Remote work. Global opportunity. EST hours demanding late-night remote work in South Africa. Salary: $1,600 per month.
This sounds like an entry-level role. It certainly would make sense with a minimum wage set at $7.25 per hour. But the role is for a Sales Director.
This is an actual job posting. One I encountered recently, targeted specifically at South African professionals. The role required 8+ years of experience, strategic leadership capabilities, and responsibility for multi-million dollar revenue targets. The salary offered wouldn’t cover rent in most major South African cities. It is a junior salary. It wouldn’t cover the cost of a professional’s home, let alone compensate someone qualified to drive serious business growth.
Unfortunately, this was not a one-off either. I’ve encountered multiple positions being offered by U.S. and U.K. companies with salaries well below market-related local salaries. It’s a troubling pattern in which international organizations are making dangerous salary assumptions about international talent.
What these companies are calling competitive global compensation is a fundamental failure in due diligence that is damaging both their businesses and the very diversity initiatives they are trying to champion.
The Due Diligence Costs Everyone
The assumption seems straightforward. Hire internationally. Pay less. Maintain quality.
The execution reveals a startling lack of market research. Organizations are operating under outdated economic stereotypes. Treating entire continents as uniform low-wage markets. Not placing due diligence into understanding local salary benchmarks or professional standards.
In South Africa, a Sales Director with relevant experience commands between $55,000 and $80,000 annually. These are professionals who understand complex B2B relationships, navigate sophisticated economic environments, and deliver results in one of Africa’s most developed markets. International job postings routinely offer these professions 70% less than their market value.
The issue with this attitude is that it assumes that geographic arbitrage automatically equals talent arbitrage.
There is no way to sugarcoat the truth. This is a lazy approach to compensation that reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of global markets. Certain countries are not low-income based purely on geography.
Education, experience, and the establishment of business practices that reflect salary expectations matter. It’s about context. And when companies ignore context, they’re no longer being strategically cost-effective. They’re being willfully ignorant.
The real issue isn’t that companies want to optimize costs through international hiring. The problem is the assumption that quality professionals will accept dramatically below-market compensation simply because of an organization’s proximity to the invincible line that demarcates the “West” from the rest of the world.
Cost Optimization or Talent Farming
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that these offers are strategic hiring practices. The reality is that it’s talent farming. It’s a strategy to lure in highly qualified and experienced professionals who are desperate for employment.
They’re hoping to find desperate professionals who will accept substandard compensation in a country where unemployment statistics focus on vulnerable communities, not experienced professionals. And what organizations fail to understand is that desperation and quality rarely correlate in professional hiring.
Professionals who are willing to accept $1,600 monthly for director-level responsibilities fall into predictable categories. Those new to the market without established salary expectations. Those in desperate financial situations. Those who fundamentally misunderstand the role’s requirements.
None of these categories produces the strategic leadership that senior-level positions require.
Qualified professionals with proven track records, established client relationships, and strategic thinking capabilities reject these offers immediately. They understand their market value and won’t accept dramatic pay cuts for vague promises of international exposure. The result is that companies fishing with below-market salaries consistently catch the wrong talent.
This creates a vicious cycle. Companies offer substandard compensation, attract substandard candidates, experience poor performance, and conclude that international talent is inherently lower quality. They seem to miss the obvious connection that they’re getting exactly what they’re paying for: a junior without the expertise they need.
The long-term business consequences are dire. Companies developing reputations for exploitative compensation practices find it increasingly difficult to attract quality international talent. Word travels quickly in professional networks, particularly in specialized fields like sales leadership.
Ultimately, a company known for offering low salaries for professional work won’t attract serious candidates regardless of how they adjust their approach later.
The Diversity Problem
Organizations don’t seem to understand how these practices undermine legitimate diversity and inclusion efforts. Companies proudly announce their global hiring initiatives and international team expansion while simultaneously offering international professionals compensation that wouldn’t support basic living standards in their own countries.
This creates a diversity theater where companies can claim international representation while maintaining pay inequities that reflect the same biases they claim to address. Having team members from different countries doesn’t constitute genuine inclusion if those team members are being systematically undercompensated compared to their domestic counterparts or local market standards.
The message this sends to domestic diverse talent is equally problematic. When employees see international colleagues accepting dramatically below-market compensation, it raises questions about the company’s commitment to fair compensation practices generally. If leadership is willing to exploit geographic arbitrage for international hires, what does that suggest about their approach to other forms of compensation equity?
This damages trust across the entire organization. Domestic employees begin questioning whether their own compensation reflects market value or whether they’re also being systematically undervalued. The result is decreased loyalty, increased turnover, and the erosion of the very inclusive culture these companies claim to be building.
The Real Cost to Organizations
The business implications of salary assumption failures extend far beyond individual hiring decisions. Organizations operating with these flawed compensation strategies experience predictable patterns of poor performance, high turnover, and missed opportunities.
Quality talent simply won’t engage with below-market offers. The professionals capable of driving actual business growth, those with established track records, strategic thinking capabilities, and proven leadership experience, have more options now. They’re certainly not desperate enough to accept $1,600 monthly for senior-level responsibilities, regardless of the company’s brand recognition or growth potential.
This means companies using geography-based discount strategies are automatically eliminating the top tier of international talent from their candidate pools. They’re competing for bottom-tier candidates while top-tier candidates work with their competitors who understand market-appropriate compensation.
Perhaps most significantly, these companies miss the actual value of international hiring. The benefit of global talent isn’t cost reduction. It’s capability expansion.
International professionals bring different perspectives, market knowledge, cultural insights, and problem-solving approaches that can drive innovation and growth. But accessing this value requires treating international professionals as strategic assets worth proper investment, not as discount alternatives to domestic talent.
Real Due Diligence
Effective international hiring requires the same due diligence as any strategic business decision. Companies need to research local markets, understand professional standards, and develop compensation strategies that attract quality talent rather than desperate candidates.
This means conducting actual salary research in target markets, not making assumptions based on outdated economic wage bands or currency conversion rates. Professional salary surveys, local recruitment partners, and market analysis provide the data necessary for competitive compensation strategies. In fact, at this point, a simple Glassdoor search would be better than what some organizations are offering.
It also means understanding that fair compensation doesn’t necessarily mean identical compensation. Market-adjusted salaries can still provide cost advantages while respecting local professional standards. The goal should be attracting top-tier local talent, not exploiting economic disparities.
If companies are going to succeed in international hiring, they need to treat it as an expansion of capability rather than a reduction of cost.
They need to invest in understanding local markets, building genuine relationships with international talent, and creating compensation structures that attract quality professionals who choose to work with them rather than accept offers out of desperation.
The hidden cost of salary assumptions in global hiring isn’t merely the poor performance of undercompensated professionals. It’s the missed opportunity to build genuinely diverse, high-performing international teams that drive business growth.
Companies ready to do the real work of international hiring will find significant competitive advantages. Those continuing to rely on salary assumptions and geographic arbitrage will continue getting exactly what they’re paying for and a poor market reputation.
This opinion piece reflects observations from the current international hiring landscape and advocates for research-based compensation strategies. It is purely opinion-based on market research that benefits both employers and international talent.