Traffic Cardinal
wrote January 28, 2026
Traffic Cardinal
wrote January 28, 2026
The job market we knew just a few years ago doesn’t really exist anymore. Since then, remote work has become the new norm, traffic crosses borders back and forth and talent is no longer tied to a pin on the map. What did stay local for a while are budgets, decisions and hiring power. But now they are shifting too.
Affiliate marketers and media buyers move across regions like particles in Brownian motion, finding themselves interviewed by companies they wouldn’t have considered yesterday. Because employers can’t be bothered with your location, as long as you can get things done (and done well). Or can they?
This piece is a snapshot of where that leaves hiring today: how that shift plays out in different geos, who companies are looking for right now and what matters if you are aiming for a role outside your usual cultural bubble. And we won’t be walking this path alone – experts from AffPal and AffJobs will be joining us to help professionally unpack every detail. Read on!
Who’s Hiring Whom Now
This is one of those topics where surface-level research won’t be enough. You can read reports and piece together theories, but that only gets you so far. To make sense of it, it has to be a sneak peek from the other side of the table. That’s why we decided to consult with the recruiting team behind AffPal and AffJobs, who were willing to talk through the things most people only guess at. Between running a global candidate marketplace and helping companies build teams faster (and stronger!), they see hiring patterns form long before they fully surface in job boards and LinkedIn posts.
According to Stefan Muehlbauer from AffPal, one of the ongoing trends is the merging of Western and Eastern job markets.
A case in point from their day-to-day work: more companies from the East are looking to hire Western specialists. And this choice is far from being random. Which raises a fair question – what makes these candidates so attractive in the first place?
The most obvious reason is outside expertise. In the end, it all comes down to perspective. When a team gets used to doing things one way, blind spots start piling up eventually. Western hires often bring experience shaped elsewhere, which can be enough to rethink assumptions no one questioned before. Some of the situations they’ve already dealt with are hard to reproduce locally, but very useful to borrow.
There is also a bridge function here. Western specialists might fit that role quite well. They can help teams adjust to international expectations and avoid learning everything the hard way, once it's time to deal with international partners and audiences.
And sometimes, it’s not about preference at all. In some markets, the real problem is supply – teams just… run out of people. People with the right skill set, to be more exact. Advanced analytics, strategic oversight or actual leadership can be hard to find these days, so they look abroad (usually West) to fill those gaps.
Irina Esan, a business developer focused on the CIS region, sees the same pattern in her work. She notes that Western candidates often come with experience from Tier-1 markets and a more structured approach to performance tasks. Eastern companies value that combination. It allows them to test faster, scale processes without unnecessary friction and keep reporting clear – which, over time, builds trust and makes teams more effective.
Western companies more often than not treat technical skills as a given. Knowing your way around analytics tools, CRM systems and all kinds of dashboards is a baseline. AI-assisted content and automation should be something you’ve actually worked with, not just nodded along to those words at your job interview. One-channel campaigns are an exception now, that’s why most teams automatically assume you can run paid ads on several platforms simultaneously without a hitch.
How those skills mix together matters just as much. These employers usually look for people who don’t split technical and creative work into separate boxes. SEO, PPC, analytics over here. Content strategy, social, messaging over there. In real life, this split never holds for long. If you can also think past isolated tasks and understand how marketing decisions ripple through the business, you’ll definitely look hireable through the Western lens.
As for soft skills – they used to be a nice bonus, something you could safely ignore. But now even fairly junior marketing roles come with an expectation that you can communicate clearly and adapt when things change. Western teams also lean toward autonomy. You are trusted to take initiative, coordinate with others and understand the context around your work without constant supervision.
Comparing the two approaches, Irina Esan explains what each side prioritizes. Western companies usually look for people who can document processes, follow platform rules and methodically optimize campaigns. Eastern teams, by contrast, are more comfortable with moving quickly and taking chances. Soft skills matter equally for both, however, Western employers pay closer attention to teamwork and open communication.
Do Hiring Preferences Form Around Skills and Regions?
There is no clean map linking regions to niches or skills and claiming otherwise would be an oversimplification. Yet some patterns do form and recruiters are the exact people who spot them early (before they harden into industry cliches). Thanks to being plugged into the global network, hiring teams notice which profiles show up where and how those profiles perform once hired.
As JJ Daranee, an HR Recruiter at Affjobs, sees it: hiring preferences aren’t fixed and might shift depending on what role is being filled and where the search is happening. Some areas end up being associated with certain strengths simply because that’s how past hires played out. That reputation doesn’t seal anyone’s fate, though. However, it often affects how quickly candidates make it past the first screening.
These patterns aren’t rules on paper, but rather expectations. Some regions get read as more technical, others as easier to work with, others as more structured and reliable. As JJ points out, none of this outweighs real experience or individual ability, but it can influence how potential hires are perceived early on.
From a more niche-specific angle, Irina Esan sees similar patterns. In her experience:
Eastern Europe and the CIS frequently stand out in media buying and traffic testing;
The US and Western Europe are more often linked to strategy and compliance work;
LatAm and parts of Asia usually surface in roles tied to local traffic and geo-specific adaptation.
This doesn’t lock candidates out if they don’t match those associations, but it can affect who gets a call sooner than others.
What Interviews Really Test
A common pitfall Irina Esan keeps seeing is candidates putting all their weight on numbers. ROI, CPA, KPIs are obviously important, but metrics on their own rarely carry an interview. If communication feels off and you don’t seem to be on the same wavelength with the team, trust takes a hit. Alas, strong stats don’t always save the situation here.
Cultural context has a habit of complicating things when you apply abroad. For instance, in many Western interviews, you are expected to speak openly about achievements and own results. Elsewhere, that style could come off as overdoing it. On the flip side, specialists who downplay themselves or highlight collective effort may look underconfident by Western standards, despite having good experience.
Remote roles add their own layer of friction, meaning “how we work here” differences may get harder to read. There are teams who expect independence and proactivity by default. In others, sticking to process and respecting the hierarchy around approvals is part of being a good teammate. So, sometimes, pitching yourself with the wrong version of “normal” in mind can stall the interview, even though your hard skills are absolutely fine.
And one more important detail: your experience won’t impress your future employers if it’s abstract. A company needs to see how your expertise is anchored in their reality: offers, audiences and success metrics. Generic language and broad strokes will only make preparation gaps obvious. But sticking to a polished list of wins (even if it fits the company’s needs) isn’t always enough. Interviews go better when candidates can also honestly talk about failures and describe how they think under pressure. It helps employers understand the ways that experience translates into day-to-day decisions.
Conclusion
Cross-regional hiring might have started as an experiment somewhere in the past, but now it’s settling into a new normal. Whether they planned to or not, teams are forming regardless of different time zones and cultures. Do you want to have an edge in 2026? Then you need to audit your candidate brand from an employer's perspective. It doesn’t require changing who you are, just present yourself in a way they’d understand, including your background, experience and communication style.
