Regional variations

To recruit successfully, employers have to be wary about regional differences, such as the need to tailor benefits to the local culture.

For instance, Google's Web site offers a "cycling plan" to its employees in Ireland, in which it contributes Euro 200 toward the cost of a bicycle. And in India, Deloitte's Web site offers free company-organized transportation that shuttles employees in Mumbai and Hyderabad from pickup points across those cities to its offices.

"It's very difficult to recruit cross-border if you don't have the right approach and awareness," Crotts says. "I always have the local HR representative right beside me to make sure I'm hitting the marketplace with the right initiatives and terms and conditions."

Companies also have to be familiar with country-specific legal requirements and traditions, Wheeler adds. For example, terminating employment in Germany is a very involved process that requires 60 to 90 days' notice and is subject to approval by the government. For this reason, he says, smaller companies without global recruiting offices often leave it to local recruiting firms to do the hiring negotiations.

Cultural differences also make it difficult to accurately assess the credentials of foreign candidates, Wheeler says. For instance, it's common for European resumes to include photographs and personal information such as weight and age. "Legally, [in the U.S.] you can't even look at this stuff," he says.

Even interpreting skill sets is difficult, since three years of programming in Israel is quite different from the same number of years of experience in the U.S. "You're not comparing apples to apples in many cases," Wheeler says.

To help feel a bit closer to far-away job candidates, some companies are turning to online referral networks such as LinkedIn to find someone who knows a candidate personally, Wheeler says. Or they might use search tools such as ZoomInfo or Jigsaw, which are designed to verify or discover information such as a job candidate's previous employers, job titles and other affiliations.

Know your limits

But no matter how flat the world may look when viewed through the lens of Internet-enabled communications, the virtualized global workplace still has limitations, according to Crotts. For example, he has developed a rule of thumb to avoid sourcing a team of programmers from more than two countries.

"The more countries involved in the development project, the higher risk the project," he says, citing obstacles such as time-zone differences, methodology inconsistencies, language problems and evolving requirements that are difficult to track and discuss when teams are distributed too widely.

"It's absolutely incorrect to say I can use global resources without concern for where a person's home base is," Crotts says.

Still, Wheeler contends that companies will increasingly hire talent no matter where that talent resides and then struggle to coordinate and manage the virtual workplace.

"Rather than bringing people to the work, work is increasingly going to the people," he says. "We'll see more employers saying, 'Live your life, and we'll send you a paycheck every week.'"