How Balboa scaled Spanish bilingual hiring across Latin America with Deel

Balboa is a 16-year-old staffing and business process outsourcing company headquartered in California. With roughly 450 employees—most based in the Philippines—Balboa provides US clients with agents for call center work, including customer service and administrative roles across debt relief, mortgage, insurance, and other financial services industries.

For years, Balboa's in-house HR and recruitment team in the Philippines handled hiring directly, using LinkedIn, Facebook, and other standard tools to source, interview, and onboard workers. The model worked well for English-speaking roles. But as US client demand for bilingual Spanish agents increased, their in-house approach hit its limits.

Finding candidates with both strong Spanish fluency and strong English skills—at the volume clients were requesting—was slow and inconsistent. A previous attempt to work with an external partner in Mexico produced a small number of hires but came with a cost structure that wasn't sustainable.

The team needed a partner that could access Spanish bilingual talent at scale, across multiple Latin American markets, without requiring Balboa to build recruiting capability in countries it had no presence in.

Two things stood out during the evaluation process.

The first was geographic scope. Deel's ability to source Spanish bilingual talent across Latin America—not only in Colombia or Mexico, but throughout the region—meant Balboa could match talent to specific role requirements rather than being constrained to a single country's labor market.

The second was hiring flexibility. Balboa could bring workers on as full-time employees or contractors, depending on the role and the individual's preference. That optionality, combined with recruiting support from Talent, meant Balboa's Philippines-based team didn't have to try to recruit in markets they were unfamiliar with.

For the Colombian contractors that Balboa sourced through Talent, the company chose the Contractor of Record model. The Contractor of Record structure gave Balboa a managed compliance framework for contractor relationships in a new market.

"We wanted the support that Deel provided by using their contractor infrastructure. We didn't feel comfortable managing that on our own." — Mark Garms, Chief Executive Officer, Balboa

Since adopting Talent, Balboa has completed approximately 30 hires across Latin America. Around 20 of those contractors are currently active, and 13 have been placed directly with US clients.

Hiring in Colombia also came in slightly below the cost of equivalent Philippines-based hiring—the baseline Balboa had been working from for years. What also changed was the day-to-day experience of actually running the program. Once the team got familiar with the platform, onboarding a new contractor—sourcing, contracting, setup, payments—ran cleanly end to end.

"In general, the system works very well and is very smooth once the team got used to it. Very simple to bring someone on board, get them set up, and get them going—and have confidence that they were getting paid." — Mark Garms, Chief Executive Officer, Balboa

The team worked closely with the recruitment partner they were matched with through Talent, which helped bridge the gap between Balboa's US-based leadership and Colombian candidates. That local expertise informed interviewing, assessed cultural fit, and made it easier to translate Balboa's specific role requirements into the right hires.

Operational flexibility also proved meaningful day-to-day. When contractors indicated they preferred to be paid twice a month rather than monthly, Balboa adjusted quickly in collaboration with Deel—handled in the same ongoing weekly cadence the teams already used to refine the broader program.

Balboa's immediate hiring footprint now spans the US and two international markets. As the business grows, Mark Garms sees Deel's geographic reach as a structural asset—not just for the roles Balboa is currently filling, but for future positions where talent profiles in other countries may be a better fit.

Some of Balboa's current contractors may eventually want to convert to full-time employees. Garms has noted that Deel's Employer of Record structure could support that transition when the time comes, without requiring Balboa to find a new vendor or build additional infrastructure. The company has also explored Deel's onsite EOR model for clients who may eventually require in-person staffing.

What Balboa has built with Talent is a scalable recruiting and compliance infrastructure that can follow the business wherever it needs to go next—across Latin America, and beyond.