Before You Recruit Internationally, Ask Yourself These Questions
There is a point at which an employer says:
“We cannot find enough people locally. Perhaps we should recruit internationally.”
It sounds like a logical next step.
And sometimes it is.
But international recruitment is not simply local recruitment with a plane ticket added to it.
Before looking for candidates in another country, an employer has to answer some rather practical questions.
Not questions about recruitment theory.
Not questions about how many candidates might exist in a particular country.
Questions about whether the business is actually ready to employ them.
From my experience in international recruitment, these questions are often more important than the candidate search itself.
The first question: Do we actually need these people all year round?
This is particularly important in transport, logistics, hospitality, agriculture, construction and other industries where demand can change significantly during the year.
If a company needs ten additional drivers throughout the year, international recruitment may be a sensible long-term solution.
If it needs ten drivers for eight weeks during a peak season, the calculation can be very different.
International recruitment involves time, administration, relocation and, in many cases, accommodation and other costs.
So the first question should perhaps be:
Is this a structural labour shortage, or are we trying to solve a temporary increase in demand?
That distinction matters.
A company should not build an international recruitment system around a problem that exists for only a few weeks each year.
At the same time, if the same vacancies keep appearing year after year, treating every recruitment campaign as an isolated emergency may also be a mistake.
The question is not simply whether people are difficult to find.
It is why they are difficult to find and for how long the business will need them.
How long will it really take?
This is one of the questions I believe employers should ask much earlier.
Not:
“How long does the official procedure take?”
But:
“From the moment we approve a candidate, how long until this person is actually here, settled and ready to work?”
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
Depending on the candidate’s nationality, the destination country, the occupation and the legal route being used, there may be employment approvals, work permits, visas, document preparation, qualification checks, appointments, travel arrangements and other administrative steps.
And after all of that, the person still has to travel.
The European Union is clearly moving towards making legal labour migration easier and more structured. The EU Talent Pool entered into force in June 2026 and is intended to help employers access jobseekers from outside the EU for shortage occupations. However, the platform itself is not expected to be fully operational until the end of 2027.
That is useful evidence of where the European labour market is heading.
But it does not change the basic reality for an employer today:
international recruitment can take considerably longer than recruiting someone who is already entitled to work locally.
This is particularly important when a vacancy is already causing operational problems.
If the company needs somebody next Monday, an international recruitment project that realistically takes several months is not a solution to next Monday’s problem.
It may, however, be a solution to the problem the company expects to have six months from now.
That difference is important.
What happens to the existing team?
This is one of the questions that is surprisingly easy to overlook.
An employer may look at an international candidate and see:
- the required experience;
- the required licence or qualification;
- availability;
- willingness to relocate;
- and an acceptable salary expectation.
On paper, everything may look right.
But the person is not going to work on paper.
They are going to join an existing team.
How will the other employees react?
Will communication work?
Will there be language difficulties?
Will experienced employees feel that they are being treated differently?
Who will explain the workplace rules?
Who will help the new employee understand how things are done?
What happens if several people from different countries are placed together?
And what happens when accommodation is involved?
These are not necessarily reasons not to recruit internationally.
They are reasons to prepare properly.
A company can solve a labour shortage and still create a completely different problem if integration is ignored.
International recruitment therefore has a human side that cannot be reduced to a CV, a work permit or a salary calculation.
Can we actually provide what an international employee needs?
This is where international recruitment becomes very different from ordinary local hiring.
Imagine that an employer finds the right driver.
The person accepts the job.
Then what?
Who picks them up from the airport?
Where will they live?
Is the accommodation furnished?
Who pays the deposit?
Are utilities included?
How will they get from the accommodation to work?
What happens if their flight arrives late?
Who helps them with registration or other local administration?
What happens during their first weekend if they have a problem?
Who explains the workplace, safety procedures and practical rules?
And, perhaps most importantly:
What happens if the person arrives and discovers that the reality is different from what they expected?
These questions do not mean that an employer has to become a social services organisation.
But an employer considering international recruitment needs to understand that relocation changes the relationship between employer and employee.
For someone moving across borders for a job, the employer is often not simply offering employment.
The employer is also, at least initially, part of the person’s relocation process.
What is the real cost?
This is probably one of the most important questions of all.
The salary is usually easy to calculate.
The total cost is not.
An international employee may involve:
- recruitment costs;
- work permit or visa-related costs;
- document preparation;
- travel;
- airport transfer;
- accommodation;
- furniture or household equipment;
- deposits;
- local transport;
- administration;
- onboarding;
- internal HR time;
- and sometimes additional support during the first weeks or months.
Some costs are one-off.
Others are ongoing.
And some may be shared with the employee.
That is why I would not ask an employer:
“Can you afford the salary?”
I would ask:
“What is the complete cost of getting this person into your workforce, and is the result still economically worthwhile?”
That is a much more useful calculation.
How much can realistically be supported by the candidate?
This is another area where expectations can become disconnected from reality.
An employer may reasonably expect an employee to contribute towards accommodation, travel or other costs.
But the candidate will also be doing their own calculation.
If someone is considering moving from another country, they may compare:
salary – accommodation – food – transport – other expenses = what can I actually save?
That final number matters.
