TL;DR
The right candidate is not always where you expect. Sometimes they are a few streets away in the City, sometimes a timezone away in Dubai.
As a London recruitment agency with more than 30 years on our doorstep and 20 years of international placements, we search at three levels: local, national and global.
Local suits roles that need daily office presence and London market knowledge. National widens the pool for hybrid and remote roles. Global is for niche skills, overseas offices and international expansion.
Our advice is simple: match the search radius to the role, not to habit. We help you choose, then source accordingly, across London, the wider UK, Dubai, Europe, Africa and the US.
“Where is the right person for this role, actually?” It is a deceptively big question. For years the default answer for a London business was “somewhere in London,” and for many roles that is still exactly right. But the working world has stretched. Hybrid patterns have widened what counts as commutable, remote roles have opened up the whole of the UK, and a growing number of our clients are hiring for offices in the Gulf, mainland Europe, Africa and the United States. The search radius has become a genuine strategic decision.
We have spent more than three decades placing people into London businesses, and around twenty years running international searches alongside that. So we tend to look at every brief through the same lens: what is the smallest search area that will reliably give you an excellent shortlist? Sometimes that is a postcode. Sometimes it is a continent. This guide walks through how we think about local, national and global sourcing, where our reach extends, and how to pick the right approach for your next hire.
Start local: why our London roots still matter
There is a reason we have stayed based in the heart of our client base in London’s West End and City. Proximity is an advantage you can feel. When a role needs someone in the office most days, a strong understanding of London salaries, sectors and commuting realities matters enormously. A candidate who looks perfect on paper but faces a 90-minute each-way commute rarely lasts, however good the match.
Local sourcing is usually the right call for office-based support and business-critical roles where presence and pace count: Executive Assistants, Office Managers, front-of-house and team-support positions. It is also where our network runs deepest, because relationships built over 30 years in the same square mile mean we often already know the person you need.
Going national: sourcing across the wider UK
The rise of hybrid and remote working has quietly rewritten the map. For roles that only need a presence a couple of days a week, or none at all, restricting your search to Greater London can mean overlooking excellent people an hour or two up the line. Widening to a national search opens up a far larger pool, which is particularly valuable for specialist or hard-to-fill positions where the London-only market is thin.
National sourcing tends to suit HR specialists, marketing and digital roles, finance functions and consultancy positions where the work travels well and the talent does not need to sit at a specific desk. The trade-off to weigh is culture and connection: remote hires can thrive, but they need a deliberate onboarding plan rather than being left to find their feet. That is exactly the sort of thing we help clients think through before the search begins.
Thinking global: talent across Dubai, Europe, Africa and the US
For around twenty years we have delivered international recruitment alongside our UK work, and it has grown into a core part of what we do. Global search comes into its own in three situations: when the skills you need are genuinely scarce in the UK, when you are staffing an overseas office, and when you are expanding into a new market and need people who already understand it on the ground.
Dubai and the Gulf
The Gulf is one of our most active international regions. UK organisations opening a Dubai presence often need senior support and management hires who combine international professionalism with genuine local market knowledge. We source into the region regularly and understand the practical realities, from cultural fit to the pace of setting up a new office abroad.
Europe, Africa and the United States
Beyond the Gulf, our reach extends across mainland Europe, Africa and the US. Each market has its own rhythms around notice periods, expectations and the way senior candidates prefer to be approached. Rather than treat international hiring as “UK recruitment, but further away,” we adapt the search to the region, which is what makes the difference between a shortlist that looks impressive and one that actually lands.
Here is a simple view of where we search and what each level is best suited to.
| Search level | Best for | Typical roles |
|---|---|---|
| Local (London) | Office-based roles needing daily presence and London market knowledge | EAs, Office Managers, team support, front of house |
| National (UK) | Hybrid and remote roles, and thin specialist markets | HR, marketing, finance, consultancy |
| Global | Scarce skills, overseas offices, market expansion | Regional leadership, senior support, specialist hires |
How we decide where to search for your role
We do not start with a map. We start with the role, and the search radius follows from it. In practice, four questions usually settle it.
- How much physical presence does the role genuinely require? Daily presence points local, occasional presence opens up national, none opens up global.
- How scarce is the skill set? The rarer the skills, the wider we cast, because the best fit for a niche role is rarely on your doorstep.
