Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign hello and welcome to Lang Town, the podcast by Multilingual Media exploring the human side of the language industry and the future of work. I'm Eddy Arrieta, CEO at Multilingual Media. Today we're talking about Work Without Borders. Building global teams in the age of AI and anti globalization. As headlines focus on deglobalization, supply chain nationalism and shrinking international cooperation, many form forward thinking companies are quietly moving in the opposite direction. Building distributed multicultural teams that are both AI enabled and human centered. For small and medium sized businesses especially cross cultural collaboration isn't just a necessity, it's a competitive advantage. To explore this, I'm joined by Jordan Evans, founder and Managing director of Higher Global and CEO of Language Network.
Jordan has built teams across Latin America, Europe and the US proving that the best ideas and execution happen when diverse people work together seamlessly. His companies champion a simple hire for character empower with technology and the borders disappear. Jordan, welcome and thank you for being here.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Thanks Eddie. I feel like I've seen you before.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: I think I've seen you drinking some tea before and I don't know if you've seen me drinking some coffee before, but that's how sometimes life is. Jordan, tell us about Higher Global. How did it start? How did you come up with the idea? How is it related to Language Network? And thank you for being here, of course.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Absolutely. It's good to share a hot beverage on a fall day and discuss this topic with you. But yeah, let's start with the story.
So hireglobo is a spinoff from Language Network, Global language solutions company that started in the United States. And I'll take you back. I think it was 2016, 2017. We were struggling to find great candidates in the United States.
The job market was dry. I think uninspired is the word that I like to use.
Wasn't getting traction with a typical job board looking 30 miles around our office. And so I decided to take a risk and hired our first project manager in Mendoza in Argentina.
And she was absolutely amazing.
In fact, grew way beyond that project management role.
But that one hire proved the model. And so we shut down our offices and went remote. And this is before COVID and that we have not looked back.
We've continued to build our team internationally, globally, especially in Latin America. And Hire Global was out of necessity really.
We were solving our own problem and other companies started asking me, how did you do that? And so we started helping them and we spun off Hire Global to be its own company of expertise with global staffing and recruiting And I know that big companies have been doing this a long time, but even though the headlines are anti globalization or let's re home renationalize, I do believe the best companies are being nimble and still globalizing their workforce.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Certainly. And thank you for sharing that. It is said that when you're solving your own pains, the solutions are really genuine and actually built onto something. I don't want to put you on the spot, but you said that people hire at people suck at hiring. How does that help you do what you do at hire Global? And what does that mean when you say people suck at hiring?
[00:03:40] Speaker B: So it's true that we just, we suck and I suck a little bit less. I like to think that we've learned from making mistakes.
It's costly, it's frustrating. They have a saying that you don't know who you're working with until you're working with them.
And so this whole process of checking a resume, doing an interview and then making a decision is just, it's imperfect and messy and it can absolutely be improved. So I wanted to share a few anecdotes. How to suck less when bringing people into your organization. And I think the, the process, the gut absolutely does play a part, like this human element of, of assessing an individual. But we can't just defer to that, that we do need data, we need actual different reference points. So someone may come across super sharp, super charismatic, but three months later you realize they're not built for this, this role in this environment.
The resumes also are points so gut. And then resumes like the writing can now be pumped through AI and so you may over skew towards what's on the resume. And I found that you need to open up your filter on the resume side, even if it's not perfect, crystal clear experience that you need to pair that with actually speaking with the individual. Then the other issue I've seen is leaders really skip the checking references.
And I don't know why we want to shortcut hiring, but this is so important.
And I've shared this trick, and it's a good one, is actually when somebody's interviewing to check their colleagues on LinkedIn and send them a message and actually ask them, hey, if you don't reply, I'm interviewing this person. I see you've worked with them and I'd like to get some reference on them, how they were as an employee or colleague. And if you don't reply, I'll assume you have nothing positive to say. And it works really well because if they are excellent. People will rush to defend and hit reply. And so you get great data that way. And these are not references that were given to me. It's people that we source on Hire Global look around the candidate and then if they don't respond well, a lot of times people don't like giving negative feedback.
