Nearshore bilingual staff: a plain guide for growing US businesses
Every growing business has work with no owner. The scheduling that slips when the week gets busy. The customer emails that sit until someone has a spare hour. The invoices that wait for whoever is nearest. That work lands on people who were hired to do something else.
Nearshore staffing is one way to give that work an owner. This guide covers what it means, which roles it fits, the two ways to hire, what it asks of your team, and the questions worth answering before you hire anyone remote.
What nearshore means
Nearshore means your new team member lives in a region close to the US rather than across the world. For US companies that usually means Latin America, which is where Solida’s team members are based.
Three things make it work for a US business:
- Your hours. They work your US business hours, so questions get answered the same day, in real time, not overnight.
- Both languages. They are fully bilingual, so they can serve English- and Spanish-speaking customers and write to your team in clear English.
- Your systems. They work inside your own software, under a login you create, like anyone else on your team.
Which roles it fits
Nearshore works best for steady, repeatable work that someone on your team can show a new person how to do. At Solida that means six roles:
- Customer Experience Specialist
- Administrative Coordinator
- Scheduling Coordinator
- Operations Coordinator
- Bookkeeping / AP-AR Support
- Recruiting Coordinator / Sourcer
The common thread: the work is real, it repeats every week, and right now it keeps landing on someone hired for something else. See what each role covers.
Two ways to hire
A managed team member. One named person works for you full-time or part-time, for one flat monthly price. We find and screen them, run the onboarding with you, send a weekly report, and replace them if they are not the right fit. Month to month, on 30 days notice.
Direct placement. We run the same search and the same checks, and you hire the person yourself for a one-time fee. You manage them from day one.
Which one fits depends on how much you want to own. If you want the oversight and the replacement handled for you, go managed. If you already run remote staff well and only need the search, go direct. See both on the pricing page.
What it asks of your team
A nearshore hire is still a hire. Someone has to show them the work. In practice that means:
- One owner. One person on your team who answers questions, reviews the work and signs off.
- About two hours of recordings. Short screen walkthroughs of how your team does the work, five to ten minutes each.
- A fortnight of review. Checking every piece of work at first, then spot checks, then a sign-off on day fourteen.
We wrote out the full plan, day by day: How to hand off work to a new remote hire in 14 days.
Five questions to answer before you hire anyone remote
Whoever you hire, and however you hire them, get a clear answer to these five. Here is how we answer each one.
- Have they done this exact work before? Every candidate completes a graded work sample of the actual task, done alone. And we speak live with a reference who personally watched them do the job.
- Can they write, speak and listen well in English? We score all three separately, under time pressure. Listening is tested on its own, because it is the one that gets missed.
- Do they know when to stop and ask? A live role-play includes a situation that must be escalated rather than handled. Handling it confidently is scored as the wrong answer.
- Will their setup hold up? Workspace and connection are tested live on camera, and their backup plan for power and internet is checked before their first day.
- What happens if it doesn’t work out? For the first 90 days live, if your team member is not the right person for any reason, you get two new finalists, free. That is our 90-day fit guarantee.
The full standard is published, so you can hold us to it. See the five checks.
Three mistakes to avoid
- Hiring before you write the scope. If you can’t say what the person owns, what they never touch and who they escalate to, nobody can hire well for it. Write one page first.
- Sharing logins. Give your new team member their own login at the permission level you choose. You keep control, and you can remove it at any time.
- Hiring for price alone. The real cost of a hire is the second one, when the first doesn’t work out. Hire for proof that they have done the work.
Common questions
What hours do they work?
Your US business hours. Full-time is 40 hours a week. Part-time is 20 hours a week in one fixed four-hour block, Monday to Friday.
Where exactly are they based?
In Latin America. We share the details for each finalist on the call.
How long does it take?
Within two weeks of our first call you receive two finalists. After you choose, there are fourteen days of onboarding, and the monthly rate starts when you sign off.
What does it cost?
One flat monthly price per team member, set by role, at about half the all-in cost of a US hire for the same kind of role. Part-time is available, and so is a one-time direct hire. You get your number on the first call.
How Solida runs it
Every job needs an owner. We find you one who has already done it. You get two finalists who cleared all five checks, you interview them and choose, and your team teaches the work over fourteen days of onboarding. There is no monthly bill until you sign off. See how a hire happens.