When sourcing hard-to-fill tech jobs, the best place to look may be beyond your own backyard?way beyond, to Ireland, Russia and elsewhere.

"Technology is a global language," says Donna Sinnery, assistant vice president of HR for corporate systems at Sun Life Financial, a Toronto-based financial services company. Recruiting offshore has the dual advantages of cost-effectiveness and higher retention, she says.

If the pay range for a technical job is $50,000 to $80,000 per year, "you can hire someone from Russia for $50,000, she explains. "You don’t have to pay $80,000."

Foreign employees lack the job mobility of their stateside counterparts. EmigrŽs with visas can be locked into jobs for up to six years, a superlative retention rate.

If you don’t want to move the workers to your office, you can move your office to the workers. Sinnery recently returned from Waterford, Ireland, where Sun Life took advantage of a governmental program that gives incentives to businesses that open shop in Ireland.

"The private business sector, the government and the education centers work really well together," she says, citing leasing options, tax incentives and labor costs as reasons that Ireland beat out other foreign locales for the Sun Life outpost.