The Client
This Toronto-based firm provides financial services to its clients and, like many growing finance businesses, reached a point where its accounting workload outpaced what it could economically staff at home. Rather than outsource the function to an agency, leadership wanted a dedicated offshore accounting team of its own — recruited to its standards and integrated into its operation.
The Challenge
The firm’s HR Manager had a single clear objective: build a Philippines-based team. Executing on that meant sourcing finance talent in a market where the company had no presence, no local network, and no recruiting infrastructure.
Key challenges included:
- Building an accounting team in the Philippines from a standing start
- Screening finance candidates to Canadian professional standards from 12 time zones away
- Sustaining a pipeline as the team grew, rather than filling one role and stopping
- Managing hiring alongside an HR function already running a domestic organization
They needed a recruiting partner who could operate as a continuous extension of their HR team, not run a one-off search.
The Solution
The client found 1840 & Company through the Deel partner program and engaged us to source and screen every candidate for their new offshore function.
Our approach included:
- Dedicated Candidate Screening: We source and screen accounting candidates against the client’s requirements, so their HR Manager reviews only pre-qualified finalists.
- Philippines Team Build-Out: We recruited the accounting professionals who make up the client’s Philippines-based team, building the function role by role.
- Continuous Pipeline: Rather than closing out after the first hires, we have kept finding candidates as the team has expanded — the capability the client singles out most often.
- Responsive Account Management: Our team responds quickly to queries and changing requirements, coordinating through email and messaging apps to match the client’s preferred working style.
The Outcome
The engagement has run continuously since May 2022 and produced the offshore capability the client set out to build.
They gained:
- A fully built-out Philippines-based accounting team, which the client names as the measurable outcome of the project
- A consistent flow of quality candidates as hiring needs have continued
- Highly responsive support for queries and evolving requirements
- Roughly $48,000 in annual payroll savings for every seat filled offshore rather than in Toronto
The client rated the engagement 5.0 overall — quality, schedule, and referral all perfect — and, asked what we could have done differently, said there was nothing they could think of.
