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What Happens If Your Tunisia Engineer Doesn’t Work Out?

20-30% of remote hires don’t work out in the first 3 months. Here’s how we handle it (and how others don’t).

The actual risk

Why hires fail:

  • Technical skills overstated (35%)
  • Cultural misalignment (30%)
  • Communication gaps (20%)
  • Motivation mismatch (15%)

Most failures show up in weeks 4-8. You’ve invested in onboarding. They’ve been paid for 2 months. Now you’re back to square one.

Cost of a failed hire:

  • 2 months salary (€7,000-8,000 for senior)
  • Your team’s time onboarding them (20-40 hours)
  • Productivity loss (features not shipped)
  • Back to recruiting (2-4 weeks minimum)

Total: €10,000-15,000 plus 2-3 months delay.

How most providers handle this

Recruiting agencies

  • You pay 15-25% upfront (€7,000-10,000 for senior engineer)
  • If they quit in month 2, you eat the cost
  • Some offer 90-day guarantee (replacement, not refund)
  • You still paid the person’s salary for the time they worked

Example: Hire through agency at 20% fee. Person quits after 8 weeks. You paid €10,000 to the agency plus €7,000 in salary. Agency finds replacement. You wait another 4 weeks. Total cost: €17,000 and 3 months lost.

EOR platforms (Deel, Remote)

  • They don’t recruit. You found the person.
  • If they don’t work out, that’s on you
  • Terminate the contract, find someone else
  • No guarantee because they weren’t involved in hiring

Fair enough. They’re employment platforms, not vetting services.

DIY (your own subsidiary)

  • Full risk on you
  • If you used a recruiter, you ate that fee
  • Severance depends on contract (2 weeks to 2 months typical)
  • Start over from scratch

How we handle it

90-day guarantee

If an engineer doesn’t work out in the first 90 days:

  • We find a replacement at no additional cost
  • No new recruiting fee
  • We source and vet candidates from our network
  • Shortlist ready within 2 weeks
  • You interview and decide

We manage the transition

  • Handle the offboarding (exit interview, final payroll, equipment return)
  • Protect your IP (revoke access, non-competes enforced)
  • Document what went wrong so we don’t repeat it

We adjust our screening

  • If we missed technical gaps, we add assessments
  • If cultural fit was off, we refine our criteria
  • If communication was weak, we test for it explicitly

After 90 days

If someone needs to be replaced after 90 days, we still help:

  • Source replacement candidates (standard 3-4 week timeline)
  • Manage transition and offboarding

No markup, just our normal recruiting process.

How we reduce the risk before hiring

Most agencies send you 3 CVs and hope something sticks. We don’t do that.

Technical screening (before you see them)

For mid/senior roles:

  • Live coding assessment (not take-home)
  • System design discussion
  • Technical depth interview

For junior roles:

  • Coding fundamentals test
  • Problem-solving assessment
  • Learning ability check

We filter out 70-80% of applicants. You see the top 20%.

Cultural fit assessment

This is where most remote hiring breaks down.

What we check:

  • Work style preferences
  • Communication habits
  • Motivation
  • Experience with European teams
  • Language proficiency (English + French, German optional)

Reference checks (every time)

We call previous managers or colleagues.

  • Would you rehire them?
  • What were their strengths and weaknesses?
  • Why did they leave?
  • How did they handle feedback?

If references are lukewarm, we pass. If they won’t provide references, we pass.

Trial period (optional, for senior hires)

  • 1 week of actual work on a real task
  • Work with your team, use your tools
  • See collaboration in real-world conditions
  • Costs 1 week of salary (~€800-1,000)

Red flags we screen out

  • Job hoppers
  • Skill mismatches
  • Communication problems
  • Motivation concerns
  • Cultural red flags

Real example: Failed hire

Company: German fintech (series A, 25 people)

What happened:

  • Hired senior backend engineer (Python/Django)
  • First 3 weeks looked good
  • Week 4: Code review showed quality issues
  • Week 6: Missed deadlines without communicating
  • Week 8: Clear this wasn’t working

Outcome:

  • 4 weeks from issue to replacement starting
  • No additional recruiting cost
  • New engineer still there 18 months later

Real example: Successful recovery

Company: German SaaS company (HR tech, 40 people)

What happened:

  • Hired mid-level frontend engineer (React)
  • Communication issues early on
  • Engineer overwhelmed

Outcome:

  • Adjusted onboarding
  • More pair programming
  • Daily check-ins
  • Engineer stayed and became senior later

What to ask any provider

  • What’s your replacement guarantee?
  • Who pays the failed hire’s salary?
  • How long does replacement take?
  • Do you charge a new recruiting fee?
  • What’s your hire success rate?

We’re at 85%+ stay 12+ months.

The trade-off

Guarantees cost money. We could charge less and offer no guarantee.

But if you hire 5 people and 2 fail, you’re not coming back.

Our model only works if retention is high. So we’re incentivized to get it right the first time.