Outsource: Nearshore, offshore or headhunt

Nearshore

Hiring outsource employees, close to your home country.

Europe: Usually means that the western countries outsource to the eastern countries.
+ Time zone is the same or 1-2 hours apart.
+ Culture can be the same – but might also be very different from home.

Offshore

Hiring outsource employees, far away.

Usually the western part of the world, outsourcing to the east (Asia).

+Positives
+Cheap
+Negatives
+Time zone is very different, make daily teamwork difficult
+Culture can be very different and hard to understand
+Spoken language can be difficult to understand. Even when English is good, accents can still make it difficult.

Southshore

Most companies tend to look in own countries, then nearshore and then offshore – where offshore means southeast Asia. Africa is completely disregarded, even though Africa is in a European time zone and English skills are very good, making outsourcing to Africa an excellent choice instead of near shoring to eastern Europe.

We call it soutshore.

+Positives
+Same time zone
+Good language skills
+Negatives
+Instability in the country