Data Brief: 64% of All Firms Use Private Agencies to Hire From Worldwide Talent Pool

As worker shortages haunt the tech sector, more companies are casting a wider net and trying to fill their important posts with international hires. For this reason, they’re using private agencies — contracted firms that handle recruitment and management of these workers.

This is examined in the study “Meeting the Demand for Cross-Border Hiring: The Role of Private Agencies,” a PYMNTS and Nium collaboration based on surveys of 250 executive leaders across accounts payable (AP), payroll or payments at U.S.- and U.K.-based companies generating more than $100 million in annual revenue, where we find that many payments firms rely on such services.

This nexus of talent and cross-border payments is the key to establishing and maintaining worker relationships in different geographies, and more firms are tapping into it.

Two-thirds of companies surveyed are tapping the worldwide talent pool and managing those employees effectively.

“Sixty-four percent of all firms surveyed said they used private agencies to recruit international workers in 2021, and 38% said agencies were their most important channel,” the study stated. “This share matches that of all firms that use their business networks to find international talent but significantly exceeds the share of other hiring channels firms said they used to recruit international workers. While 53% used online job search engines, 39% used social media and 26% contacted prospective employees directly.”

PYMNTS research found that larger firms ($250 million to over $1 billion in annual revenues) are the most likely to be using private agencies for HR recruiting and management.

The survey showed that 70% of companies with revenue between $250 million and $500 million used private agencies to recruit workers located outside their home countries, while 53% of companies generating revenues of $1 billion or more did so.

“Among companies that have operated for less than 10 years, 71% have used a private agency, 7 percentage points more than companies that have operated for more than 10 years,” the study stated.

Get the study: Meeting the Demand for Cross-Border Hiring