De Pere manufacturer Infinity Machine and Engineering Corp. found itself in uncharted territory when it needed to build a software team from scratch to support a new product line.
The company, known for manufacturing tissue packaging equipment, had ventured into the Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) market. Unlike traditional packaging machinery, AGVs require sophisticated warehouse management software to coordinate fleet operations, a capability far outside Infinity’s wheelhouse.
“We’re not known to be a software company at Infinity,” says Ryan Crabb, the company’s autonomy and robotics product manager. “We build industrial equipment — we have controls engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, but we don’t have a software team.”
When a partnership to develop the necessary software dissolved, Crabb realized Infinity needed to develop its own internal team to maintain control over its complete product offering.
The company posted job openings on traditional channels like LinkedIn and was inundated with applications.
“It’s hard to hire a software team if you really haven’t had a software team before,” Crabb says. “I have piles of applications, but I don’t know how to vet out the competency of anybody. It was overwhelming.”
Infinity’s dilemma is shared by many businesses expanding into tech markets: They need to acquire specialized skills that fall outside their core competencies in geographic markets where talent is scarce.
The solution came through Truss, an Oshkosh company that’s revolutionizing how U.S. businesses access untapped global talent pools in emerging markets such as Uzbekistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan.
Julia Collins, managing partner and founder of Truss, says since the 1980s, traditional global hiring has concentrated heavily in known tech hubs such as India, but that market has become tumultuous.
“Tech giants like Uber, Google and Meta have made it not only hard to hire top candidates, but it’s even harder to retain them. There’s more demand in that market than there is supply of top talent,” Collins explains.
Meanwhile, emerging markets offer untapped potential, says Collins, who first worked with Uzbekistan teammates as a software engineering intern at DealerFire, a web development and marketing platform for the automotive industry.
“During my time at DealerFire, I had great experience working with teams in Uzbekistan,” Collins says. “But nobody’s really built that bridge to make it easy to hire these people and to pay them. It felt like green pastures to build that initial infrastructure and to take off running.”
As an employer of record service, Truss launched in 2021 and works with businesses of all sizes, from founder-led startups to global enterprises. Truss handles all legal employment requirements in foreign markets while clients manage day-to-day operations. The Truss team helps with everything from finding and interviewing candidates to setting up security measures on employee devices.
Truss’ platform — where clients can see team member wages and track global team distribution — also includes features to bridge cultural gaps, including local holiday notifications and weather updates.
“Once we introduce companies to this market, they just keep growing,” Collins says. “It’s really helped provide a new talent acquisition strategy that is not only optimizing the cost, but helping [businesses] retain mission critical teammates.”
The success Collins has seen in Truss reflects broader shifts in global hiring patterns.
“When companies first started to hire globally, if they had a Wisconsin office and an India office, those were the two markets they hired in. Now the top companies are fluid. They’re just finding the best candidates wherever they are and adding them to their team,” says Collins, who sees the advancement of AI-powered HR and recruiting tools only increasing this trend.
Crabb has reaped the rewards of this approach. Infinity began working with Truss last year and today employs four team members in Central Asia — two from Uzbekistan and two from Georgia — with hopes of hiring more due to the success of its new product.
“We definitely picked the right people. They are probably 90% of the product, those guys. I really rely on them to help evolve the product that we have today,” Crabb says. “I wouldn’t be where I’m at today without them. No doubt.”