So that. That silence also says something. The other piece is, I believe as humans, we have our worldview, we have our motivators, we have our stressors, we have our strengths, we have our faith and our family. Like all of those make us who we are and how we show up in the world. And so it's really rare that somebody has this disconnect of how they show up elsewhere and then how they show up at work. So it's important to go deeper on who these people are with the hard skills and the soft skills. So what we've added in is behavioral assessments, hard skill tests. So if you've heard of disc or enneagram, those types of personality components to really map them and uncover who this person could be. So it's in conjunction with all those pieces coming together that you get better data on somebody rather than the traditional resume looked good. Check. I did FaceTime interview with them. Check. Okay, now let's move to hire. So those are just some areas that we've added to the process to suck less because it's so disruptive. I've. We've made mis hires and it hurts, it's expensive. And then you go back to square one, starting the whole process again.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: That's right.
As you know, as a company leader, certainly it's. It's a huge pain when. Whenever you have to restart the process, it feels inefficient. It feels we've somehow slowed down. In some cases, we have to destroy or dismantle complete structures that we thought we were going to work.
You are right. When we're looking at the technical side of things, felt as a leader, sometimes because of technology, it's much easier to showcase these technical elements. So I'm curious to know from your perspective. Of course, there is a balance between how technically great a person is and also what you've referred to as the soft skill skills and their ability to come across and all of that.
How do you balance those things so that at the end of the day, as humans, we make the ultimate decision and we don't have the excuse of. The algorithm told me, the AI told me, and I didn't even have to say anything. I just clicked and the person was automatically hired and Evaluated in all these different ways.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And the truth is that perhaps people are doing that, that deferring to a tool or a machine to make a decision. But good hiring is knowing that the human being behind the resume, behind this interview process.
And that's why I was advocating for having multi step approach, you know, references having multiple team members compare notes. How did this person show up, how did they communicate? Did they look prepared, were they charismatic or were they serious?
All of those data points as humans still has a piece, I think we talked about this earlier, that the gut still has a place. It's not the only thing in making a hiring decision. But you still need to have a gut check on a candidate and then the AI piece, the learning, the adaptability.
I won't fault somebody for using AI to bolster their process or to supplement it, but if they're doing what you said, they're deferring to an AI tool and there's no agency, there's none of themself in it. There's no wrestling using AI as a empowering piece and still being them and their skills.
Because if you're just showing up and submitting what you know, machine gave you, then why do we need you in the process?
So those are my thoughts on it. Hopefully there's something good in there.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Absolutely, there's something great in there. And of course for those of us that are listening to this conversation, thank you so much for listening to Lang Talent. Once again we're talking to Jordan Evans, CEO and founder of Higher Global and Language Network Jordan Latin America. You did tell us about your great experience with Mendoza in Argentina. You're looking into Latin America. Why Latin America?
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Well, a couple of reasons. It was a sweet spot and so similar time zones to the United States or even Western Europe, strong English skill set. So that makes it very seamless. Your work ethic blends quite well with like US and European customs with, with work and schedules there. And we found the best professionals that are highly skilled and culturally adaptable. So it's, and it's been a warm relational workforce and, and pool to pull people in. So I found that they, the North American colleagues or the Western Europe colleagues work quite well with colleagues in Latin America. So in Latin America it's a sweet spot. There's also this entrepreneurial drive that people are hungry to learn, to grow, to contribute.
I found compared to that like dry or uninspired workforce that was before like 15, 20 miles around our office, that I can get really great talent, the best person for the position, no matter where they are. And I also want to point out that there is a value proposition on cost savings relative to a US or a European hire. I'd say that's not the primary benefit. Absolutely is a benefit and it's not about cheap labor. It's really about finding that right person while also doing amazing things for a company. You can reduce your operating expenses while bringing on A players but I would say more importantly now it's A players or B players with AI can be A players.
