Work, perks, and culture quirks: how to hire across different locations

Thinking about scaling your SaaS business into new locations?

When you're a scaling SaaS company, at some point in your growth journey you're likely to start thinking about expanding into new territories. 

This might look like a start-up setting up a sales team in Singapore, a newly PE-backed organisation building a Product team in Poland, or creating a Customer Success function in Canada. Alliteration that we couldn't resist aside, entering a new geography that's different from your HQ base can be challenging. In fact, this is something that our clients regularly chat to us about.

With that in mind, here's a whistlestop tour of the key hiring norms across North America, Europe and APAC to help inform your talent strategy when you start to move your operations to a more global approach. And if you're looking for more general advice on how to approach hiring in a new location, you can find a blog on just that here. 
 

Hiring approach

In the US: Hiring cycles are often pretty short, and talent teams are often focused on getting results with speed. At-will employment (where either the employer or the employee can terminate the contract at any time, for any reason) is around in every state apart from Montana, offering flexibility with onboarding but also making high turnover more of a risk. 

In Europe: Longer hiring cycles are more common, with hiring processes typically erring more on the formal side with more stages. Europe as a whole is a highly regulated and employee-protected environment, but each country has different laws and norms around employment (Germany has Kündigungsschutz, the Netherlands have 13-month salaries, for example). Notice periods across the board are also, on average, longer, so expect hiring timelines to be slower and plan ahead!

In APAC: Things vary far more from country to country so a 'one-size-fits-all' won't work. For example, Japan has longer hiring cycles that are focused on relationship building, and job security is a key factor. As a contrast, hiring in India is much faster but attrition can typically be higher. And the general rule with Australia and NZ is that they align closer with Western hiring norms. Getting into the nitty gritty of how to hire across APAC is key to a successful talent strategy in this region. 
 

Hiring processes

In the US: Interview processes are largely designed for speed and thoroughness. The norm looks like 3 to 5 stages over a period of 2 to 3 weeks, with a variety of stakeholders involved. This is standard for US candidates, so they expect this! Dragging out interview processes or waiting to offer to benchmark other candidates is likely to turn candidates off. 

In Europe: The interview process can take a little longer. You're usually looking at a similar number of stages, but these can be spread out over a few more weeks. Again, candidates are used to this, but communication needs to be strong here to keep them managed through longer processes. Robust feedback is also a real expectation here. 

In APAC: Interview processes are typically quite similar to what we see in Europe, with 3-5 stages spanning up to 6 weeks on average. A notable exception is Japan, where 7 stages isn't unheard of and interviews are often more spread out, so an 8 week process isn't all that unusual. Aligning with country-specific norms here is key to make sure candidates don't feel rushed or, conversely, like the process is being unnecessarily elongated. 

Culture and work-life balance

In the US: Anecdotally, the US is known for being highly achievement focused. This gives rise to an expectation of strong career development opportunities for candidates located here. This also mirrors what we see with work-life balance - longer hours and less flexibility is normalised, but that means companies offering better-than-the-norm can really stand out.

In Europe: Culturally, work life in Europe tends to be more collaborative, and particularly in the Nordics and Western Europe hierarchical structures are also often more flat. Work-life balance is more protected here, which manifests itself in clear, mandated annual leave allowances, and in some cases limits on working out of core hours. Remote and hybrid work is popular, but in-office also remains a common approach by employers so candidates expect to see both on offer.  

In APAC: Naturally this really ranges across APAC. There's a strong emphasis on job and company stability and performance cultures, with some locations (like Australia, New Zealand and Singapore) leading the way in terms of flexible working arrangements and prioritisation of positive work-life balance. Across the board, employee experience plays a big role in retention and attraction, particularly in competitive markets like India and Singapore.

Benefits packages

In the US: Benefits in the US are very much driven by the employer, and vary dramatically from company to company. Paid annual leave isn't mandated, but on average companies offer around 10-15 days. There are also no state or federal requirements for parental or sick leave. Health insurance, on the other hand, is critical and if you're not offering this then most candidates will discount you as an option. Because of how variable benefits are in the US, this can be a key area for you to differentiate yourself and attract candidates.

In Europe: Benefits and compensation packages are heavily legally backed in Europe, and are widely considered to be pretty employee-centric. This can look like generous paid annual leave, parental leave backed by job protections, mandatory employer contributions to pensions, plus the 'smaller' stuff like discount schemes, food allowances, and more. In Europe benefits are really considered to be a baseline expectation of employment so it's well worth researching into what the norms are in a particular country when you start hiring there, or risk doing damage to your employer brand.

In APAC: Benefits are very diverse across APAC. There are a lot of things that are mandated, like a reasonable amount of annual leave, parental leave, and pension/superannuation options for retirement. Private healthcare is also widely considered to be an expected benefit across the region, so including this in your offering will help to make sure you're competitive. There are some regions - particularly Japan, China and the Philippines - that are more heavily regulated too, so it's well worth doing your due diligence to make sure you meet the right standards.

Our overall advice?

This may sound obvious, but our overall advice is to make sure you're matching your process and offerings to what's expected in the market.

If you're used to the US, then you might find hiring in Singapore is an entirely different beast. And what works in Germany may completely fail in Australia. Mapping this process in advance is key, so before you get deep into hiring in a new location be sure to take the time to strategies and fully understand the dynamics at play in a particular location.

And, of course, in all of this don't forget about candidate experience.