Hiring new talent is always a tedious and challenging task. Plus the outcome is unpredictable.
That's why most companies keep on hiring and firing employees. Not only it is time-wasting but also deteriorates the market value of a company. Thus, it is recommended to take help from consultants and hire talent with proven skills as well as expertise.
But here's an important thing.
Hiring developers is a long-term investment. While some companies own a team of dedicated developers, others keep on hiring developers whenever required. Whichever option you choose, working with local developers is always expensive, especially in countries like the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia.
Here the staff augmentation model comes into the picture!
What is IT Staff Augmentation?
Staff augmentation is a popular business strategy, wherein you can hire developers from another organization located in a country with a low cost of living. The organization adopts this approach to quickly scale their internal team and meet the IT requirements.
IT Staff Augmentation model is recommended;
- If you already have a team working in your local office but willing to extend or scale it.
- Your team is building a product that needs a specialized set of skills to fulfill your project & business requirements.
- The developers you intend to hire are not available in your nearby location.
Here are the biggest issues with the hiring process;
Staff Augmentation model is very helpful in the IT industry, as a highly specialized team for large projects is often required. When companies don’t have the burden to hire developers and sustaining them, they tend to focus on the core business objectives.
Common Challenges
- The hiring process is expensive.
- There are different expenditures involved in the hiring process.
With the staff augmentation approach, you pay developers for the work done only. Moreover, it eliminates all the recruiting, training, or any other expenses related to hardware or software requirements.
In short, you can expect your dedicated offshore developers to get started right away!
1. Hiring is a Lengthy Process
Organization requires extra help in case of sudden firing, resignation acquisitions, or for large projects which extended the capability and ability of the currently working staff. The companies are in a hurry to fill the vacancies because the productivity of the entire business is at risk.
The main issue is the total amount of time that is spent on finding, onboarding, hiring, and training the new set of employees while handing over the task to them.
Talking about staff augmentation vs managed services, always consider the IT staff augmentation model.
Glassdoor states that it takes approximately 23 days to complete the hiring process. This number can increase or decrease according to the hiring practices.
Phone calls, Skype interviews, face-to-face interviews, and skill tests are very time consuming that require a good amount of investment. When the applicant is actually selected, background verification may add another week to the process. If the candidate backs out a day or two before the joining, all the efforts go in vain.
When you hire a developer, it takes at least one month's time to join. Then the developer is trained for at least two weeks to a month before he starts working at peak efficiency. At a higher management level, it might take a month before achieving the expected outcome.
On the contrary, while hiring top offshore developers online via the IT Staff Augmentation model, you can expect your team to start working within a day or two. They not only work efficiently but also add value as subject matter leaders.
Their turnaround time for full productivity is less than a week and not a month. So, it becomes beneficial for businesses as it gives them the opportunity to hit the ground running whenever a loophole arises.
2. Turnover is High
As the economy improves, it becomes more challenging to hire developers in the office premises.
IT Staff Augmentation Model has the ability to tackle this issue comprehensively. It provides the company with skilled individuals having steady, consistent capacity and workforce. Random resignations don’t disrupt the productivity of the deliverables.
Surprising Benefits of IT Staff Augmentation Model
1. Reduces the Recruitment Time
Planning and organizing a recruitment drive is a resource-intensive activity. From creating a job description (JD) to updating it on different job portals. Shortlisting to interviewing takes a lot of time and effort. If anything goes wrong in the hiring process, the company has to start from scratch.
But, when it comes to IT Staff Augmentation Model, the task of hiring developers is completely the responsibility of the staffing agency. It is just about a matter of days for the staff augmentation team.
If you collaborate with the right service provider, even setting up your offshore development center is quick & easy.
Recommended read: Ultimate Guide to Offshore Development Center
2. Efficient Staff Management
When compared to the managed services, offshore IT staff augmentation services provides more control over the team workflow. In addition to this, actions can be taken immediately.
3. Focus on Talent and not Vendors
When you look for top-notch software developers, make sure you pay attention to the total experience of the company in this industry.
Target the skills you require and then narrow down your options. Let's consider that you are planning to build a mobile app using Flutter. So, you should only focus on the staff augmentation companies that can help you hire mobile app developers with hands-on experience building Flutter apps.
The staffing service provider gives you an opportunity to work with the best, without any long-term commitments. You can hire one developer or a team, the choice is completely yours.
4. Quality on a Budget
Paying full-time wages to the in-house team may be costly, especially for startups. You have to provide other allowances and bonuses from time to time to make your employees happy. But this is not the case when you opt for IT staff augmentation model.
You can save big by hiring qualified developers having the ability to produce the same quality of work and that too at the fraction of cost commitment over time.
5. Access to a Talented Pool of Experts
The organization only decides the skillset for the job and the staff augmentation agency doesn’t take much time to give the requisite experts. Staff augmentation gives access to an organization of the global repository of a dedicated team of software developers, making it possible to work with professionals across the globe.
