Part-time, full-time or either: What 237,000 Latin American applications say about hiring a remote professional for fewer hours
This content submission is written by Alan Schultz, Chief Marketing Officer of Virtustant, a remote staffing agency that places professionals from Latin America with US companies. He writes about hiring and managing remote teams.
A lot of first remote hires are not full-time.
A founder needs someone for 15 hours a week to clear the inbox and run the calendar. A small accounting firm wants 20 hours of bookkeeping support during tax season. A sales team wants an appointment setter for the four hours a day when its prospects pick up the phone.
The usual way to fill these roles is to post the job as “part-time” and hire from whoever applies.
Our application data suggests that this narrows the pool more than it needs to, and toward a group that is less likely to cover US hours.
What we looked at
Everyone who applies to Virtustant tells us whether they want full-time work, part-time work or either. Many also tell us whether they can work US business hours, and many take our cognitive reasoning test, scored from 0 to 100.
For this article we looked at applications created between January 1 and October 31, 2026, from candidates living in 18 Latin American countries. That gives about 237,600 applications with a stated availability.
Reasoning scores cover the roughly 82,000 candidates in that group who took the test. The US-hours figures cover only the candidates who answered that question.
How the pool splits
| Availability | Share of applications | Median reasoning score | Can work US hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time only | 51% (121,700) | 65 | 99.2% |
| Either part-time or full-time | 37% (87,300) | 67 | 99.4% |
| Part-time only | 12% (28,600) | 63 | 94.8% |
Three things stand out.
Part-time-only candidates are a small slice. Only about one applicant in eight is looking exclusively for part-time work.
If your job post says “part-time,” the people most likely to respond are the ones who want only that, and that is the smallest group in the pool.
The flexible group is large, and it scores highest. More than a third of applicants say they will take either arrangement.
That group has the highest median reasoning score of the three, two points above full-time-only candidates and four points above part-time-only candidates.
A two-point gap is small for any single person, so this is not a reason to pick one candidate over another. It is a reason not to filter the flexible group out before you have looked at it.
US-hours coverage drops in the part-time-only group. Among full-time-only and flexible candidates who answered, more than 99% said they can work US business hours. Among part-time-only candidates it was 94.8%.
That still sounds high, but it means about one part-time-only candidate in twenty cannot cover your hours at all, against fewer than one in a hundred in the other two groups.
Part-time work is often a second job, so the hours a candidate can offer may be the ones left over from somewhere else.
The pattern holds across the four largest markets
We checked whether one large country was producing the result. In Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, the four countries with the most applications, the shape is the same.
| Country | Median score: full-time only | Median score: either | Median score: part-time only | US hours, part-time only |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Argentina | 63 | 70 | 63 | 94.6% |
| Brazil | 67 | 70 | 61 | 95.9% |
| Colombia | 67 | 70 | 67 | 97.0% |
| Mexico | 70 | 70 | 67 | 97.2% |
In all four countries, flexible candidates have a median score of 70, equal to or above both other groups.
In all four, the part-time-only group is the least likely to say it can work US hours, while the full-time-only and flexible groups sit at 99% or above.
What candidates ask for, and why it is not a like-for-like number
Candidates also tell us the monthly pay they want, in US dollars.
Median requests across the 18 countries were about $1,500 for full-time-only candidates, about $1,390 for flexible candidates and $1,000 for part-time-only candidates.
Be careful with the last figure. A part-time candidate’s monthly number usually assumes fewer hours, so it is not cheaper per hour.
The useful comparison is between the first two groups. Flexible candidates, who will also take a full-time role, ask for less than full-time-only candidates in each of the four largest markets.
In Brazil the gap between the two medians is about $230 a month, in Mexico about $240, and in Argentina and Colombia between $110 and $160.
We can’t tell from this data why. One plausible reading is that flexible candidates are optimizing for getting a good role rather than for a full-time salary, so they price a little lower.
Another is that the groups mix different roles and seniority levels. Either way, the flexible group does not cost more, and on average it costs a little less.
What this means if you need a part-time hire
None of this says you should hire full-time when the work only needs 15 hours. It says the way you search for a part-time hire matters.
1. Describe the hours, not the label
“Part-time” means different things to different people. Write the block you actually need: “20 hours a week, Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern.”
Specific hours bring in flexible candidates who would skip a vague part-time post, and they screen out people whose free hours don’t match yours.
2. Search the flexible pool on purpose
If your platform or provider lets you filter by availability, include candidates open to either arrangement.
In our data that makes the pool about four times larger than part-time-only applicants alone, and it adds the group with the highest median score.
3. Confirm US hours before the interview, not after
Ask candidates to commit to the exact block in writing at the screening stage.
Coverage is weakest in the part-time-only group, and a second job behind a part-time application tends to surface later as a scheduling conflict.
4. Price by the hour
Monthly requests from part-time and full-time candidates are not comparable. Convert every request to an hourly figure based on the hours you are offering, and compare candidates on that.
5. Plan for the role to grow
Part-time roles often take on more hours once the work proves itself. A flexible candidate can grow with the role.
A part-time-only candidate may not be able to, and replacing them means starting the search again.
How we use it
At Virtustant, the minimum engagement is 10 hours a week, and the hourly rate for a role stays the same whether a company books 10 hours or 40.
When a client asks for a part-time hire, we search the flexible group as well as part-time-only candidates. We also confirm the agreed hour block during the recruiter screen, before anyone reaches the shortlist.
You can see how our hourly rates and minimums work.
The limits of these numbers
These are applicant records, not job outcomes. Availability, US-hours availability and pay are self-reported at the moment of application.
Not every candidate takes the reasoning test or answers the US-hours question, and the groups mix roles, seniority levels and countries.
We have not linked these figures to on-the-job performance or retention in this analysis, so they show an association between how candidates describe their availability and how they score, not a cause.
They are still enough to question a common habit. If you post a role as “part-time” and hire from whoever applies, you are drawing from the smallest group in the pool, and the one least likely to cover your hours.
Writing out the hours you need and including flexible candidates is a better way to find someone who can do the work at the times you need it done.
Independent
