Why Cross-Border Hires in Asia Pacific Fail at the Offer Stage

Cross-border hires in Asia Pacific fail at the offer stage far more often than at the assessment stage. The candidate is right, the manager is convinced, and then three things arrive at once: a notice period longer than anyone planned for, a work authorisation process nobody started, and a counter-offer from an employer who has just learned the person is leaving. None of the three is unpredictable, and all three are usually discovered in the wrong order.

What actually goes wrong?

The offer is made on a timeline built from the employer's need rather than from the candidate's obligations. The employer wants a start date; the candidate has a contractual notice period, an unvested bonus, a lease, possibly a dependent's school year, and a visa process that has not begun because it cannot begin before an offer exists.

That is a sequencing problem, not a negotiation problem. Discovering it after the offer converts a hire into a renegotiation, which is the moment a counter-offer does its work.

How long does work authorisation take?

Long enough that it must be started as a workstream, not a formality — and the honest answer is that the timeline depends on the market, the pass type, the candidate's qualifications and the employer's own standing, and it changes with policy. Every market we operate in publishes its own current processing guidance, and that published guidance is what to plan against rather than what worked last year.

What is stable enough to plan around:

• Eligibility is assessed against the employer as well as the candidate in several markets, so a first hire in a new market is not the same application as the tenth.
• Dependants are a separate process with separate criteria, and a hire who cannot bring a spouse or child is a hire who often does not move.
• Documents that take weeks to obtain — authenticated degree certificates, police clearances — are the real critical path, and they can be started during assessment rather than after the offer.

Ask the question before the shortlist, not after the offer: what would this person need, and how long does the authority currently say it takes?

What is a notice period in practice?

Longer than the contract says, often. The contractual period is the floor; garden leave, handover obligations and bonus vesting sit on top of it, and senior candidates in several Asia-Pacific markets carry notice measured in months rather than weeks.

The practical consequences are worth planning for explicitly.

• Ask for the notice period in the first conversation, not in the offer conversation.
• Establish whether any part of it can be bought out, and who would pay.
• Assume the current employer will use the period. A three-month notice is three months in which a counter-offer can be constructed.

How should an offer be sequenced?

Work backwards from the start date and make each dependency explicit, rather than issuing an offer and hoping the rest resolves.

• Confirm the band internally before the first candidate conversation, so the offer is not the first time finance sees the number.
• Check work authorisation feasibility while you are still assessing, using the candidate's actual qualifications rather than an assumption.
• Make the offer verbally first, with the full package explained, and get a verbal acceptance before the paperwork.
• Put the resignation date and the expected start date in writing on the same day.
• Stay in contact through the notice period. A candidate who hears nothing for eight weeks is a candidate whose current employer has eight weeks of uncontested access.

What can you do before you have a candidate?

Most of it, and this is the part that separates organisations that hire well across borders from those that keep being surprised.

Establish which pass types your entity can realistically sponsor, and what your track record allows. Know the current published processing guidance for the markets you hire into. Decide in advance what relocation support you will fund, because "we will discuss it at offer" reads to a candidate as "we have not thought about it". Have a position on dependants before you are asked.

Who should own this timeline?

One named person, with the authority to chase all three tracks — the candidate, the immigration process and the internal approvals. When it is split between a hiring manager, an HR business partner and an agency, the gaps between them are exactly where the weeks go.

If you are hiring into a market where you have no entity or no track record, talk to us before you shortlist. Which pass a candidate can realistically obtain, in which market, is a question worth answering while you still have options.