So those soft skills like are they coachable, can they grow, are they tech savvy? And I found that yes, yes, yes in Latin America. And then also I think you pointed this out in a pre conversation is by hiring somebody as a colleague for US or European company, we can offer a really competitive and compelling package that otherwise wouldn't be available domestically. So I see it as a win win rather than big corporate company rolling in and just outsourcing for the pure motivation of low cost labor.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think when we've seen companies optimizing not for low cost but optimizing for a win win situation, we see impact, we see growth and a lot of the companies that are within our industry are in that situation.
Jordan, to put you on the spot once again, Latin America, huge part of the world, many countries. If you can give us one or two examples of what you've seen in specific countries that get your attention and that might be interesting to other companies, what would that be and what would be those examples?
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Sure, I. So you asked me this question. It feels like a trap because I can't call out every country.
But the caveat will be I'll just use some examples. You know, every country has amazing talent and different hubs. So you might look at universities or different companies that have gone before and have invested in the people and workforce there that you can find the right person for the role you've got. I'll give you an example.
So since we've used Argentina, we can stay on that.
Buenos Aires has great tech development, you know, software.
So if you've got a technical role, that's a great place to start. Or even it's got a fantastic university system for translation and you've got other companies in our language industry based there. So you've got highly skilled pre trained workforce in Argentina.
Brazil I've seen amazing marketing talent. A lot of marketing agencies have located to Brazil. Also great technical talent. But you can find different hubs all over.
The other example I'll use deep accounting and finance roles. So a Lot of the big CPA global firms, global consulting firms, Accenture for instance, they've set up these hubs across Latin America too. And you can get some amazing talent that they're working for, big global entity and can join a small or medium sized company and make a bigger impact and be less of a small cog and a big machine. So that's been my experience.
We've hired all across from Mexico down to. I can't say we've made any placements in Patagonia, but that would be fun.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Absolutely, yes.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: I mean, I could shout out so many. Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, I mean all over.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: I'm glad to hear, I'm glad to hear that. And of course it gets me to my next question. As I'm hearing this, I'm like, well, maybe hire global can help me hire some people. Could you tell us a little bit about the roles that you've helped with and that you currently help with? And we know Latin America. What are some of those roles that you can help with? With the hiring?
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's important when you're building a team or thinking about hiring somebody globally or remotely, even in Latin America, that it's any position in an organization, from leadership to entry level, and everything between people, management, administration, operations, sales and marketing, account management.
There's no limit really. So I found it's important to look at your organization and say, why couldn't this be a colleague in another continent or in another country and try and find the best person for that job.
We've had great success to answer your question, specifically rollers, accounting, accounts receivable, billing coordination, bookkeeping, sales and marketing, account managers, directors, operations, project management.
You name it, it's available.
So the sky's the limit. I think it's important also to get this virtual assistant idea out of your head that's been long promoted. Especially when we weren't in more of this nationalization era where people think, okay, I need to hire domestically.
The va, like, let's send jobs to the Philippines or India or other low cost resource areas. This is not what we're talking about. We're talking about, uh, it's, it's hiring a colleague like, like you would down the hall if you were in an office. And it's the best person for that job.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Right. Jordan, I want to put you on the spot one final time. I feel like I've been pitching you these curveballs all throughout the day, but you, you, you mentioned, you know, it's not only about A players or B players or identifying the plus A plus plus players. But identifying AI players, how important is it in, in hiring today and how important do you think is going to continue being in the future?
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Great question. Actually an AI player is actually somebody that's a human player that's more adaptive. Where this idea of I need to hire a players and if I just hire A players, I'm gonna have a great company, great team, we're gonna accomplish everything. When that's not how the world works. You know, you got people with different strengths and weaknesses and when you put together a team, you need to think about what energy, what, what type of skill set. Do they need to be a driver or do they need to be a maintainer, that they're organizer, that they're a stabilizer. So how you put together teams is super important.