- Where does the role actually sit? A role anchored to a Dubai office is a Gulf search, not a London one, however British the parent company.
- What is the wider hiring strategy? If you plan to grow in a region, hiring people already rooted there pays off well beyond the first placement.
The honest bit we share with clients: casting wider is not automatically better. A global search for a role that only needs someone in the office on Tuesdays simply adds cost and complication. Matching the radius to the reality is the whole game.
What changes when you hire internationally
International hiring is rewarding, but it is not the same process on a longer runway. A few things shift, and planning for them up front keeps the search smooth.
| Consideration | What to plan for |
|---|---|
| Compliance and right to work | Local employment rules, visas and sponsorship vary by market and need factoring into the timeline |
| Timezones and interviews | Scheduling across regions takes coordination; we manage this so momentum is not lost |
| Salary and package norms | Benchmarks, benefits and expectations differ by country and should be set to the local market |
| Notice periods | These vary widely internationally and affect realistic start dates |
| Cultural fit on the ground | Local market knowledge often matters as much as the CV for roles based abroad |
None of this should put you off. It simply means an international search rewards an experienced partner who has run them before, rather than a scramble across job boards you cannot read.
Case study: staffing a new Dubai office from London
Details below have been anonymised at the client’s request, but the shape of the search is real.
The situation
A London-headquartered professional services firm was opening its first office in Dubai and needed a senior Office Manager to anchor it: someone who could set up operations from scratch, represent the firm confidently with regional partners, and bridge the London and Gulf ways of working. Their instinct had been to hire in London and relocate, but early conversations suggested the strongest candidates would be people already established in the region.
What we did
- Reframed the search as a Gulf search rather than a London one, drawing on our international desk and regional network.
- Prioritised candidates who combined international professional standards with genuine on-the-ground knowledge of Dubai.
- Ran personality profiling as standard to check the candidate could operate autonomously in a brand-new office far from head office.
- Coordinated interviews across timezones so the London leadership and the successful candidate could meet without weeks of diary friction.
The result
We presented a focused shortlist, and the firm appointed an Office Manager already based in the region who was able to start quickly and had the new office operational within weeks. Because the hire understood the local market from day one, the leadership team could stay focused on the launch rather than on hand-holding. It is a clear example of the core point: the right person was never in London at all, and searching there first would only have slowed things down.
Making the right choice for your business
If you are weighing up where to search for an upcoming role, a few practical steps make the decision easier.
- Define the presence the role truly needs before you set the location, not after.
- Be honest about how scarce the skills are; if the UK pool is genuinely thin, widening early saves weeks.
- Where a role is tied to an overseas office, plan for local sourcing and the compliance that comes with it from the outset.
- Lean on a partner who works across all three levels, so you are not forced to fit the role to whichever pool a specialist happens to cover.
Frequently asked questions
Do you only recruit in London?
No. London is our home and our deepest network, but we source nationally across the UK and internationally too. We work across Dubai and the wider Gulf, mainland Europe, Africa and the United States, choosing the right search level for each role.
What makes a good global recruitment agency in London?
The ability to search at every level rather than defaulting to one. A strong local network for office-based roles, national reach for hybrid and remote positions, and genuine international experience for overseas offices and scarce skills, all under one relationship.
Is international recruitment slower than hiring in the UK?
It can involve extra steps, such as right-to-work checks, cross-timezone interviews and local salary benchmarking. With an experienced partner managing those in parallel, an international search does not have to feel slow, and it often reaches better-suited candidates.
When should I search nationally rather than just in London?
Whenever a role does not need daily office presence, or when the London-only market for a specialist skill is too thin. Hybrid and remote roles in particular benefit from opening the search to the whole UK.
Can you help us staff an office abroad?
Yes. Staffing overseas offices, particularly in Dubai and the Gulf, is a core part of our international work. We prioritise candidates who combine professional standards with real local market knowledge so the office is productive quickly.
How do you decide where to source candidates for a role?
We start from the role, not the map. The required presence, how scarce the skills are, where the role physically sits and your wider growth plans together tell us whether to search locally, nationally or globally.
Not sure how far to look? Let us help you decide
Whether your next hire is a few streets away or a few timezones away, the starting point is the same: a proper conversation about the role. Tell us what you are trying to achieve and we will advise honestly on where the right person is most likely to be, then run the search to find them. Explore our global recruitment reach or get in touch with The Maine Group to talk it through.