Should you hire a domestic or foreign company?
When you need a task done, it’s hard to know who to hire. It’s scary to think about hiring a company in a foreign country. What will they be like? Will they cheat me? Do they speak my language? What I learned is that companies right here in the United States are very likely to cheat you, or have workers who don’t speak or spell properly in English. Don’t base your judgment of a company based on location — get to know them!
Getting to know you!
Companies represent themselves in many ways. Some have a beautiful website, great sales staff, and many brag about the types of services they offer. But, if you look more deeply you may discover a lot more. I suggest doing a lot of digging. Some companies may have fantastic staff members for web design, but if you hire them for content development, they might only have one person who is multi-tasking. That one person might not be that great at content development. You need to get to know not only the salesman at the company, but the owners, managers, and whomever the employee is who will be working on your projects.
The wall of separation
Many companies like to keep their employees behind an impenetrable wall. Let’s keep it impersonal, right? This might be a good thing or bad thing depending on what type of project you are working on. If the workers are doing generic and repetitive tasks and are replaceable, then you might not need to get to know them. But, what if you are working on a sensitive programming project! It is imperative that you know the workers well if working on a sensitive project of any type. If anything goes wrong, there will be a huge communication issue between you and the workers!
To outsource or not to outsource?
This is funny, but I like to outsource certain tasks, while other tasks must stay here in America. Why? If I need direct communication with staff members, they have to be in California and they have to be friendly and willing to meet regularly with me. I interviewed companies about an ASP project. The companies here who said they did the work in-house turned out to be outsourcing the work to India. They told me it would be a lot more expensive if I wanted to have regular face-to-face meetings with the programmers and that it would be “difficult”. Hmmm, looks like they are hiding something. Their workers are in Hyderabad, and that’s why it’s difficult to see them! However, I found a good company that really does have an in-house programmer. They are seven hours away, but they are real, and the programmer is a great communicator.
Critical projects?
If you are working on work that is not so important, you can risk a newer company, a younger boss, and risk working with strangers in general. If something goes wrong, you won’t lose your business. But, what about a really critical project? I would get someone who has been in business for a decade and who has staff who have a lot of experience who are not going anywhere. Even if the company is overseas, a personal visit makes your work with them a lot safer and builds a psychic connection between you which is very important!
Conclusion
The bottom line is to hire a company that you feel very comfortable with no matter where they are. Don’t let artificial national borders be barriers for your enterprise!