But this AI piece, I think it represents adaptability. At this stage where we are with AI is if, if a candidate is teaching themselves and open to learning, like that's the best way to go about it. And an A player, like a C or a B player that in the traditional sense, like they might not know everything, have that deep expertise, but if they've got the communication, the curiosity, adaptability and right urgency with AI, they can be just as good as an A player in my experience.
So AI, let's just call that adaptability, that they're not afraid to test what's possible and they're wrestling with AI as a thought partner and to improve their work, to improve their, their speed, but not outsourcing their agency and their theirselves to AI. We talked a little bit about this earlier where I just run it through AI, I submit it to my, my boss or whomever without any refining, without any processing like that. Why do you need that person then if we're just run it through AI. So that's what I mean by an AI player is that adaptability.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Thank you for sharing that. And of course you're referring as well to some of the human elements. And you know, we've talked about Latin America and I'd like to ask you about what you've learned about mindset. And you just mentioned also adaptability and skills of professionals from the region. What have you seen there?
[00:19:29] Speaker B: The mindset, curiosity, the adaptability, the resourcefulness and the positivity. I think I've seen that consistently across countries, but let's just use an anecdote or a story.
So in Argentina, they've lived with decades of economic uncertainty and instability and not knowing what the cost of things will be tomorrow. And if you could put yourself in that position, like growing up, going to school, getting a job, I guess societally, a pressure cooker. Like, how do you make plans for the future when so many things are changing? And that, I think gives people a different mindset of how they work and how they view the world. So I've found strong resourcefulness, ability to adapt fast, and just a sense of team and collaboration over individual ego, that there's this sense of taking care of your team too. And I think that's amazing. So out of that pressure cooker of economic uncertainty and all the things there, it's like a breeding ground for really great colleagues. And I'm using that only as an example, I should say, because every country has their own version of that anecdote, right?
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And probably we all can refer to what you're mentioning, of course, in your experience with Higher Global and also with Language Network, there is a way in which you approach your leadership. So how do you approach empowering people to take ownership, to make decisions that drive impact, and not to defer responsibility or agency onto tools and even other team members as well?
[00:21:06] Speaker B: It starts with, you know, I'm hiring a colleague for this position. They just happen to be in a different country. So going in with that mindset and then the, the empowerment actually comes to somewhat organically is I find when you mix like colleagues in North America, South America or Europe, that it actually raises the standard and overall positivity or mindset collective. You know, I think what I've seen is people enjoy the diversity of their peers or colleagues and ends up strengthening. So that that creates a nice base to then grow from. But people empowerment. So how do you empower people? Well, one is making sure that you've got a vision where they can also win in whatever their motivators are, whatever their vision for their life is that there's space for that the company or there's alignment there. I think hiring somebody that sees beyond the paycheck, so it does go back to picking and pairing the right company with the right person and having the right element. Somebody is coming that believes in the company, that they see a win win. But then as a leader, we use a system called eos, which is Entrepreneur Operating System. So I use that Ohio Global and Language Network. And that's been a wheel you slap on your car. There's other operating systems, if you will, of how a company sets goals, deals with issues, recognizes their people, allocates the work. That's really all that it is.
And so this eos has allowed us to set goals on a 90 day and on an annual basis. And every team member and department sets these objectives collaboratively. So empowerment, I think starts with where are we going as a company? And then what's your piece in that? And so if you have ownership per se in that, it's a lot more inspiring. And then the other practical piece is access.
