IT Staff Augmentation

In the U.S., staffing agencies provide companies with over 16 million professionals in a year. In the UK, the number of recruiting agencies broke a record with a figure of more than 27,000 in 2022. The IT staffing market shifts gears in sync with technology development: the digital industry remains one of the most innovative realms of the global economy. Digital business tends to delegate the task of hiring developers to third-party organizations, according to the merely rational arguments:

• it takes less time;

• it requires few tech skills from an employer;

• it alleviates the burden of paperwork and solving legal issues.

The typical client of an IT staff augmentation company is an organization that needs an IT professional but doesn’t have the assets (and isn’t prone to find them because of objective reasons) to fill the vacancies. The assets needed are as follows:

• a network of developers who is in contact with a company, so an employer can get in touch with candidates quickly, and the chances of getting a positive response are high;

• solid tech skills to assess each of the candidates to find the perfect match to a position;

• an acquaintance with legal norms on employment, especially when it comes to remote work and collaboration with professionals from abroad.

Last but not least: a company should pay an HR specialist (or a person who is responsible for hiring IT professionals) for each iteration.

Reaching out to a top staff augmentation company is an optimal solution for companies whose needs in hiring emerge from time to time, and specific skills are required. HR manager whose contacts with IT engineers are always updated is able to offer the appropriate candidates within a couple of hours and ensure the proper assessment.

Collaborating with a staff augmentation provider, a good idea is to be aware of the model restrictions. Dealing with in-house IT professionals yields a higher level of loyalty: teammates are immersed in the corporate culture, and the company’s values work as motivation. Moreover, in the case of a temporary contract, the pay rate is higher. So, if a team needs a position in the course of years, it’s more profitable to incline to an in-house format.

The term “IT staff augmentation” stands for a process of hiring IT professionals on a short-term basis provided by a third-party company. The key feature of the concept is flexibility. You hire a teammate only for the period of time you need certain expertise. When the goal is achieved – for example, an app is launched or a data model is built – the collaboration is accomplished.

To use a metaphor, a team based on software development staff augmentation is a LEGO set that is perfectly adjusted to the “project” – because any time you can add a certain detail. Let’s say, you’re going to build a windmill. You’re on your way, elated and sure about the result that seems predictable. Yet you face the conundrum one moment: you need one purple brick, but there aren’t any purple bricks in your LEGO. There are three options:

• a network of developers who is in contact with a company, so an employer can get in touch with candidates quickly, and the chances of getting a positive response are high;

• solid tech skills to assess each of the candidates to find the perfect match to a position;

• an acquaintance with legal norms on employment, especially when it comes to remote work and collaboration with professionals from abroad.

By contacting the top IT staff augmentation company, you get an opportunity to hire a developer, an architect, a UX designer, or a project manager with the required professional profile and for the time your team needs such expertise.

Why apply for a third party? Hiring an IT professional is more challenging than it may seem. Despite the fact that the market is overloaded by candidates, business experience an overwhelming lack of talents – globally! According to the McKinsey survey, 43% of top managers all over the world struggle with the skills gap. The IT industry obtains second place at the top of the list along with executive management, HR, and sales. These days, when people tend to work in a comfortable space, preferably remotely, and are oriented to get a decent salary, negotiations between an employer and a candidate become not such smooth sailing as it was before the pandemic. Professionals know how to hire. They are responsible for:

• providing a candidate with the required skills;

• legalization of the relationship between an employer and engineer;

• comfortable launch of the new team member within a project due to the candidate’s strong soft skills.

There is one more bonus. An IT staff agency overcomes all hurdles and bares all the responsibilities, but the boss is a company that carries out a project, and team members are one hundred percent aware of this.

Whether to build an in-house team or outsource – is a matter of choice, to some extent. However, if a company tends to be accurate with expenditures and deadlines, it’s worth weighing the pros and cons of different forms of hiring staff. These are cases when software development staff augmentation is recommended as long as it provides the cost and time optimization:

• A project is short-term. Let’s say it’s a startup: the team is going to launch a product within a few weeks. There are two founders; they are the core of the team. All the others teammates could be involved according to the goals and timeline. As long as a job is done – for example, the app’s design is finished – the collaboration with a designer ceases.

• A team requires a niche professional, e.g. an engineer with a unique set of skills, and, again, the demand is temporary. Here the high level of expertise is implied, that’s one more reason to consider filling the position slightly daunting. To find such a seasoned pro, an IT recruiter who represents the staff augmentation provider uses advanced searching techniques along with personal contacts nurtured for years – just for a case like this one.

• There is a need to hire a developer from a foreign country. In such a situation lots of legal and organizational issues arise starting from the time zone difference, cultural peculiarities, and ending with signing a contract. The staffing agency takes responsibility for solving all formal issues. Chances to become a part of a client’s team are high for those who show up tolerance and eagerness to work in a multicultural environment.

