Article
7 min read
8 Tips to Find and Hire AI Talent
Contractor management
Employer of record
Global hiring

Author
Jemima Owen-Jones
Published
February 04, 2025
Last Update
February 04, 2025

Table of Contents
1. Focus your efforts on regions that check your boxes
2. Start with international job boards, search engines, and social networks
3. Leverage social media sites and community platforms
4. Use international recruiting software
5. Consider hiring remote independent contractors instead of employees
6. Contact universities and colleges to find fresh AI talent
7. Create an incentivized referral program to grow your international team
8. Use local government resources
Hire top AI talent with Deel
Key takeaways
- Job markets worldwide are facing challenges in finding talent with the necessary skills in artificial intelligence (AI).
- As competition for AI talent increases, businesses are looking for effective ways to hire remote international workers to support growth and innovation.
- Deel, with its years of global expertise, helps companies overcome these AI talent shortages with its Employer of Record solution for global hiring and team management.
Hiring top talent has never been more competitive—especially in fields like AI, engineering, and software development, where demand far exceeds local supply. Companies worldwide struggle to find and afford the right candidates, as talent shortages drive up salaries and make hiring a costly, time-consuming challenge.
To stay ahead, businesses must expand their search beyond local markets and tap into the global talent pool. By hiring internationally, companies can access highly skilled professionals at competitive rates while maintaining flexibility and controlling costs.
With decades of global experience, Deel helps companies navigate these challenges through its Employer of Record solution. This article outlines eight strategies to help you source, hire, and manage top remote talent—without the legal and compliance headaches.
1. Focus your efforts on regions that check your boxes
Different regions foster different talent pools depending on economies, governments, and the prioritization of educational systems. The first step to finding the right overseas talent is to pinpoint the AI skills your business requires and then target the foreign markets that have an abundance of candidates with those skills.
Start by forming a list of desirable AI skills that a potential employee must possess to perform a particular job. Once you have a list of skills, you can perform a Google search to establish “what region has the most AI talent” or check out LinkedIn’s article on the Top 11 Countries Leading the AI Revolution in 2024.
The US remains the global leader in AI, with Silicon Valley at the center of innovation. Followed by the UK, Singapore, and Sweden.
Once you’ve picked a new market, you should understand the cost of hiring in the region. You can use Deel’s cost calculator to determine the total cost, including benefits, taxes, and more. Enter the worker’s position, home country, currency, and salary to calculate the total employer costs.
With Deel’s salary insights tool, you can look up the average pay rate for any position in any region. This way, you can get a data-backed range for a competitive salary.
Now that you have an idea of what countries have the best AI talent for your needs, you need the tools to find it.
Discover how ShopBack used Deel to hire skilled talent in countries without entities.
With Deel, we could hire skilled engineers in markets where we lacked local entities, allowing us to meet our technical needs efficiently.
—Carolyn Choo,
VP, People at ShopBack
See also: State of Global Hiring Report
Deel Employer of Record
2. Start with international job boards, search engines, and social networks
The following online platforms make it easy to advertise open remote positions and identify potential remote job seekers around the world:
Top General International Job Boards and Search Engines | Top Remote Work Job Boards |
---|---|
Indeed | FlexJobs |
Monster | We Work Remotely |
Glassdoor | Working Nomads |
Craigslist | RemoteOk |
Top tip: Acquiring remote global talent starts with a strong job description. For remote jobs, the logistical details are key. To attract the right kind of candidate, keep the following in mind when writing a remote job description:
- Provide an accurate description of the remote policy
- Include why the company or the specific job is remote
- Include any time zone requirements
- Include any travel requirements
- Describe your company culture and how a remote worker will fit into that culture
Check out our free Job Description Templates:
3. Leverage social media sites and community platforms
Job boards are great for volume, but social media sites often procure higher-quality candidates.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, with over 810 million members worldwide. The platform offers many features for finding international candidates. You can search for candidates by location, create job postings with a particular city as the location, or add “remote” to the location field.
Listing a job as remote will make it viewable to job searchers on LinkedIn regardless of their location—an effective option if you’re willing to hire international employees from various countries. However, keep in mind that the language you use to write your post may limit your audience.
If you want to target a particular country, you’re likely better off listing a location within that country, even if the position is remote.
