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An IT recruiter, especially one of great caliber, is not easy to come by, especially for smaller or medium-sized companies. And without a great recruiter, you cannot have a great team. That’s why a lot of people are turning to IT staff augmentation to augment their IT teams, filling the talent gaps or making niche development possible, especially in newer or more advanced technologies such as VR or AR development and Elasticsearch.
What is IT Staff Augmentation?
Let us now look at staff augmentation meaning. The outsourcing of few members for IT roles in a company, generally on the payroll of a third-party staffing agency, is referred to as IT staff augmentation. The process of IT staff augmentation involves adding members to an existing team of software professionals and does not include building one from scratch. The outsourced members of the team in IT staff augmentation become a part of the in-house IT team for a short period.
Benefits of IT Staff Augmentation Services
The benefits of the IT staff augmentation services are-
1. Dedicated, on-demand skilled candidate/team
Depending on your business needs and role requirements, your third-party staffing provider will select and deploy a talented, certified, experienced candidate to address the talent gap and work on your specified project requirements.
2. Agile, Flexible and scalable
If you require a skilled professional to be deployed in your organization on an urgent basis, a staffing provider will work swiftly to equip your team with a specialist. Based on your requirement this model allows you to scale up or down as per your business needs.
3. Cost effective
A permanent employee can typically cost you 1.25 to 1.4 times the salary if your account for the benefits, compensation etc. With a staff augmentation model, you can hire temporary staff who will not be part of a contract that accounts for benefits, thereby saving overhead costs.
4. The elimination of a training phase
A certain amount of training is necessary when you onboard a new employee. But with a staff-augmented employee, you can eliminate the training part almost entirely saving you resources like time and effort.
5. End-to-end recruitment
A third-party staffing provider will have an experienced HR (Human Resources) team that handles every aspect related to HR management right from the on-demand supply of skilled candidates, profiling, and selection to onboarding them and any other function that falls under the candidate’s care.
How it Works: The Process of IT Staff Augmentation
1. Identification of the problem
Identifying the shortfalls in your team is a good place to start. Do you have a talent gap in the organization or are you working on a niche project? Discussing with in-house employees is also a good idea as it gives you better clarity on how to go about solving the problem. Communicate your needs with your staffing provider who will then go about analyzing the problem further in a bid to arrive at a solution.
2. Specify the requirements
Defining your needs is crucial in IT staff augmentation. Do you want to have the staffing provider help you with finding people with specific skills, define a marketplace strategy that will work for you, help with negotiations with the candidates etc. Once you have specified the requirements, make sure you communicate them in a clear manner to your relationship manager within the staffing agency.
3. Search Strategy
Upon sharing the problem statement and specifying the requirements, the staffing company takes over in the search process to find the right candidate(s). The staffing company will decide what sourcing strategies to use, what channels to focus on and who should be the main people within their company working on the search and interview processes and how they should be organized.
4. On-boarding
Once the candidates who will be part of the team in the company are selected, you must begin onboarding them in your company. As a staffing company, we help the new members augmenting your IT staff get better acquainted with the company culture and policies. As an IT staff augmentation service provider, we will ensure that all the requisite steps are followed before the individuals become a part of your company.
5. On-going support
To ensure that the employees cooperate with you, the employer, we work hard to get both parties acclimatized to the new ways of working. As a reputable third-party provider of IT staff augmentation services, we ensure that we take feedback too from both employer as well as employee to ensure that the transition happens well and that the project is completed on time.
Use Cases for IT Staff Augmentation
Quick Team Scaling
You have a project that needs a business analyst and a mobile developer in addition to the AI/ML engineers you already have working on it. Not only this, but you also need to add them in a couple of weeks. Staff augmentation is a great option.
Work on Niche Projects
You have a project that requires expertise in CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software, and some advanced modelling and simulation tools and you do not know who can do it. In such cases, the best thing to do would be to consult a staffing agency who would supplement your existing team in a way that you would be reading for any challenge in the road ahead. IT staff augmentation for the win, again!
Fill Talent Gaps
You have a blockchain specialist on board, but his experience is too low, and he needs guidance. You just wish you had someone at a managerial level to show him how it is done and to correct him when he takes a wrong step in development. IT staff augmentation can help here too!
Improved productivity
Adding on the right members to your IT staff can improve the productivity of the entire team, as each person now has their own designated set of duties and do not have to overmanage anything. An example of this is hiring a front-end developer well versed in a specific technology in addition to a back-end developer.
Access to a global talent pool
It is a well-known fact that software engineers from India have remarkable intellect and sense of application. What if a company from Germany, with already a well-established team wants to onboard two more engineers as consultants, just to benefit from their knowledge? This is possible too with staff augmentation.
Choosing the Right IT Staff Augmentation Partner
When it comes to availing oneself of IT staff augmentation services, one must always pick the right IT staff augmentation partner. Picking the right IT staff augmentation partner allows to bring in the right talent, increase productivity, and reduce the time to market for solutions developed by the company. The cost of development could also come down as the time is reduced and lesser reviews may be required. Do you want to win the IT solution development game? Opt for Alp Consulting’s IT Staff Augmentation service and gain an advantage.
