Interview with George Atuahene, Founder, Ataraxis

This interview is with George Atuahene, Founder, Ataraxis.

What key experiences or inflection points led you from leading recruitment teams to founding Ataraxis, and how did they shape your approach to cross-border talent?

In 2021, I hired a virtual assistant based in the Philippines to help my recruiters with time-consuming administrative work. My goal was to keep her behind the scenes, but I quickly realized that she was capable of more and started teaching her about recruitment. After a lot of trial and error (I had a lot to learn about creating Standard Operating Procedures), she began working alongside my best recruiter and helped us fill a key role for one of our new clients.

That small win helped to turn that client into our biggest client of all time, and it opened my eyes to what was truly possible with global talent. I shared this with a couple of other founders in my network and showed them how to do the same thing. Fast forward a few years, and now I’m a strong believer that great hires can be found anywhere in the world, provided you have a system in place to onboard them properly and set them up for success.

When you kick off a remote, cross-border search, how do you run your 30–45 minute role calibration session to get true alignment before sourcing begins?

We show up to every role calibration session with 5-10 representative candidate profiles, based on the information we have about the role. We have the hiring manager walk through each of the profiles and provide their candid feedback, while paying close attention to how they analyze profiles, what stands out to them, and what the red flags are.

Then, we ask several questions to better understand how those insights tie back to the job description. At the end of the call, we agree on a rough ICP (Ideal Candidate Profile) and base all of our recruitment efforts on that criteria. This approach helps us fill most of the roles we recruit for with five or fewer candidates presented.

You built a data-backed global outsourcing talent index; how do you turn that data into day-to-day sourcing decisions and market selection for clients?

Overall, our global outsourcing index helps us to source elite talent from regions that most of our competitors aren’t paying attention to. While most outsourcing companies are focused on the Philippines and Latin America, we are placing highly talented individuals from South Africa and Egypt.

Most of our customers come to us with specific roles or jobs they need to fill but don’t know what region to hire from. Therefore, we advise them based on the differences in labor costs, English proficiency, and other factors that our index helps us to understand.

When hiring across countries, how do you structure fair, flexible compensation ranges (salary, benefits, currency, and norms) that keep offers competitive and sustainable?

While compensation ranges are mostly dictated by the customer’s budget, we advise customers on what ranges are most in line with the region they are hiring from. We discuss compensation upfront with every candidate to ensure we align them with roles that they will be happy in for the long term.

To strengthen employer brand and close rates across time zones and cultures, which candidate touchpoint has proven most decisive in your experience, and why?

The first video interview between the candidate and hiring manager is absolutely the most critical. If both parties come out of that interview excited, then the rest of the process is usually very smooth. The biggest question our candidates and customers have going into that interview is, “Will I enjoy working with them?” So many candidates and hiring managers are focused on asking the right questions and saying the right things during interviews, but likeability is the biggest factor.