might consider as being standard. For example, a great salary in Mexico will look different from one in Brazil. You want to offer a compensation package that will secure you your first choice.
- Make the hire and onboard your new teammate
You’ve secured your ideal candidate, but the hiring process is not over yet. Effective onboarding is crucial for retaining new employees and creating a good working relationship from the get-go.
You likely already have an effective onboarding program, but if that program hasn’t been made to account for remote employees, you may want to think about revamping it.
With remote-only workers, you want to pay a little more attention to helping them feel like part of the team. Trust us, your efforts will be rewarded handsomely with improved productivity and efficiency.
This DIY approach is entirely possible if you have the time and resources to learn the nuances of international hiring. However, many leaders find that partnering with a specialized firm offers a faster, more efficient path to the same destination.
What Working With a Partner Looks Like
Here’s how partnering with Near eliminates the risk, stress, anxiety, and overwhelm of hiring from LatAm.
You can work with us in one of two ways:
Near as your recruiting agency: We find you the ideal placement, but then you take over to make the hire and pay them however works best for you.
Near as your full-service staffing partner: We find you the ideal placement, and you hire them through us. We take care of payroll, administer any benefits you have offered, and provide ongoing support.
Here’s what your hiring journey would look like:
- Discovery session
We delve into your hiring goals, outline the role requirements, and discuss talent markets.
You might not know what a competitive and attractive compensation package looks like for someone in LatAm. Not to worry. Our experience makes us well-placed to advise you (within your budget) on what to offer, and we can cover this in this call.
- Kick-off call
You meet with your dedicated recruiter to refine the candidate profile and craft the perfect hiring journey. Together, you’ll shape a process that’s streamlined, efficient, and laser-focused on securing top talent that aligns with your business goals.
- Candidate selection
Because we already have a pool of more than 35k+ pre-vetted candidates, within just three days, you will receive candidate profiles selected to match your requirements.
And we don’t mean they match your criteria just on paper: we pre-screen our candidates to ensure they have the skills needed. We evaluate their communication and other soft skills in a screening interview—and we do this in English to verify their proficiency level.
We also administer any relevant assessment tests. Whatever the skill you are looking for, we do our utmost to ensure the candidates have it.
- Conduct interviews
We’ve got you covered on this one too. We don’t just give you a list of contact details—we facilitate scheduling interviews and sending invites.
(And at this point in the process, you’ve still not paid us a cent. You don’t pay anything until you make a hire.)
- Make an offer and secure your hire.
You’ve found that perfect match. Now it’s time to woo them with the perfect offer. Want help with the offer letter? Sorted.
But our support doesn’t stop after you successfully find that ideal candidate. If we are your full-service staffing partner, we also help you with:
Onboarding
We support you through onboarding and advise on strategies to retain your remote talent, setting up you and your new hire for success.
Payroll and benefit administration
We remove any hassle of paying your new hires. You pay us a monthly fee, and we pay your candidates and administer benefits. Our pricing is fully transparent, and you’ll know exactly what your placement is being paid.
Retention
Our hires stay longer—not only because of our vetting and screening process but also because they are culturally aligned and eager to grow within the company.
Can we guarantee this? Of course not. But that’s why we offer to replace any placement free of charge.
Ongoing support and team expansion
You get continuous support after you make a hire. As your business grows, we can help with team expansion, including high-volume hiring and executive search.
We are in it for the long run with you.
Why Now Is the Time to Seize This Opportunity
There has never been a better time to take advantage of the opportunities hiring from LatAm can give you.
Availability of tools to make the process seamless
Maybe you think onboarding and managing an international hire has to be complicated or take up a lot of your time. But there are digital solutions for everything these days.
From the digital communication and workflow tools your company already uses to simplified international payment methods, you have technology on your side—as long as you know where to find it.
Onboarding and running payroll with platforms like Deel, Multiplier, and Omnipresent take the paperwork—and the stress regarding compliance—off your shoulders. From generating contracts compliant with the candidate’s local region to automating invoices and paying talent with just a click, the logistics side of managing your international workers has never been easier. (Plus, by partnering with us, you get preferential pricing for some of the leading platforms.)
With collaboration and communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Miro, and ClickUp, work culture today is primed for this opportunity. Workers are comfortable collaborating remotely with colleagues and know how to do so efficiently.
Opportunity to lock in cost savings for uncertain economic times
If we’ve learned anything in the last few years, it is that the economy can take a turn for the worse at a moment’s notice. Locking in cost savings to your business model now helps protect your business during unexpected downturns.
The chance to get in before everyone else does
If you want to gain a competitive advantage, you need to act before your competition does—if they haven’t already discovered hiring from LatAm.
The more popular this strategy becomes, the more companies there will be vying for top talent. We already see this happening with top engineering talent because there simply is not enough to go around.
Next Steps
As we said before, we’re not pitching you a theoretical concept or an unproven strategy. The evidence is clear: hiring from Latin America works, and hundreds of companies are already seeing the results.
Those success stories we shared aren’t outliers. They’re the norm when you approach this strategy thoughtfully. This isn’t about compromising on talent quality or taking shortcuts.
It’s definitely not about tightening your belt or taking advantage of candidates who don’t know better. It’s about making smart business decisions that give you access to exceptional professionals who will become valuable team members.
For many businesses, the question isn’t whether to explore LatAm talent acquisition but how to do it effectively.
If you want to handle this on your own, the framework in this guide will get you started. You now understand the key considerations, potential challenges, and best practices for finding and hiring LatAm professionals.
But here’s something we’ve seen time and again: companies that try the DIY route often spend months figuring out the process, making costly mistakes along the way. When you factor in the opportunity cost of that learning curve—plus the risk of bad hires—many businesses find it more efficient to work with a partner who’s already navigated these waters.
We’ve built the infrastructure, relationships, and expertise specifically for connecting US companies with top Latin American talent.
Whatever path you choose, don’t let hiring limitations constrain your business growth. The ability to build high-caliber teams affordably and efficiently is too important to ignore—especially when your competitors are likely already exploring this advantage.
To discuss how Latin American talent might fit into your specific business needs, book a free consultation call today. We’re happy to share insights relevant to your industry and specific hiring challenges, whether you decide to work with us or not.
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