How to Hire Employees Quickly: Offer Letter to First Day

You’ve found the perfect person for your open position. They are enthusiastic and interested. Great situation, right? If you don’t have your ducks in a row, it might not be, because the clock has already started.

The time between when a company makes an offer and the new employee’s first day can be the difference maker between a new employee and a lost opportunity. The longer you delay hiring, the more opportunities your competitor has to present a more attractive option to the same candidate. And all the while your team waits, understaffed, forcing them to crunch while that critical role remains empty.

The problem usually doesn’t come from the side of the business. Compliant hiring takes time. In places like Brazil or India, it can take four to six months to set up a local business. In France, labor laws differ significantly from those in Singapore. Tax forms, work permits, and compliance requirements that no one on your team has experience with can make onboarding a mess.

In the meantime, your product roadmap falls behind. Your current team is getting burned out because they have to pick up the slack. That momentum you built? It stalls.

This is not a guide on cutting corners. It’s about knowing how long it really takes to get someone from signing an offer to their first day of work. You’ll learn about the factors that slow things down, where hidden delays occur, and how companies that hire people from other countries can onboard quickly without running into compliance problems.

Timeline comparison: Entity setup vs. EOR

So what does the actual timeline look like? Let’s break down both paths with real numbers.

Setting up a legal entity

The average timeline is 3–6+ months, sometimes longer, depending on the country.

This is the traditional route to global hiring as a foreign entity. You register a business in the country where you want to hire. You secure tax identification numbers, open local bank accounts, and navigate labor law requirements that vary wildly by jurisdiction.

You will need local legal counsel and an accountant who understands the tax code. And you’ll need to set up payroll infrastructure from scratch.

The upfront costs are significant. If the hire doesn’t work out or the market test fails, those are sunk costs.

Hiring through an Employer of Record (EOR)

The average timeline is 1–2 weeks.

With this route, an employer of record becomes the legal employer on paper while you manage the employee day-to-day. They handle compliant payroll, employment contracts, local onboarding, benefits, and tax filings. You skip the entity setup entirely.

You can hire people before you have local infrastructure with EOR services. Instead of assembling the necessary mechanisms internally, you can test a new market with just one person. You can grow your business without changing its structure.

For a deeper dive into when each approach makes sense, see this breakdown: EOR vs. Entity Establishment.

Key advantages of fast hiring with an EOR

When you hire through an EOR, you get more than just speed. You get infrastructure without the extra costs, compliance without the learning curve, and the freedom to move at the speed that your business really needs. The main advantages are:

Speed. You can hire people in days, not months. Instead of waiting for entity registration and payroll setup, you can go from a signed offer letter to your first day of work in one to two weeks.
Compliance. Stay in line with local labor laws without having to learn about the law yourself. The EOR takes care of things like tax filings, employment contracts, benefits administration, and changes to the law, so you don’t have to know everything about the labor code in every country.
Scalability. Try out new roles or markets without having to set them up permanently. You can hire one person in a new area to check for demand or look for talent pools before you set up a full legal entity.
Focus. Don’t let HR red tape get in the way of your team’s focus on product and growth. Your internal team can stay focused on what they do best instead of getting bogged down in payroll systems, tax compliance, and benefits administration in several countries.
Cost predictability. Know how much you will pay ahead of time. EOR fees are clear and easy to understand, unlike the costs of setting up businesses, hiring local advisors, and keeping up with compliance requirements, which can change.
Flexibility. Scale up or down without legal entanglement. If your business needs change or a market doesn’t work out, you can change the size of your team without having to deal with complicated shutdowns or breaking up your company.

Cost and time planning

Most companies grossly underestimate the time and money required to hire employees outside of their home country. When they initially budget for salaries and taxes, they often overlook each country’s employer contributions and mandated employee benefits. Companies may also be unfamiliar with compliance regulations, which require costly consulting firms to interpret.

These surprises will make your timeline longer by weeks. Before approving the hire, finance wants more information. HR is in a hurry to find out what the total cost really is. All the while, the candidate is stuck in limbo while you look for answers.

You don’t have to go through this whole cycle. You can find out exactly how much it will cost and how long it will take to hire someone in a certain country before you even send an offer.

With Pebl’s employee cost calculator, you can quickly view:

Total cost to hire. See the total amount that includes base salary, payroll taxes, fringe benefits, and all other hiring fees combined.
Payroll contributions. Learn how much you will pay for employer-only items such as social security, health insurance, and pension plans for each country you are hiring for.
Time to onboard. Get a realistic timeline of the process from when the candidate accepts the offer through to their first day with your company, taking into account the requirements of your country and any necessary documentation.
Local compliance requirements. Understand which registrations, filings, or documentation are required prior to making the hire.

Tips to streamline hiring even further

As you continue to grow globally, building a scalable, effective hiring strategy will be critical to maintaining hiring efficiency and consistency across your organization.

Develop a repeatable hiring playbook. The hiring playbook should include the entire hiring process for each job role, including role definition, interview stages, evaluation criteria, approval processes, and other relevant details. This will enable all hiring managers to follow the same successful process, helping prevent bottlenecks and reducing the potential for errors.
Select your top hiring countries. Identify the top three to five countries where you would like to start your global hiring efforts. This will allow you to become an expert in local regulations and create strong talent pipelines in those countries.
Implement remote-friendly HR technology. Implement software solutions for global payroll processing, electronic signature-based contract management, and automated employee onboarding workflows. Using the best HR technology will reduce the need for paper-based documentation, reduce compliance risks, and provide a simple user experience for your employees, regardless of their location.
Use a global EOR platform. Use an employer of record to hire in multiple countries of interest without establishing a legal entity in each country. Your EOR provider will manage compliance, taxes, and employee benefits for you.
Create a standardized interview process. Develop interview guides for each job role with predetermined questions and scoring rubrics to be used across all locations. Utilize video interviews or asynchronous assessments to allow flexible scheduling for candidates and hiring managers and provide a fair way to evaluate candidates, regardless of time zone.
Create communication protocols. Establish communication protocol guidelines for all stakeholders involved in the hiring process, including, but not limited to, response time requirements, preferred communication methods, and meeting times that account for multiple time zones. Establishing communication protocols at the beginning of the hiring process will eliminate potential misunderstandings and allow for efficient collaboration among team members.

Go from approval to offer in days with Pebl

Time is money. Hiring via traditional entity establishment often takes months to complete, and a ton of money. Using EOR services for hiring beats traditional methods on both fronts. It allows you to hire compliantly and scale your team globally in days versus months.

Speed doesn’t have to mean sacrificing quality or compliance. You can get accurate numbers fast when you use our self-service hiring portal to calculate the cost of hiring through our employer of record service. Leveraging a trusted EOR partner like Pebl gives you a competitive advantage when hiring top talent and expanding into new markets. So what are you waiting for?

This information does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal or tax advice and is for general informational purposes only. The intent of this document is solely to provide general and preliminary information for private use. Do not rely on it as an alternative to legal, financial, taxation, or accountancy advice from an appropriately qualified professional. The content in this guide is provided “as is,” and no representations are made that the content is error-free.