Firecell: How an open-source telecom company secured top-talent through EOR solutions

Industry	Telecom
Location	France
Company Size	20+
Founding Year	2021
On Horizons since 2021

Website

Introduction

Firecell is a French tech start-up that develops, packages, and distributes the world’s first open-source 4G and 5G core network and Open-RAN compatible radio access network software suite.

This technology simplifies and streamlines network operations and maintenance in order to improve network reliability in remote or underserviced locations, to create public shared networks or private networks, to overcome the limitations of WiFi, and precisely track and geofence company tools, products, or vehicles.

Firecell’s clients are large-scale enterprises in tech, industry, and education.

It’s a company that develops and deploys high-tech solutions, a task that requires top talent no matter where in the world those talents are.

Firecell had a great candidate lined up in India. An Employer of Record helped hire the candidate compliantly while visa paperwork was filed.

Immigration is not always a smooth process. Sometimes it takes time. In the world of employment, schedules are often crunched—candidates often do not have the luxury of taking time off work while immigration paperwork is processed. This is what Firecell faced when they identified a software developer in India with suitable niche skills.

Due to normal immigration timelines, bringing this candidate to France was not an immediate option, and employing him as a contractor wasn’t ideal either; it could have created an employee misclassification risk for Firecell, and wouldn’t have given the employee social security benefits from being a full-time employee. [Read more about the difference between employees and contractors]

In order to secure the candidate, Firecell needed a fast and compliant local employment solution until the candidate could join the HQ in France. That means they needed to know and comply with international tax laws as well as local Indian employment laws— no small feat when time is of the essence.

Horizons can onboard employees in as little as 48 hours, anywhere. Since Firecell had already identified an employee, the process to hire them onto Horizon’s India entity was simple, straightforward, and fast: a perfect solution for the problem they faced.

Onboarded using the latest tech

In the case of Firecell, all official documents were collected from the employee via Horizons’ HR management platform and used to create an employment contract that was compliant according to Indian employment law. The employment contract was signed, and the employee was able to begin compliantly working for Firecell with minimal time lost.

Even better, the HR management for that employee was also centralized on the Horizons platform. This means that essential HR admin like national holidays of India, leave requests, expense reporting, and document records were all available in one secure cloud location, at any time it was needed by the employee or the company. Such a platform is key for the success of asynchronous, globally distributed teams. [Check our other tips for successful remote-friendly working environments]

The best part of this story? Eventually, the employee was able to join the home office in France after securing a France working visa.

See what other clients say

"As a seed-stage, London-based startup, we were initially hesitant to expand internationally due to the administrative workload involved. Horizons completely took the headache out of the process and allowing us to hire a team of software engineers in Germany."

Gabor SzedlakCo-founder & COO

"I truly appreciated the thoroughness and the professionalism of Horizons personnel while going through the process of hiring internationally. When they spoke and commented, they spoke confidently and knowledgable on all subject matters pertaining to internal employment."

Gary PaskyVice President of Software Development

"On deciding to begin commercial activities in Asia Pacific, we needed a provider to handle the employment and remuneration of our workforce. With Horizons the result was a fast, efficient and fit-for-purpose employment solution. We recommend Horizons as an EOR provider.”

Chris MorrellManaging Director

"The collaboration with the Horizons team is excellent. Both our local employee as well as our HQ in Germany are more than pleased with the support provided and the simplicity of the service. We can highly recommend the Horizons solution to anyone."

Christoph EngelbertCo-Founder & CTO

"We needed an EOR that could provide expert support for payroll in APAC. We are pleased with Horizons’ expertise and the fact that they are flexible, responsive, and easily accessible from Belgium. They were able to provide services within the short timeline we required."

Katia FlamandHuman Resources

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