There is a lot of academic material that has tried to define what IT Staff Augmentation or IT Staffing consists of, but from the outset, we are going to explain this terminology to you in the simplest way: it is about adding professional outsourcing resources to the base team of a company to reinforce the development of software or to perform certain functions, with specific skills that the in-house team does not have.
That is the goal of IT Staffing solutions. “It is beneficial in circumstances when you have a big project to finish, at which point you have to add extra resources,” says Aram Melkoumov, CEO of the company Crowdlinker. Precisely in this context, the company begins to look for an outsourcing agency that can provide the capacity it needs.
The integration of external resources with the in-house team is an interesting and important phase, since it determines how successful this work collaboration will be. As a company, the first thing you should check is the experience and skill set of these outsourcing engineers; It is also appropriate to know if they have experience in the product or area covered by your project.
Characteristics that IT Staffing profiles must have
- Knowing how to work as a team is essential.
- They are people who adapt well to any work environment and learn quickly, since the hiring is also quite fast compared to a traditional permanent hiring.
- They have access to valuable technical documentation, so they are always up to date on different technologies.
You can ask the IT Staffing provider for references of the resource you are going to hire, their experience in previous projects and how their relationship with other clients has been. All this to have a reference of what it is like to work with this professional and if he is the right one for the project he is going to enter.
What things can you achieve with IT Staffing Solutions?
Fill vacancies with critical profiles
Even if companies try to have the most complete team of professional profiles, it may happen that they run into a project so complex that they need very special skills that they do not have in-house. That is where the benefits of IT Staffing come into play, because it quickly provides profiles meeting the specifications that the client needs and demands.
“Because it can be a challenge to find a resource in a short period of time, especially one for a specialized position, a good solution is to hire an IT Staffing agency to help your company fill the position quickly. In addition, these agencies have access to larger networks than internal recruiters," they highlighted in an article by Liberty Staffing.
Maintains operational capacity
It doesn't matter what the season or time of year is, whether your staff is on vacation or on sick leave for health reasons. With the IT Staffing services you will be able to hire specialized personnel on-demand, according to the personnel needs of your company, being able to have flexibility to attend to your projects.
Speed up the selection of candidates
Human Resources departments are sometimes so swamped with work that the candidate selection and interview process can be chaotic, a process that is later than successful. This can lead to bad hires that, in the end, become another problem for the company and not a solution.
In these cases, an IT Staffing agency is ideal, since it is in charge of the entire process of capturing profiles, interviews and recruitment. The agency simply presents the profiles to the client and the client is in charge of deciding which one is going to integrate their team.
High employee turnover
The technology industry is very changeable and it can be a challenge for companies to retain profiles. In case your company has experienced a shortage of employees due to high turnover, a quick and efficient way to fill vacancies is to hire temporary profiles through an IT Staffing agency. When a company hires external profiles, it only pays per hour or for the work performed and does not acquire any kind of administrative commitments.
Avoid wrong hires
Companies sometimes fall into wrong hires due to the same urgency and need to strengthen their teams. But hiring someone without doing the relevant evaluations and tests, without knowing references from past jobs, can lead to a wrong hire, which does not contribute anything productive to your project and is all a waste of money and time.
Extra skills without training
Continuous training is one of the best practices within any technology team, but sometimes companies do not have enough budget or time to provide all the training they would like on the latest technologies or tools.
That is why resorting to IT Staffing solutions can be a wise decision, because generally the professionals who manage staffing agencies are trained and qualified with the most advanced technologies in the industry, so you will not have to invest in training. You are going to invest in a temporary staff that has those skills that you need.
Aspects to take into account
We know in depth the broad benefits of IT Staffing agencies, but there are also other aspects that you should take into account before hiring, so that you know how to handle them and do not hinder the workflow of your in-house team with staffing resources.
- According to the F5 Studio portal, the integration of the local team with the IT Staffing employees can be problematic if the culture of both sides is different, so they recommend evaluating the culture of external resources very well before hiring.
- You should work with an IT Staffing agency that truly understands the nature of your type of business. Only then will they work with the north that you need. Otherwise, if you work with professionals who are not very specialized in your industry, you will run the risk of losing control of the project, decreasing productivity and wasting valuable time.
Do you need an IT Staffing agency to reinforce your project? At Rootstack, we have +10 years of experience supporting companies in their digital transformation. Contact us!
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