Brian Samson Shares Real Nearshore Hiring Stories from Brazil and Mexico

Real nearshore recruiting stories straight from the front lines of Latin America tech hiring — no theory, just placements that actually happened. Host Brian Samson sits down solo to unpack seven real case studies sourced by senior Plugg recruiter Xiomara "Xio" Santana, one of the top performers on Plugg's nearshore staffing team, who alone closed 39 placements across Brazil and Mexico in 2025. From a Brazilian project manager who traded generous benefits for USD compensation, to a four-person Salesforce QA team hired in one sweep through referrals, this episode pulls back the curtain on how U.S. companies actually build nearshore development teams in Latin America.

🎧 Host | Brian Samson – Founder of 💻 Plugg Technologies
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson/

🎙️ Sponsored by Plugg Technologies – Connecting U.S. companies with top-tier software developers across Latin America.
🌐 https://www.plugg.tech

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome

Welcome And Sponsor Thanks

SPEAKER_00 0:14

everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Sampson, and I have done a lot of near shore hiring Latin America placements over the years, and I want to tell you some real stories today about these hires, these placements, types of companies, types of candidates, how they all came together. Real stories from the ground. Before I do that, let me thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies, PLUGG.tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America with US companies. Today I want to tell stories from the recruiting frontlines. And one of our top senior recruiters, Zio Mara Santana, she goes by Zio, has some really interesting uh stories that I want to share for you.

Brazil Project Manager Chooses USD

SPEAKER_00 1:15

So the first story takes us to Brazil. We had a global client, and this company was looking for a really senior project manager, and it had to be based in Brazil. So Zio found someone who had been a full-time employee for years and years. And if you know anything about Latin America, and there's certain countries that this especially speaks to, uh, Brazil is one of them, where being a full-time employee means loads of benefits, healthcare, PTO. I think in some cases it's like a month of pay time off. So very nice perks for employees. But the salaries don't always match up with that, they don't always correlate. So often it's like low to medium salaries compared to the market, but really nice benefits. And in this case, uh, we had a candidate named Anna who wanted to flip-flop that and optimize for compensation, cash salary, get paid in USD. And you know, at this stage in her life, she wasn't so concerned about all the benefits and perks. So Zio really built some nice trust with this person. She had a lot of great seniority as a senior project manager in the IT space and found out that it was really cash compensation that mattered. We put an offer together for this large global company that was operating in Brazil, and uh just the right offer, and Zio helped to close it. And months and months later, we have a very successful placement, and the company, the client got what they needed from a talent perspective. And the candidate, Anna, is thrilled to be optimizing for what she's looking for at this stage in her career.

QA Contractor Gets Placed Twice

SPEAKER_00 3:16

The next one I want to talk about is a QA role, and in this case, this is a candidate we have placed twice. Zio has placed twice. One time it was for a large nonprofit that needed some QA work for an IT project, and that one wrapped up about a year after the kickoff. They uh got done everything they needed to get done. Canada had wonderful references, but we didn't have a project ready to go immediately to place this candidate on for the next one. So Zio and this candidate named Alec stayed in touch. Alec is based in Mexico, and they just kept building this relationship. And a few months later, Alec happened to be available, and Zio had a perfect fit, another QA role that was with a health tech company. And uh, she immediately thought of Alec. Alec was so happy to hear from Zio as they had stayed in touch, became really friendly, and it was super easy. We have wonderful references, and but this person had obviously worked for Plug. So uh Zio put it together, and Alec is happy again at yet another project uh with Plug.

Startup Finds A High Impact Analyst

SPEAKER_00 4:36

The next one uh takes us to uh the tech startup world. And if you know anything about tech startups, there's a mindset of hire slow, fire fast. And in many cases, the hiring bar is absolutely critical. Hard, complicated hiring bars seems like no one was ever good enough. Um, and I used to be ahead of talent for a lot of tech startups, and this is just another case of the hiring manager had a very clear idea of what they wanted, but it was so hard to find what they were looking for. Zio happened to find somebody based in Guadalajara, which is a big tech hub in Mexico, and this person named uh Gerardo happened to have this special mix of great communication skills and not just English, but how to communicate clearly what they're working on, KPIs, deliverables, timelines, process, all that. They happened to have that startup mindset of being scrappy, figuring stuff out, and had all that special domain skill. They were a data analyst. And wow, these roles are tough to find today. Data engineers, data analysts with this big AI boom. And Zio found uh this great candidate who had everything, and the startup a year later is still ecstatic and thrilled with this candidate, where they really are making a difference, a high impact in an early stage small startup.

