This is an anonymous post from an Elpha member.

Job rescinded because visa fell through. What tech companies use POEs?

Vickie196·Mar 28, 2023

In short my question is:

Which US-based tech companies use Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) like Deel.com, Globalization Partners, Papaya, or Velocity Global?

Can you please leave the company name in the comments? Thanks!

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Backstory:

Hi, I signed a contract to join a tech company in the US as an executive partnerships leader. I'm Canadian.

Everything was in order except the visa. However, this fell through so I no longer have the job opportunity.

I'm devasted but am looking for other ways to work with awesome tech companies in the US. I am avoiding visa pathways because I find this route to be so unreliable, and less interesting to employers unless they really know the candidate.

Any advice/help with identifying companies that use POEs is appreciated as this is the simpler route to employment. Thanks.

Sherie25·Mar 29, 2023

I have used them extensively but strongly suggest you look for companies that are willing to do sponsorship not necessarily using 3rd parties. A PEO is not what they all are. My company uses a PEO to do payroll and benefits for the US and global employees as we choose not to hire a whole team internally and are too small to support the costs of a big internal HR team. What you might find is a 3rd party agency that specializes in finding roles for people from your Mother country who they do the work to find you a job and your VISA is held with them but you remain as a contractor to the company where you work. That is perhaps the only way at this time to really get what you want. There is no simple path around this situation the only advantage that you perhaps have is being Canadian you have the TN VISA which is cheaper for a company to pay. You could offer to pay the costs yourself to an employer but they would ultimately still have to do the VISA paperwork.

Vickie196·Mar 29, 2023

I find many companies are not willing to take the risk with TN. In many cases they'd need to shape the JD to fit the candidate, which is already a lot of work. In my case, if anything goes wrong, they give up.Using a PEO has been a helpful way for me to "prove my worth" to the company. so they'll take the time to invest in a visa directly, and invest if something might go wrong with the visa.

Iynna·Apr 02, 2023

I am so sorry to hear this, as an international student/person in the US, I feel this so so much! I don't have anything useful to add other than I send you lots of love!

leighhoneywell·Apr 04, 2023

It takes very little effort for a company to sign up for Deel/Remote.com/etc; the bigger question is if they will sponsor you for an L1 after you've been there a year. Not all may want to given the lower cost of employing people up here in Canada. One option would be to look through the "customer" pages on each of those services, especially the tech-focused ones, and start your search among their listed customers.