Can I Hire Offshore Staff with UK Tax Experience?

This is a consistent question we hear a lot from existing and prospective clients. It’s a reasonable question. 

But before we get into it, let’s quickly clarify what we mean by offshoring. Unlike outsourcing, where you hand off a job to an external company and hope for a good result, offshoring means building your own team, just based overseas. The staff are dedicated to you. You’re in charge of their training, performance, and culture. Think of it as hiring a remote team member, not a temp.

So, if you’re short on capacity, struggling to hire locally, and want to retain control over your workflow, offshoring can be a smart, long-term play. But it also means the development of that staff member is your responsibility, just like any junior you hire in the UK. And that’s where the question of experience comes in.

Let’s face it. Just like bringing in a local trainee comes with an upfront training burden, your new offshore hire will need training. And training is work. Perhaps by hiring someone with experience, the lead time to become productive could become shorter.

Seems like a no-brainer, but let’s discuss the pros and cons.

Imagine buying a second-hand car.

The seller tells you it runs beautifully. It’s been driven. It's been tested.

It’s got “experience.”

You buy the car. But you later find that the previous owner never changed the oil, ran it hard, and skipped all the servicing. Now you have problems, and you realise you overpaid for it and can’t easily recoup your investment.

Being overly focused on hiring ‘with experience’ can be like that.

What Makes a Great Candidate?

When Frontline arrived in the Philippines in 2011, there were no Filipino accountants who had the tax experience I would have liked. I knew I had to train those technical skills.

Here’s what we looked for when hiring:

• Chemistry and fit with our team culture

• Good accounting skills (knows their debits and credits)

• 1-5 years relevant local experience

• Right qualifications (degree or CPA)

• Good English

• Physical proximity (we didn’t want traffic to hinder performance)

• Hunger to learn and grow

This list kept us in good stead. The first item on the list would still be my most important consideration if I were starting now. Over a decade later, some of those hires I made are still around.

Rather than buy the used car (which didn’t exist initially), I got the raw materials and assembled what I needed.

Our early clients have followed this formula, invested in the staff, and achieved similar success.

What Looks Easy Isn’t Always Better

Now don’t get me wrong. The pool of experienced staff is slowly increasing as more international firms hire offshore. I’ve hired staff with experience but always saw it as a ‘bonus’ and proceeded to put them through our standard training anyway. After all, who knows how hard the previous firm pushed them in their career and exactly how much responsibility they were given.

There’s an assumption that experience = less training required. The reality is, ‘Buyer beware!’

For Best Results

Hire for raw talent and cultural fit. Tax skills and software skills are very learnable. Accounting practices usually have training in their DNA. We are knowledge professionals after all. So, lean on resources and back your training to bridge any gaps.

This isn’t to say that hiring experienced staff is always wrong. But the firms with thriving offshore teams treat learning and development as core to their business model. They build training into the culture, mold staff in their methods, and enjoy higher long-term retention.

Unlike local trainees who often move on once they qualify, offshore staff who feel valued tend to stick around. Experience is nice. But it’s not everything.

Hire for fit. Train for success.

Reach out to us if you’d like to discuss whether offshoring might be a fit for your practice.