Hiring and retaining talent is the greatest challenge of this year. With over 19 million developers and even more companies, skilled candidates are overwhelmed with job offers, as IT services spending is expected to reach $1.389 billion in 2023.
It is difficult to find a professional with the right experience and skills for your project. That’s where staff augmentation can help. It’s a model where you collaborate with a company that has a large talent pool and typically “rents” you its experts. This approach is valued among businesses because it helps them access top talent, find the right expertise fast, build a flexible team, and support their processes.
This article has gathered a list of the 5 leading staff augmentation companies that can support your business with any request. You’ll discover the way this model works, its benefits, when it is best applied, and how to choose the right partner. Read on for more!
Companies usually provide staff augmentation services in three different models: commodity, skilled, and highly skilled. These options vary depending on the talents businesses aim to hire.
The commodity model is a regular service that provides a company with employees to complete a project. It usually involves workers with no specific specializations to cover repetitive and manual tasks.
The skilled model is one where companies search for specific skills for their projects. For example, it could be hiring a developer with experience in the required technology and industry. This helps the business ensure its project is in capable hands.
The highly-skilled model is used to cover skill shortages and fill in business-critical positions as quickly as possible. Finding C-level and senior positions requires extensive expertise and knowledge. Staff augmentation helps companies get these professionals without delay.
Collaborating with staff augmentation firms brings multiple benefits to your business. It’s one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to hire top-tier talent that can develop high-level software. However, there are many other advantages.
With over 19 million software developers in the world, staff augmentation allows you to work with any of them by accessing the global talent pool. You are not limited to a certain location which significantly increases your chances of finding the required expertise. This is also relevant when sourcing senior developers and C-level positions.
It takes 35 days on average to hire an in-house software engineer in the US. The time required may vary significantly depending on the required technologies, expertise levels, and experience. The standard hiring model may even take several months to close a position. Staff augmentation provides ready-to-work expertise from a large talent pool, helping you get a specialist almost immediately.
You can easily increase or downsize your team whenever your business requires it. All you need is a reliable staff augmentation company that can provide you with talent whenever you need it. The model is also ideal for finding not only a specialist with the appropriate skills, but also the perfect cultural fit.
The average vacancy costs employers $4,129 over 42 days or $98 per day. Executive positions require even larger financial investments. Considering that staff augmentation takes less time than the standard hiring model, you can save your budget on recruiting. It also reduces expenses when you need a specialist for a short-term project, as you only pay for the work done.
When you lack technical expertise, your project can be put on hold. This leads to longer development processes, forcing you to postpone the planned deployment. However, staff augmentation helps you hire software engineers and other professionals to complete your project on time.
StartupSoft provides expert staff augmentation services. The company’s purpose is to help tech startups build dedicated offshore and nearshore teams by finding people who are interested in delivering results. With StartupSoft, you can get technical experts like software engineers and non-technical professionals like digital marketing managers. The company also covers all processes from sourcing to taxes and equipment.
What else you should know:
Terminal helps world-changing companies hire elite engineering teams from all around the world. The company focuses on end-to-end team creation, covering all possible processes from hiring to retention. Terminal’s vision is to empower brilliant people to work with bold companies regardless of their locations.
What else you should know:
N-ix is a software development company that provides team extension services. The brand states that it closes 80-100 positions per month with an average term of 4-6 weeks each. It also mentions that N-ix focuses on finding people from close time zones and cultures, targeting European and American clients.
What else you should know:
Andela is a talent provider whose mission is to “connect brilliance with opportunity”. The company has a pool of technology experts like developers, designers, and managers. It tries to find the perfect candidate by using machine learning and AI to determine the best match in terms of skills and experience.
What else you should know:
BairesDev specializes in providing nearshore software development teams for companies. It uses AI-driven team-building to find the engineers best aligned with its projects. BairesDev positions itself as a team of digital acceleration experts, collaborating with 5,000+ engineers from 36+ countries.
What else you should know:
If your team doesn’t have the resources to meet their deadlines, you might want to bolster them with additional staff. Hiring a full-time specialist is costly and may take several months, which is why you may want to follow this model. It can reduce the workload on your current developers which speeds up the work processes and makes it more efficient.
Some projects may require a specific skill to complete a task. Recruiting a full-time specialist for such tasks isn’t always advantageous, because it can be a short-term commitment. Frequent examples are DevOps, data scientists, and business analysts who may be involved in short-term projects. Using this model may significantly reduce costs while providing top-grade quality.
If you already have an in-house software development team, you may need to supplement it with additional expertise when launching and releasing new projects. This can help you reduce the workload on your current specialists and make the work process more efficient.
Sometimes one of your employees may be absent due to various reasons: illness, commitment to other projects, an ended contract, and so on. Staff augmentation helps you find a replacement as quickly as possible while your employee is absent or a full-time position is vacant. This keeps all processes running, removing any possible delays.
While a company may create a strong impression with its website and during your first meeting, you may want to dig deeper to ensure there are no pitfalls. Case studies and client reviews usually show how things work from the inside, and reading them will help you determine if it’s a good fit.
Here’s what you might want to focus on:
All these aspects are usually described in detail in the reviews on Clutch.co. The platform has a strict review policy, ensuring all comments are verified and valuable. That’s why you can trust the opinions provided on this website.
If you plan on hiring more than one professional from a vendor, try conducting an interview that includes all of them together. This will help you see how well they work together. While individual skills are important, it’s also necessary to demonstrate robust teamwork abilities.
Here’s what you could do during a group interview:
Implementing these strategies in your interview can help you assess both hard and soft skills. You’ll see how knowledgeable the developers are in terms of their tech stacks and how they work with other people during the discussions. It’s an essential element in any project.
You may wish to prepare yourself before conducting such an interview. Forbes and Indeed provide some tips on how to make the process convenient and effective.
Your contract with the staffing company is an essential element as it includes all the terms of collaboration from A to Z. This involves all of the roles, responsibilities, requirements, payments, and other details. Stating everything on paper is necessary to prevent possible misunderstandings.
While it is generally expected that the contract is written by the legal department of one of the parties, you may want to learn how it is done yourself. Here is a detailed guide on how to write an employment contract to help you learn the ropes.
StartupSoft is your reliable partner when it comes to IT staff augmentation. We help startups and companies build dedicated teams of professionals who take pride in their work and share your values, because that’s the only way to build the best product.
Leave all the boring processes to us:
If you’re looking for a reliable partner that would hand-pick top tech talent for you, we’d recommend checking out StartupSoft. We know we might
be biased, but we’re quite confident we’ll be able to make that perfect tech match for you.
Staff augmentation is a model that allows businesses to rent IT talent of any kind for their projects. It helps companies remain flexible in terms of team composition and costs. The collaboration can be both short-term and long-term, and it covers all kinds of positions.
Finding a reliable staff augmentation partner requires considering ratings on various websites or platforms like Clutch. You should ensure that the vendor is trustworthy by reading their client reviews and case studies. This will help you understand whether you’re a good match.
You can use staff augmentation services when there is a short-term need for a specific skill or your in-house experts are temporarily unavailable. It is also helpful when you are hiring and need to fill in a position before you find a specialist yourself.
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