A salary that looks attractive from the employer’s perspective may not be attractive to a candidate once the cost of living and relocation are taken into account.
And the opposite can also be true.
Sometimes an employer is offering a perfectly reasonable salary, but the overall package becomes much more attractive because accommodation or transport is provided.
This is why I believe international recruitment should involve more than asking:
“What salary do candidates want?”
The better question is:
“What complete package will make the right candidates seriously consider moving?”
That is a market question, not simply a recruitment question.
And then there is retention
There is one more question that should probably be asked before the recruitment starts:
What will make this person stay?
Finding an international candidate is only the beginning.
If the employee relocates, completes the administrative process, arrives, starts working and leaves six months later, the employer has not necessarily solved its labour shortage.
It may simply have paid a considerable amount to postpone the problem.
Retention does not always mean paying the highest salary.
It can mean predictable working conditions, decent accommodation, respectful treatment, a functioning workplace, reliable communication, opportunities to earn more, opportunities to develop and, importantly, the feeling that the person has made the right decision by moving.
This is especially important when recruiting from countries where the employee has made a significant personal decision to leave their home country and relocate.
Only after that should we talk about candidates
Once the employer has answered these questions, the candidate search becomes much more straightforward.
Then we can ask:
Where are the people we need?
Which countries have the required drivers, welders, technicians, healthcare professionals, cooks, engineers or other workers?
What experience do they have?
What qualifications do they hold?
Which licences are recognised?
What languages do they speak?
What salary do they expect?
Are they willing to relocate?
How competitive is the employer’s offer?
Which legal route is available?
These are important questions.
But they are not necessarily the first questions.
The European labour market itself increasingly demonstrates why this matters. The European Labour Authority’s latest report identifies thousands of occupational shortages and surpluses across European countries, with some occupations in shortage in one country and surplus in another. It also points to demographic change, skills mismatches and limited labour mobility as important drivers.
In other words, sometimes the people you need do exist.
They simply do not exist in the place where you are looking.
But moving them across a border does not automatically make the recruitment problem disappear.
It creates another set of questions that have to be answered properly.
International recruitment is not always the answer
This is something I think is worth saying clearly.
I do not believe every labour shortage should be solved by recruiting internationally.
Sometimes the salary is simply too low.
Sometimes the working conditions are unattractive.
Sometimes the employer needs people only temporarily.
Sometimes the vacancy requirements are unrealistic.
Sometimes there are candidates locally, but the recruitment process is too slow.
Sometimes the company has a retention problem rather than a recruitment problem.
And sometimes the business genuinely needs people who simply are not available in the local labour market.
Those situations can look very similar from the outside:
“We cannot find people.”
But the solutions can be completely different.
This is why I am cautious about the idea that international recruitment is some kind of universal answer to labour shortages.
It is not.
It is one possible answer.
The important part is understanding when it makes sense.
What I believe the recruiter should actually bring to the table
Finding candidates is, of course, part of international recruitment.
But I believe the more valuable part happens before the candidate is found.
An employer should be able to ask:
How realistic is this?
And receive an honest answer.
If the answer is:
“Yes, there is a candidate market for this position, but your current salary will make it difficult.”
That is useful.
If the answer is:
“Yes, there are qualified people available, but the immigration timeline means you need to start much earlier.”
That is useful.
If the answer is:
“There are candidates, but given the seasonal nature of your requirement, I don’t think international recruitment is economically sensible.”
That is also useful.
And if the answer is:
“Your local market is becoming increasingly difficult, the requirement is permanent, the salary is competitive and the company can support the relocation process. In this case, looking internationally makes sense.”
Then the recruitment can begin with a much clearer understanding of what everyone is trying to achieve.
That is where I believe an international recruiter can become more than a supplier of CVs.
The job is not simply to find someone who says yes to the vacancy.
It is to understand whether the vacancy, the market and the candidate can realistically work together.
So, should your company recruit internationally?
Perhaps.
But before asking “Where can we find the people?”, I would ask:
Do we need them permanently?
How long will it really take to bring them here?
Are we prepared for the practical side of relocation?
Can the existing team absorb them successfully?
What will the complete cost be?
How much of that cost can the employee realistically support?
Is our overall offer attractive enough?
And, after everything we have invested, what gives us a reasonable chance of keeping the person?
If those questions have good answers, the question of where to find the candidates becomes much easier.
If they do not, finding 100 candidates probably will not solve the problem.
And perhaps that is the point that is sometimes missed in international recruitment:
The difficult part is not always finding people in another country.
Sometimes the difficult part is making sure that the company is genuinely ready for them when they arrive.
My name is Dan Georgescu, and I have been working in international recruitment for over eight years.
Over that time, I have learned that recruitment is rarely just about finding somebody who matches a job description.
Sometimes the candidate is the problem.
Sometimes the market is the problem.
Sometimes the offer is the problem.
Sometimes the timing is the problem.
And sometimes the employer simply needs to look at the situation from a different angle.
This is why I believe an international recruitment consultant should be able to do more than present CVs.
The market will not always give us the candidates we want, at the salary we want, within the timeframe we want.
But if we understand the market properly, we can at least make better decisions about what is realistic — and what is worth pursuing.
