I’m sure some of you will disagree, but I would recommend using workers from your own country, or at least someone you can arrange to meet periodically.
We had a couple of employees in other countries, whom we chose because the salary level at their respective countries is way lower than my own country. We carefully selected them and indeed they were both very professional and qualified for their tasks but then there were a lot of little differences that were wearing us off… First of all there was the time difference that was sometimes hard to handle, and different holidays that resulted in non-parallel off-days, infrastructure issues (one of them had regular power-shortages because that’s how it is over there…) and stuff like that. Also, since those guys work exclusively on remote-status, you could never be sure which current “employer” is higher on their priority list.
In order to offset the difference in salaries, we decided to go with students in our own country and work with them on remote basis. People who would take less money but are often more talented, intelligent & motivated because they are eager to prove themselves and also they appreciate the benefits of being able to work from their own home/dorm and integrate the job with their study time. Finally, since they don’t have too much free time they are not likely to take other similar projects/jobs.
That way we paid only little more than the cheapest end of the scale, while enjoying a dedicated staff who are easily manageable but are available for face-to-face meetings when we felt it was necessary.