In simple terms, IT staff augmentation model is the best option to build a team of remote developers in a foreign country and fulfill your business goals.
Companies can best leverage external and internal resources, look for loopholes, and fill the gaps if any by the staff augmentation. This staffing solution service facilitates access to professionals while lowering the training and development experts required to enhance the resources while being a part of the project.
6. Reduction of the Operational Cost
The recruitment and staffing services of augmentation save hiring cost incurred on full-time IT recruitment services and also saves various additional operational costs. The hiring is paid on the project basis while avoiding payment of full-time salary at the time when the project isn’t underway.
The company has to provide benefits to full-time employee benefits like insurance and other perks. But all this gets eliminated when employees are outsourced. This brings down the overall operational cost.
7. Enhanced Flexibility and Scalability
Upscaling and downscaling is easier when you adopt the IT staff augmentation model. It brings another level of flexibility and scalability to the table. It is always good to augment the existing staff with new resources as per the demand rather than recruiting full-time employees and then laying them off.
How to Make IT Staff Augmentation Model Work for your Business?
The IT staff augmentation model can turn highly effective for your business if you will implement it correctly. Consider the following:
1. Choose Projects having a Fixed Deadline
Staff Augmentation works best for one-time projects. This type of project has the most viable option to avail of the benefits of staff augmentation. If you want to create a website or an app for your business, instead of looking for local developers, you should hire offshore staff and get started within a week.
There is a reason why staff augmentation feels like a perfect fit. Hiring a new developer on the project basis is a good decision as compared to recruiting someone on a full-time basis that will be one time only.
2. Ensure Clear Communication
Clear communication is important for the success of every business. You have to develop the process early in the development lifecycle to enable open communication.
Team collaboration and project management tools like Basecamp and Slack encourage idea-sharing. The lack of communication may also result in major miscommunication. And this may have a detrimental effect on the overall project. So, it is very important to communicate when augmenting new employees.
3. Define Roles and Responsibilities
Defining roles to every member of the project ensures that responsibilities have to be met at their end. Both in-house and offshore developers should understand the core objectives of the project and how they play an important role in the vision.
Project managers and team leaders should ensure that tasks are distributed among the team members equally. So that everything should get completed on time and as per the expected standard. Allow the team members to share their opinion or feedback, that may prove beneficial for the project.
For the IT staff augmentation model to be effective, it is highly imperative to implement the development workflow. Every member should have a clear picture of all the steps involved in the process and which task is allocated to whom.
Having a documented workflow works best for the whole team.
4. Embrace Tools and Technology
As per the project Management Institute report, companies taking the help of project management tools specialize in meeting the budget constraints while adhering to the quality standards.
To get the best out of the augmented team, companies have to adopt project management tools and technologies. Tools like Asana and Jira keeps the project on track while monitoring their current status.
Recommended Read - Project Management Statistics: 45 Stats You Can't Ignore
5. Make Sure to Document the Codes
Code documentation is the backbone of every app. Organizations should keep a check to ensure that the outsourcing team members keep a record of their code at different stages.
The process requires continuous updation and maintenance. When there are multiple developers taking care of the same project, it becomes easier to figure out the bugs and potential risks.
Follow a collective approach of code documentation that works for everyone. Tools like Swagger help helps in implementing clear mythologies for the code documentation.
6. Identify the Skill Gap in your Company
Every business process requires an in-depth analysis. This can be instrumental in providing you the insights regarding the talent gaps this present within the organization.
Whether it is about evaluating the current project needs or planning for the upcoming projects, going for a talent audit is essential. This helps in identifying the present talent deficits.
Once you fill the loopholes, determine the requirement of the candidate. Do you need an external resource for the long-term or just for a couple of days? It is where the staff augmentation model helps you to bridge the gap.
7. Identify the Skill Set Requirements
Once the project role is specified, the process of finding the right person begins. And you can easily do that by shaking hands with an offshore software technology partner.
Hiring developers from an IT staffing company on a short term basis has the benefit of being experienced in handling the same type of project like yours. And this way they will bring their own expertise to the table which is an added advantage. The breadth of knowledge of dedicated developers who have worked on diverse projects is way more than the ones who work on similar types of projects for a longer time period.
The Bottom Line
Staff augmentation model allows a company to sustain its competitive advantage. As this model provides companies with a huge list of benefits like less operational cost, less legal responsibilities, and paperwork, it provides more flexibility.
Augmentation addresses various issues giving the company a steady and consistent capacity of the workforce. Augmentation saves time, money, and effort involved in the hiring process. Every company looking for growth should seriously consider this hiring model.
With the right developers hired by the staff augmentation model, you will be able to gain a new perspective on how things can work. The efficiency and disciple that the experts bring will encourage the in-house staff as well to improve their performance.
Do you have a project coming up? Want to embrace the IT staff augmentation model for this new project? Get in touch with us or drop your line of requirements at info@yourteaminindia.com and our team will contact you shortly.
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