Which countries and areas should you look for quality remote countries? We wrote an earlier post more on processes needed and questions to consider related to remote workers. This is to be more data and visual driven, hopefully showing you pockets and areas that best align with your hiring interest.

To thrive in an ever-changing global economy this global hiring question will continue to gain in relevance. Those with a plan on the kinds of employees they want and a plan to go out and efficient acquire them will have a huge step ahead the competition. Personally, I’ve often asked myself this question many times. Typically I just look at individuals on larger freelance types of sites and not being as interested in the country that they are located in, but I’m just not crazy about paying that 10% fee that most take. So in lieu of that (or not) what are the best counties to place your eggs in? How would you even go about answering this type of question?

The first logical place to look at is where are the largest amounts of people, right? If you look at that here is what our world looks like now, an interesting map that skews the size of the country based on the population.

Definitely some areas that have many more people than others, sorry Liechtenstein. Top 5 countries to consider for shear volume are based on this country population data are

China

India

United States

Indonesia

Brazil

All countries and people aren’t created equal though (sorry Gorbachev) so you have to look at many over things based on what you are looking for. A big that many look at is the rate of pay. Here is a map of world minimum wages per hour by country:

Another great place to check is here which compared GDP per capita or essentially how much value each person is adding to the total country GDP.

Just comparing these first two maps, population and wage, it appears that the most populated areas have the lowest wages. Sounds like a natural place to start then, right?

Looks like countries like China and India would be the initial winners if these were you only two factors. But the assumption though would be that just looking at areas with lots of people and low wages would lead to low quality workers. So, lets see what we can find out about quality and the education of workers around the world.

Here is a map of literacy rates around the world:

Looks like you should steer clear of Africa, especially central Africa, if you want a better chance of getting those with a high literacy rate. Here is a similar map which supports the above based on the Education Index:

Based on our last post on hiring remote employees too and a very important element of speed and stability of the remote contractors internet connection. Here is a great map of the top areas to consider for high speed connections to the internet:

It was interesting to me to see those pockets of bright red and dark black in India so be particular about hiring there. Also enlightening were the vast areas of darkness in northern Asia, most all of Africa as well as center South America.

Here are some additional great reads on Countries by Average Internet Speed and Countries by % of Population that Uses the Internet.

“But Fred how do I know what countries are the best to research for particular types of jobs.” Well, good question and glad that you asked. Our friends at Elance have some great research tools are your disposal to answer this based on the location of the tons of available workers they have there. Here are the maps based on their users by country:

IT & Programming:

Design:

Writing & Translation:

There are tons more and you can even drill down to super specific skills by country like creative writing consultants:

Be sure to spend some time browsing around these maps based on your particular hiring need of the moment.

The last piece of the puzzle as stated in the last past is just hiring good people that you can trust. If they are going to be remote and working from home or the local cafe then they need to have high morals and just be honest people. Here’s the best map I found that conveys this:

Definitely appears you should stay away from central Europe if you are more likely to lose your wallet.

Ultimately, it really doesn’t matter where your remote employee are located as long

as they are providing value to your company. If you are though looking to hire lots

of people or want some consistent countries to continue to grow your hiring from,

then I hope you found this post helpful.

Either way, I would love your candid insight into what countries you hire from now and why you from them as well (if you know) in the comments below.