Some other online community platforms you can explore to connect with international professionals include:
- Kaggle: Hosts data science competitions, offers practice datasets, and nurtures a community of data scientists and machine learning enthusiasts. It features a job board where companies can post relevant opportunities, allowing direct access to professionals actively engaged in the field
- GitHub: A valuable resource for sourcing tech talent, as developers use it to showcase coding projects and collaborate on open-source initiatives. While it’s not a traditional professional network, many users share their contact information, making it possible to reach out
- AngelList: Connects startups with tech professionals, providing job listings, company profiles, and advanced search functionalities to filter candidates by skills and experience
- Stack Overflow: A widely-used Q&A platform for tech talent, especially in programming and software development. It enables searches for developers based on specific tags or technologies
See also: A Guide to Finding Global Talent
4. Use international recruiting software
Online global recruitment software streamlines global talent acquisition by simplifying functions like selecting applicants, screening resumes, interviewing candidates, shortlisting candidates, maintaining smooth communication, and more.
See also: How to Create a Successful Recruitment Strategy
5. Consider hiring remote independent contractors instead of employees
You don’t always have to hire a permanent employee for every role. If your business needs someone with AI skills for a short-term project, it could make sense to hire an independent contractor instead.
Contractors are not part of your permanent workforce and therefore aren’t employees. They are workers who offer their professional services to clients as a non-employee, usually on a project-based or fixed-term basis.
You can find contractors and freelancers via the following talent marketplaces:
Discover how Bowtie Life Insurance attracts and hires global talent with Deel.
With Deel, we can easily attract, hire, and pay our globally distributed workforce — whether they are employees or contractors — all in a timely manner without any additional burden on our HR team
—Sara Choi,
Senior Manager Talent Acquisition & Development, Bowtie
Deel Contractor of Record
6. Contact universities and colleges to find fresh AI talent
Certain universities and colleges will specialize in developing the AI skills you need.
Reach out to career development offices of the top schools in the countries you’re hoping to expand to, or email specific departments to establish direct contacts who will be able to put you in touch with graduates.
Graduates naturally have lower salaries and are more affordable for organizations to hire. Graduates often bring fresh ideas, are keen to learn and progress, and are often prepared to mold into your company culture and adopt new working habits.
See also: 9 Strategies to Manage a Remote Team on a Budget in 2025
7. Create an incentivized referral program to grow your international team
A great way to find top AI talent is to ask your existing team if they know of any potential candidates via employee referrals. Often team members may have international connections that they’ve formed while working other jobs or traveling.
88% of employers say that referrals are the most effective way to hire, with 70% of employers agreeing that employee referrals make a great culture fit.
Rewarding employees with a monetary bonus is an excellent way to encourage referrals. We recommend giving a $3000 incentive to employees who refer successful candidates.
You can automate your referral process and increase employee engagement using Referrals by Deel. The app allows your team to search and filter through open jobs, submit referrals, and track the status of their referrals, all from the comfort of Slack.
Top tip: Create a Google doc containing information about the company, how the referral recruitment process works, and the types of positions available to make it easier for employees to copy, edit, and share opportunities with friends, family, and acquaintances.
See also: Hire faster with a rewarding employee referral program in Slack
8. Use local government resources
Countries often have government platforms that share information on job opportunities and employment programs with local citizens. Reaching out to the appropriate authorities, such as India’s Ministry of Employment, could put you in touch with potential candidates within local markets.
Hire top AI talent with Deel
Building a global workforce is a strong move in today’s world of work. But it can be confusing, especially when compliance and local labor laws are involved. There are different local laws, payroll taxes, and compliance requirements for each country to be aware of. Luckily, Deel keeps up with it all for you.
Deel lets you hire anyone, anywhere in the world, within minutes. Plus, you can rest assured legal experts vet your contracts to be completely compliant, so your new hires are set up to work correctly in no time.
Want to learn how it all works? Book a demo today to find out.

About the author
Jemima is a nomadic writer, journalist, and digital marketer with a decade of experience crafting compelling B2B content for a global audience. She is a strong advocate for equal opportunities and is dedicated to shaping the future of work. At Deel, she specializes in thought-leadership content covering global mobility, cross-border compliance, and workplace culture topics.