What You Should Know About IT Staffing as a Recruitment Approach Before Getting Started
Make a proper choice and consider IT staffing as an option to supply the project with perfectly tailored talent. The process of hiring tech talent has never been easy, especially given the increased demand for technical expertise and the shortage of qualified individuals. So, what are the pros and cons of using IT staffing services?
WHAT IS IT STAFFING?
IT staffing is the process of searching, shortlisting, and hiring a technology workforce by the IT recruitment agency at the company’s request in need of staffing tech talents. To put it simply, this is talent staffing on demand.
IT staffing services help the company reduce the recruitment burden by carefully analyzing the labor market, finding the best suitable candidates, and connecting them with the customer.
To better understand the essence of IT staffing, let us compare it with software development outsourcing since these two concepts are similar and often mixed up.
IT STAFFING VS SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT OUTSOURCING
Software development outsourcing is using the services of a ready-made team already gathered and tailored to the specific project needs by the development vendor. In this case, the team belongs to the outsourcing company but is temporarily assigned to a customer’s project development.
Sometimes the company has to hire additional specialists to fill in the talent gap if the customer’s project is specific. In the case of software development outsourcing, the customer works with a virtual and remote team, solving issues directly related to the software development process. Issues such as paying taxes, salaries, and other fees for employees are the vendor’s responsibility.
IT staffing, on the other hand, is the process of hiring tech talent on-demand and transferring the assembled team to the customer, who can manage them according to business needs.
HOW DOES IT STAFFING WORK?
As the first step, the company in need of tech talent chooses an IT hiring agency. Next, the company should define its project’s specifics, tasks and challenges, and write a description of the perfect candidate to match the business goals. At the next stage, an IT staffing firm looks for and shortlists potential candidates, evaluates their skills, knowledge, competencies, and overall compatibility with the customer’s project to offer the customer the best possible matches to choose from.
After the customer decides on the best candidate (or candidates, if the initial task was to gather a whole team), the technology staffing agency drafts the paperwork to hire chosen staff and then transfers the responsibilities for their management to the customer.
WHY DO COMPANIES USE IT STAFFING?
What makes IT staffing solutions effective? Most companies using them appreciate the following opportunities of recruiting talents on demand.
- Speed up the hiring process. It takes 42 days on average to hire an employee. IT staffing allows you to cut time and costs since the agency already has an extensive database of tech candidates and a well-developed market understanding. Plus, the agency uses dedicated technologies to automatize and speed up the process even more.
- Reduce recruitment costs. The average cost for hire is about $4,000. In most cases, collaborating with an IT staffing agency allows you to reduce this figure as well since they charge the customer based on the candidate’s salary. The fee you pay to the agency is usually 25-100% of the salary, which is significantly less than the estimated $4,000.
- Get assisted in headhunting and executive search. Headhunting and executive search are quite specific approaches to hiring top management talent. In most cases partnering with an IT staffing agency is the only way to reach out to executives. While this recruiting tactic is not very ethical, some companies consider it effective and worth the cost.
IT STAFFING MODELS
- Project-based model. In this case, the company hires a team to meet specific project goals that are different from its usual activities.
- Contract model. This model is suitable for short-term projects, and its essence is simple: the team works with the customer until the contract is ended or terminated.
- Contract-to-hire model. Similar to the previous one, it makes sense when the customer considers whether to hire a team in-house after the contract ends.
- Mark-up model. In this case, a recruiting agency supplies the customer with a suitable candidate for a fixed fee.
- Hire-train-deploy model. According to this model, a recruitment agency selects and hires the team members to deal with specific project tasks, onboard and trains them, and then the team gets started with their jobs being managed by the customer.
PROS AND CONS OF IT STAFFING
Before getting started with IT staffing, let’s also compare its pros and cons.
IT Staffing Benefits
Talent Sourcing on Demand
The use of IT staffing services allows you to hire specific talent according to your project needs. The better you identify the business needs and expectations regarding a suitable candidate, the better chances are that the IT recruitment company will be able to match the specialist with the goal. 52% of recruiting managers consider accessing the candidate with the right set of skills as the main challenge in the hiring process, but using IT staffing services helps you overcome it.
Wide Choice of IT Staffing Companies
There are a lot of IT staffing firms to choose from, starting from global companies like TopTal and Robert Half and ending with lesser-known niche-specific companies.
The opportunity to access a global talent pool is great if you need to establish a fully remote team without the need to transfer it in-house, and if you are ready to manage it on your own. IT staffing also opens up an opportunity to gather your team from the best tech talents worldwide while tailoring the cost of specialists to your budget and ensuring cultural diversity.
Less Paperwork
An IT staffing agency also takes on the responsibility for the paperwork related to hiring, onboarding, and payroll – so you can expect less bureaucracy.
IT Staffing Disadvantages
Initially High Cost
40% of hiring managers avoid working with staffing firms because they believe this strategy is pricier compared to hiring on their own. Still, the practice shows that the feasibility of IT staffing largely depends on the choice of an agency, setting a business goal, and defining the specialist the customer needs to hire. Since in most cases, the agency fee is significantly lower than the profits the perfectly matched candidate can bring to the company in the long run.
The Risks of Miscommunication
This quite common risk is typical for IT staffing and most business processes with a need to attract a third party for help. To reduce it, make sure to clearly define your business goals and come up with a complete skill set and the expectations of the candidate to communicate that to an agency from the very beginning.
The Risk of Cultural Mismatch
The risk of cultural mismatch is also typical for both IT staffing and software development outsourcing. That is why you have to choose a recruiting agency carefully and make sure there is no cultural mismatch between the firm and your company.
WHAT SHOULD YOU LOOK FOR WHEN USING IT STAFFING SERVICES?
Below are three essential points to check in advance before getting started with an IT staffing agency. They are the most significant factors of the opinion of Millennial business owners deciding to give this strategy a try.
- Reputation and online rating. Make sure to check the company’s reputation and online rating before getting started with it. While the risk of facing fake reviews is high, pay attention to reputable platforms for feedback sharing like Google My Business, Clutch.co, and Yelp.
- Responsiveness. Since a lot of companies decide to turn to IT staffing because of the urgent need to fill in a job position, the responsiveness and the response speed of the recruitment vendor matter as well. To check it, get in touch with several potentially suitable companies and evaluate their communication style and response speed.
- The use of the latest technology. 58% of Millennial business owners believe an IT staffing company should use the latest technology to find and suggest the best candidates according to the project requirements. It is the right approach that allows for quick selection, screening, and outreach to the best candidates.
CONCLUSION
IT staffing is worth a try. In partnership with a reliable staffing vendor, you are likely to significantly speed up the process of recruitment without loss of efficiency and risk of overpaying. And for those already hired by an effective in-house team, there is one more winning option. In this case, IT team augmentation is a good strategy since it also allows for quickly strengthening your in-house team with remote teams.
The skillset of the latter can also be tailored to the specific needs you face right now, and Cprime Studios is here to help you. Reach out to us for tech team augmentation services to power your project with the needed talent ASAP!