So making sure you have the right tools to work remote. So we use Slack, for instance. It's our digital water cooler or break room where people share photos of their dogs or motivational music for the day or they will exchange files or hop in a quick call like you would in an office. I'm going to go talk to my colleague about an issue. So having the right tools, you know, the right information and documentation really empowers people. If you're not in office or if you're hybrid, let's say you've got an office and now you're adding team members remote, you know, treating that as an opportunity to standardize like how we do things. And it's documented and accessible for all. So it pushes you to be better as an operation too, hopefully. I'm not rambling here, but pragmatically it's about I'm bringing the best person in, I'm given the space to operate and we've got the right tools or tech to do that seamlessly. The other thing is we do company meetings and we'll record them. So most of the time, time zones work. But having those recorded, transcribed, posted, so people are all on the same page with, you know, all company meetings or even department meetings is really important too.
Access to information is an empowering point.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: Thank you, Jordan. You've shared a good number of concepts that are really important. The eos you've shared adaptability, resourcefulness.
There are a lot of professionals that today are doubting their abilities, that they are doubting how they should approach technology.
What advice would you give those that are in that hesitant moment? We're in a really interesting moment where some are saying, where are the AI experts? And then they realize, oh, it's us, we are the AI experts. Do you have any message for the talent that might be doubting themselves, that probably has the skills that you've worked with and are thinking, maybe I should be considering this approach that Jordan is sharing as a professional to kind of get out of my cocoon in Latin America and then propose my talent so that it is expanded over, over the globe.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: It's an amazing time to be alive, to be honest. You can teach yourself anything if you go back a couple hundred years, you had to go to a library or have money and means to be able to better your life or chart a path in the world.
But now everyone anywhere can, can learn. And so I think that's so important is the self agency to be smart enough to invest in yourself and to take risk. This is, this is where AI can't replace that, that, that human ability to adapt, to take those first steps and to figure it out and own things machine is just there to augment that. So the other thing is expert, right? Well, expert is relative so you don't have to be the person who wrote the book on ChatGPT and how to prompt but if you're in a room and you know the most by proxy, you're the expert.
So the like learn and augment your knowledge base, experiment and if there's a certain field you want to go after, like start investing. Udemy is something that we offer to everyone that we bring in where every quarter people can select a course or some skill that they want to learn and it's reimbursed and then you get a bonus for doing that. So in today's world you're only as good as your people and AI is never going to solve that. And for the talent like we're at a moment where if you learn and bet on yourself and own it, you're going to be fine, you're going to do a great job. Any company is going to be lucky to have you. So that, that's what's. And it's interesting time. Eddie. So we all, a lot of people are worried AI is going to take away jobs. Automation is going to take away jobs. Could be true, maybe the volume of it, but it's going to deepen the need of people that have like high agency and adaptability and they're willing to augment themselves through AI if you will or figuring things out on the job. So that's my, my long winded answer. Teach yourself, bet on yourself. Amplify yourself with what's available.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Thanks. Thank you. Jordan.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: You've eloquently have presented your, your thoughts and your concepts. We really appreciate it. We are ready to wrap up this conversation. Before we go, any final messages, any final thoughts? Where can we find higher global language network? Any call to actions for us?
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Sure. Well I'm easily accessible on LinkedIn or you can check out HireGlobal.com or Language.network I love talking about business teams so if anyone wants to reach out just to talk shop happy to do that. And then of course, our team would be happy to help you. I think actually through Multilingual, we'll have some links or call to actions upcoming if people want to engage and see what's possible with hiring globally through a team like HireGlobal. But it's an amazing time and the world is our oyster for building awesome teams and collaborating professionally.
So I stand by it that even though the headlines are anti globalization, the best companies are leaning into it.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: All right, Jordan, thank you so much for your time.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: All right, Eddie, thanks for having me. This is fun, right?
[00:28:39] Speaker A: For all of our listeners of Language Talent, thank you so much for doing this. Once again, like I said, a big thank you to Jordan Evans, CEO and founder of Higher Global and Language Network, Higher Global.com Language Network Jordan, for sharing these insights. Once again, thank you for helping us understand how to build global borderless teams and reminding us that technology doesn't replace people, it connects them. Catch new episodes of Language Talent on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Subscribe, rate and share so others can find the show. I'm Eddie Arrieta with Multilingual Media. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.