The Search For A Salesforce Lead

SPEAKER_00 6:17

The next one, going back to the leadership world, Zio had a really tough role to fill. This was not only a Salesforce uh developer, but a lead at that. And finding a player coach in the tech world is difficult. Somebody who has great communication skills, the authority and respect to run and lead teams, lead projects, and all the domain skills because people want to work for others that know what they're talking about. And Zio happened to find a woman named Brenda who has been just an incredible get. Brenda has strong leadership skills, she understands that respect goes both ways. And Mexico, like a lot of um places in the world, when it comes to technical candidates, the majority are men, and Brenda knows how to navigate that environment and not only navigate it but do it exceptionally well. So this client has been happy with Brenda for many, many months, and Brenda's built and retained a really fantastic team. The next story that I want to talk about has to do with uh also Salesforce, but this time it's QA and uh Salesforce admin type of candidates. And

Four Referral Hires Build A Team

SPEAKER_00 7:44

in this case, due to a existing relationship that Zio had, Zia was able to make not one, not two, not three, but four placements of brand new candidates. And they happened to be candidates that were referrals from a prior placement. So we uncovered a need. This health tech company needed um uh a whole team of Salesforce admin QA types. Zio, due to her relationship, learned more about it, scoped it out, and was able to put a whole team in place. And that is rare. Companies often, you know, hire one at a time, and Zio just found four standout people that were validated, vetted, referred from somebody that was uh highly trusted. And just to note, you know, we can talk about LinkedIn all day, but referrals of great candidates that may or may not even be on LinkedIn can sometimes make or break a company. And you get referrals by treating your candidates like gold and continuing to treat them like gold. So kudos to the plug team, the operations team, and Zio for building and maintaining these fantastic relationships.

Fintech Sniper Search For Niche Skill

SPEAKER_00 9:01

And the last one that I want to talk about was a late-stage tech company that had a complicated tech stack. This is a fintech company that had raised boatloads of capital, but fintech is a highly regulated, highly complex space to make hires in. And they didn't have an overly arduous interview process. Uh, it wasn't multiple, multiple steps forever. It was relatively quick, but we still needed to find candidates that met this excruciatingly difficult hiring bar for a very niche skill set. And this skill set happened to be uh closure with a lot of other technical aspects of the role. Very difficult candidate to find. But uh Zio pushed hard, she really picked up her sourcing game. And this isn't a case of let's find hundreds of people because number one, they didn't exist. This was very much a sniper search where Zio bared down and found just a couple people that met the skill set. One of them was an engineer in Brazil named Cauwe, and he's been a standout, you know, fit that really hard, complicated hiring bar and in a difficult environment to thrive. A regulated fintech, small engineering team of top performers. This guy has stood out and he's been a really amazing addition to the team. And this fintech is very happy and using him as a model for other uh niche developers that they're looking for to build the company. So hopefully

Key Takeaways And How To Hire

SPEAKER_00 10:45

you uh got some value out of this that these are real hiring stores stories with uh real candidates uh from the front lines doing Latin America recruiting. Um big thanks to uh Zio for finding all these amazing candidates. And by the way, these were just a small sample size. Zio made uh 39 hires in 2025, and many of them just like this story. So if you need software developers, QA, AI, data engineers, really niche roles, Salesforce, Zio and the rest of the plug recruiting team has your back, and you can uh reach them at plugplg.tech if you have a need, and hopefully they'll be able to turn your need into another successful hiring story. This is the Nearshore Cafe Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Sampson, and again, plugplg.tech is our sponsor and a great way to connect top talent from Latin America to US companies like yours. Thanks for listening, and we will see you next time.