Hire web development staff augmentation can’t be considered optimal in a number of cases. Long-term projects require rather dedicated teams than temporary staff extensions. It’s worth thinking twice if a company expects from a developer a high level of motivation and emotional engagement. It’s reasonable to keep in mind that the success of a new member’s adaptation to the team is an employer’s responsibility.

Strictly saying, software team augmentation is a type of outsourcing because as long as you address the third-party vendor you delegate the task of searching and hiring a professional to another company. However, in practice, the term “outsourcing” is used when a company passes on to a vendor all the set of tasks including management.

The outsourcing model has plenty of advantages:

• An employer gets rid of all the fuss connected with coordination, control, and maintenance. No equipment. No time management. No teambuilding. No documents flow. A client obtains the sheer result according to the goals discussed at the very beginning.

• It’s easy to launch a project. It’s easy to go through it. A team lead is always in the loop. If metrics for control are workable, and a team is devoted, everything goes smoothly. The project’s CEO gets reports and gives feedback – it requires much less time and effort than comprehensive management.

• When a new team member is needed, an outsourcing vendor deals with a task without the employer’s involvement. How to choose the right candidate, in what way a new team member should be assimilated into a company, how to provide the legitimacy of collaboration – all these issues are an outsourcing partner’s responsibility.

All in all, what solution is best – app development staff augmentation or outsourcing – is defined preliminary by two factors. The first one is time. For projects prolonged into the future for years, an in-house team or outsourcing could be a solution. If you need a pro for specific tasks now, a partnership with a top IT staff augmentation company will be a deal maker. The second factor is cost. Salary payments are under your control anyway, yet in case of augmentation, the schema is more flexible.

By contacting a top staff augmentation company, you take a step toward expanding your team – just to the right extent, for the set period of time, and at a reasonable price. The team’s scale is perfectly adjusted to the number of projects, deadlines, and specializations (accounting, sales, healthcare, education, etc.). App development staff augmentation is one of the most sought-after services since app creation is growing tremendously across the globe.

Since the launch of StarNavi, the team accumulated the most fruitful staffing practices to meet the client's expectations. The hiring, assessing, and vetting techniques allow StarNavi to stay on top of the hiring process and fill the positions in the shortest terms. But, first, there are a few things the team expects you to bring to the table:

• the list of positions according to the company’s strategy and the set of current tasks which experience the lack of expertise;

• a brief description of each position, focusing on hard and soft skills;

• the financial outline of the IT staff augmentation project (your vision of pay rate for developers your team requires).

The general understanding of the needs is quite enough for the first friendly talk with StarNavi. Contact us to say “Hi!” and get the first impression of our team. Sometimes you need a brief conversation to set the questions for yourself more precisely. As long as the goals are visible, we’ll form an offer containing a detailed description of the services we are ready to provide to scale up your team. The destination point is to add the defined number of professionals with the required level of seniority to your projects for the set period of time.

As a top IT staff augmentation company, we can guarantee to keep the principles of privacy and information safety. As soon as we seal the deal, the StarNavi team is contacting the candidates whose skills and experiences match your requirements.

The staff augmentation services are considered cost-effective, and one of the reasons for that is the absence of upfront fees. Only the result – outlined according to the client's needs and expectations – is paid. StarNavi responsibilities are discussed in detail and fixed in an agreement, so, collaboration is financially transparent.

In general, there aren’t any additional fees – the budget includes the new teammates’ payment and the cost of StarNavi expertise. In practice, an ambiguous question arises when an IT specialist decides to quit after onboarding and working for a company during a couple of months. The situation is tough for an employer: hiring and adaptation take time and money. The resources appear to be lost when the list of teammates becomes shorter by one point.

In StarNavi, when an emergency of that sort takes place, we offer another candidate with similar expertise to fill the gap.

That’s what differentiates a collaboration with a staffing agency from an independent search through freelance platforms. When your partner is a custom software development and IT staff augmentation company, you can be sure that your team is always on duty, in full force. There is a reliable way to reduce the risk that a newly hired developer jumps a ship. Motivation is key, hence, our task is to filter out the candidates who are reluctant about their professional plans and find the right ones: dedicated, and aware of the value of the offer they can get from a reliable employer.

To wrap up, it’s worth mentioning that outsourcing and team augmentation in particular are more cost-efficient in contrast to hiring an in-house team. First of all, by delegating all managerial and financial issues to the partner, an employer saves money which otherwise was spent on HR managers and accountants. Secondly, “outsourcing” is a synonym for “remote”, so, a company doesn’t face office maintenance expenditures. In the case of a team expanding, the only challenging task for an employer is onboarding and knowledge transfer. When a candidate is motivated enough, onboarding gets easy.