With salaries in the tech industry increasing at a fast pace and the developer shortage in North America getting bigger every year, companies all around the world are focusing their attention on talent overseas, especially in Latin America.
The region has seen a huge boom in its tech industry and Brazil stands as one of the prime destinations for tech recruiters looking for experienced developers to work at North American companies.
But why should you hire Brazilian developers, and how can you do it? Let’s explore some of the main reasons Brazil may be a location to look at.
Why should you hire Brazilian talent?
1. Similar time zones
This is highly convenient for North American clients. For example, the time difference between New York and the vast majority of the Brazilian cities (including big cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) is only 1 hour.
Timezones are also one of the biggest big arguments against hiring developers in faraway regions like Asia or Africa if your company is primarily located in the United States or Canada because in the long-term it may heavily disrupt the team’s workflow and jeopardize productivity and quality of deliverables.
According to research conducted by Dr. Philippe Ruiz from Kledge Business Scholl, 57% of projects fail due to a “breakdown in communications” so as a general tip, when hiring remote talent from places like Latin America, give them the flexibility to choose their working hours on the condition that there is a minimum amount of overlap with the majority of your team.
Asynchronous communication (like emails or messages) is great when you need to have a few questions concerning a certain topic answered quickly and can’t wait a few days to have a meeting about it, but if your team can’t have at least a weekly meeting inside that overlap, communication issues and misalignment may arise quickly.
2. Similar cultures
The average Brazilian has a similar culture to workers from North America: great communication skills, a proactive and entrepreneurial mindset, a hard-working and problem-solving attitude, and a knack for finding new and creative ways to do things.
These are traits particularly valued at tech companies, where many of the situations and problems are deeply complex to solve, and, because of this, the candidate will fit in nicely with international companies that value such characteristics.
3. Top talent with great experience
LATAM is already one of the trendiest technology hubs in the world, with Brazil considered number one in the region and ranked 24th in the world, according to StartupBlink.
Dozen of startups like Quinto Andar, Nubank, and Nuvemshop achieved unicorn status (over $1 billion in valuation) while being founded there with great talent at their disposal. Brazil is already pretty known regionally for its talent pool of experienced and highly skilled tech workers.
Also, by hiring Brazilian talent, your company can reduce the cost severely: a Brazilian senior developer’s salary is worth less than half of an American one. That’s partially due to the current exchange rate from Brazilian Real to US Dollars (1 USD = 5 Brazilian Reais).
4. Engaged and passionate candidates
Working for an international company (especially one located in North America) is a big goal for Brazilian developers for both economic and professional reasons. Because of that, you will notice how engaged, passionate, and determined those professionals are not only during the hiring process but also on the day-to-day.
Another great perk when you hire international talent to work remotely is the number of different points of view in your team or squad that will have from day one. Since life in Latin America can be so different than in the majority of cities in the United States and Canada, those candidates may have different ways to see and do things, which will help your team’s repertoire.
Where to find and connect with Brazilian developers?
Finding and hiring top international prospects can be daunting if it’s your first time doing it.
You have several options in terms of recruitment: from recruitment agencies to job boards, active recruiting with LinkedIn, and talent marketplaces.
They all have their pros and cons so we will go over them all here.
Recruitment agencies are a great choice when you want experienced recruiters with deep knowledge of the region in question but can lack in terms of the volume of candidates and not knowing deeply the intricacies of the job and the company that wishes to hire that candidate.
Job boards like Indeed are essential when you just need both a careers hub with every job opening at your company and key info about the organizational culture at the same place but they lack the interaction with candidates that LinkedIn recruiting and talent marketplaces can offer.
LinkedIn can be a great tool for actively going after the perfect candidate based on their profile on the platform. It also shows the developers that you and the company are heavily interested in interviewing, saving them the time to find you and apply for the job. The problem is that using Linkedin filters can be hit-and-miss: they don’t actually get screened so there’s always a chance of profile misalignment.
Finally, talent marketplaces are platforms where companies find, connect interview and hire top talent. Features may differ from the options available, but most of them have specialists screening and testing candidates’ experience and skillset before sending them to your recruitment team.
GeekHunter is one of the main options in Latin America. If you want to learn more about them click here.
Now what?
Ok, so you found, connected, and selected the perfect candidate for the job position. Now what? Hiring in Brazil can be a complex experience for newcomers so we will bring here the main key topics you should know beforehand:
Cost of hiring in Brazil
An important topic to mention is the percentage of employer taxes in Brazil: between 35-40% for full-time employees.
Let’s say you want to hire a full-time software engineer with a gross salary of 174,933 Brazilian real. After taxes, benefits, and other employer expenses, the total annual cost would be around BRL 249,868.32.
A cost-effective alternative is to hire the developer as a contractor. Employers pay lower taxes when hiring contractors and experience less bureaucracy due to fewer employment laws
How to Legally Hire in Brazil?
There are two main ways in which you can hire employees in Brazil: by opening a foreign subsidiary or using an EOR.
A foreign subsidiary is the most popular option but it is a complex process since it requires you to have a director with a Brazilian ID and central bank approval. If this is your first time hiring from abroad, this option may not be the best one.
The alternative is to use an Employer of Record (EOR) which is an organization that employs and pays employees on behalf of another
Main Labor Laws in Brazil
- Working hours: employees can work up to 44 hours a week. Any hours in excess of eight per day are considered overtime and should be charged an additional 50% hourly rate.
- Overtime: limited to two hours daily. Work on holidays is charged 200% of the regular pay.
- Probationary period: 45 days but can be extended to 90 days.
- Notice period: 30 days for employees in their first year with additional three days per year worked at the company (up to a maximum of 60 total days).
- Social security
- FGTS: workers compensation insurance.
- A 13th salary (end-of-year bonus)
- Vacation leave pay: at 1/3 of the regular amount
- Transportation vouchers: if the employee requests the benefit of using
public transportation
Employees also are entitled to leave paid by the employer under certain
circumstances like:
- Maternity leave (120 days for female workers)
- Paternity leave (five days after the birth of the child)
- Sick leave (full payment of the salary for the first 15 days)
- Marriage leave (three days)
- Bereavement leave (two days off if an immediate family member dies)
Finally, there are the termination requirements.
Employers can use “at-will termination” except for terminations of pregnant employees and coworkers who suffered an accident at work.
Either way, the employer must abide by specific laws, such as a one-month notice period and a
severance package (balanced salary, unused holiday periods, prorated 13th salary, and 40% of the FGTS).
If you want to learn more about the legal intricacies of hiring in Brazil, take a look at our ebook with Deel about how to hire and manage remote teams in Brazil by clicking here
Hire Brazilian Developers with GeekHunter!
As you can see, there are several reasons to hire Brazilian developers. We hope this article answered some questions you and your team may have.
If you are for a developer role right now, click on the button and fill out the form to contact our team! We would be honored to help you create the ultimate tech remote team.
