IT Recruitment Guide: How to identify and attract tech talent from Latin America

It is well known that the majority of technology talent is employed, that is why companies need to look for talent outside of their countries. Fortunately, the US is close to one of the regions with the largest pools of tech talent: Latin America, which also has the advantage of sharing the same time zone with the US.

The types of projects in which Latin American developers have experience are related to the maintenance of systems or legacy code, including in US banks and large corporations. This implies that the programming languages and the versions they are experienced on are not the most recent. And those who do have experience on this, are still a minority, but growing by the day.

There are currently 26.9 million developers globally, according to data from Evans Data Corporation (EDC), of which it is estimated that they will increase by around 1 million each year, with Latin America being the region with the second highest growth of developers globally.

As it is shown in the graphic below, Brasil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia are the largest pools of developers in the region.

If you need talent with an advanced English level, you should know the following: the salary of a Latin American developer increases almost four times when he/she has advanced English.

In Mexico, the average monthly salary of a technology professional with advanced English is $2,110.4 USD, while with an intermediate level it is $1,320.41 USD (Hireline IT Labor Market Report 2022). That is why those who have an advanced command of the English language can have a remuneration up to 3.9 times higher compared to employees who do not speak it or speak it at a basic level. If you are looking for a senior developer, you should consider a higher salary.

A good piece of advice I can give you is to bet more on talent than on specialization or years of experience in a specific technology. Let's go deeper with salary ranges.

In the following table you can see a list of salaries for the most common technologies vs the salaries for those with advanced English proficiency level:

According to our IT Labor Market Report 2022, 77% of Mexican IT professionals consider professional development the most important factor when accepting a new job offer, but to continue in a company they consider: salary, work environment and perks as almost equally important. The number of applications is 3 times higher when your vacancy is fully remote.

Mexican developers are seeking a salary increase of 21% to 30% to switch jobs. (Hireline IT Labor Market Report 2022)

In short, it is important to show all the information and details of the type of projects they will be working on and the salary offered.

There are two main hiring schemes commonly used for tech professionals:

1. Full time employee: For example, benefits based on the law in Mexico assumes all legal responsibility. This cost is between 35-40% additional to the salary and the employee has a withholding to obtain the net salary.

   1. IMSS (Mexican institute of social security)
   2. INFONAVIT
   3. Christmas bonus 15 days (30 days average in the industry)
   4. Vacational Bonus and 6 days of vacations per year. (10 days average in the industry)

2. Contractor services agreement: Sign a contract for services between contractors and your company. This cost is between 10-20% for the payroll service and the contractor obtains net salary.

   1. The full salary will be paid directly to the contractor.
   2. The contractor will be responsible to pay taxes and other legal responsibilities.
   3. Perks and benefits will be optional depending on you. (life insurance, Major medical insurance, christmas bonus, meal vouchers, etc).

   The contractor model is a good option to suggest with the first employees since you don't need to have a company incorporated in the country where the employee is from.

According to our last IT Labor Market Report, 94% of Mexican IT professionals use job portals to search for jobs.

Today's job search is done primarily through the Internet and, of course, the creation of job portals has facilitated the recruitment work of thousands of organizations, being the first source of tech talent search jobs in Mexico.

Hireline is a recruitment platform specialized in Information Technology profiles. We have more than 250,000 profiles of IT professionals in Latin America and more than half of them are programmers. The most popular programming languages for our candidates are: Java, PHP, Python and C#/.NET.

LinkedIn is the second most used platform by IT professionals to look for jobs; and recommendations among friends and colleagues complete the top 3 of the most popular ways to access new job opportunities.

The disadvantage of LinkedIn is that you do not have the candidate's contact information to talk to him/her immediately. You have to send a connection request, which the candidate can accept or not.

Other job portals that operate in Latin America are OCC Mundial, Computrabajo, Indeed, and Bumeran.

If you are looking for a complete recruitment and hiring solution, Hireline can help you.

The more information your vacancy has about your company and position, the more candidates will apply. It is likely that Latin American candidates haven't heard about your company. Include these points in your job posting:

1. Clear job title with main Role and Technology you need in the position. For example, if you are looking for a programmer who knows Java you should put the title "Java Programmer". This way, the candidate will quickly understand what profile and technology you are looking for.
2. Requirements you are looking for. I suggest using a section for the indispensable ones and another one for those that would be a plus.
3. Company description. Someone reading your vacancy may feel attracted if you get them to think about the type of project they will be involved in. Also, because these profiles are looking for professional challenges.
4. Benefits or perks you offer. Benefits are always a great attraction and say a lot about you as a company.

Here is one example for you to get inspired:

Now you have a broad overview of the tech talent in Latin America, which we can summarize in the following main points:

• Consider the salary ranges according to the English level you require in your vacancy. Remember that in Mexico, the average salary of a technology professional with advanced English is $2,110.4 USD but if you're looking for a senior profile, you should consider a higher salary.
• The contractor model is a good option to offer with the first employees since you don't need to have a company incorporated in the country where the employee is from.
• The more information your vacancy has about your company and position, the more candidates will apply. It is probable that Latin American candidates haven't heard about your company.
• A good advice I can give you is to bet more on talent than on specialization or years of experience in a specific technology.

We know that the fast-growing IT industry needs changes equally fast and effective to adopt flexible but challenging work schemes. It is key to have strategic partners who allow you to move forward and keep the pace that the industry and your organization demands, as well as mastering the data and culture of the country in which you want to hire.

Hireline offers you everything you need to start or expand your engineering team distributed in Latin America. Recruiting, Hiring and Payroll.