Hiring across time zones is possible. Here’s how.

In the ongoing war for talent (which is still a thing even amidst this economic downturn), more tech workers are opting to bring their talents to companies that have flexible or remote work policies. Salesforce, Slack, Atlassian, Airbnb and Twitter are among the big tech companies that have announced “work from anywhere” policies for the majority of their employees.

• In some ways, it’s one of the few win-win situations for startups and tech workers alike: Workers get to live in cheaper or more convenient locations, while companies get access to a dramatically larger talent pool in a competitive market. According to one startup CEO, Zach Cutler of PR tech company Propel, hiring this way has boosted its talent pool by a factor of 100.

• But doing so successfully can be quite a headache. Some companies are famously async, but transitioning to a fully asynchronous mode of working can be tough culturally.

I spoke to two startups that are successfully hiring and working across multiple time zones and consider themselves completely “time zone agnostic” about things to consider when hiring across time zones:

• Companies like Deel and Remote.com can take care of the logistics. Companies just have to pay a fee.
• Hiring platforms haven’t caught up yet, but hiring managers can work their way around them. Job boards like LinkedIn are still set up to be country-specific, so you might have to post the same job listing multiple times to catch multiple job markets.

Hiring a global workforce is simple enough. But then there’s the challenge of collaborating effectively when your evening is your co-worker’s morning:

• It doesn’t matter what the system is, as long as it’s mutually agreed upon. At Propel — which has employees across 10 time zones in Israel, the U.K. and the U.S. (including two working full time in camper vans) — employees loosely keep East Coast hours, with most of the overlap from 8 a.m. to noon, according to Cutler. For presentation software startup Pitch, which has employees distributed across the globe, the consensus is a six-hour overlap of working hours is generally what’s needed to work successfully together, according to co-founder and VP of People Vanessa Stock.
• Having colleagues in different time zones can be a productivity boon, according to Anna Roolf, Propel’s SVP of Operations and People. Banishing the idea of a 9-to-5 and consecutive meetings throughout the day has helped her carve out real focus time during the hours she knows most of her other co-workers are offline.
• When you do have meetings, it’s even more critical that they’re productive. Come to the meeting with specific objectives. When you know your meeting is at a late hour for your colleague, be more considerate about scheduling meetings and make the most out of them. Pitch minimizes standing meetings and has few all-staff meetings that require everyone to be on at once, according to Stock.
• Make creative use of productivity tools. Asynchronous video tools are a must-have for the time zone agnostic. Cutler is known to send Slack voice memos, which to Roolf “feels like I’m talking to him,” even if it was sent and received asynchronously.