IT Staff Augmentation vs. In-House Recruitment: Which is the Right Choice for Your Business?

When it comes to the burdensome process of identifying, qualifying and ultimately recruiting highly-sought after IT professionals for your business, what is the best approach? As cliché as it sounds, the best approach depends on the specific needs of a given business/organization. Generally speaking, businesses face a number of challenges in recruiting qualified IT professionals, especially for roles and projects that require niche-expertise or have unique job requirements. Aspects such as required experience with specialized technologies, onboarding processes and timeframes, and associated cost/expenses make it most difficult to effectively use traditional in-house recruitment methods to bring on IT talent.

With an average time of nearly 44 days to hire a qualified IT professional, it’s quite the undertaking to onboard new resources. While time and fiscal resources accrue in the search for the desired technical professionals, another more efficient option should be considered: IT Staff Augmentation.

What is IT Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation allows businesses to onboard needed talent without the hassle of dedicating their own recruiting and human resources teams towards the effort, and instead leveraging the capabilities of a third-party vendor. For example, QED National has provided IT Staff Augmentation services for nearly 30 years, connecting IT consultants with countless public and private sector organizations for specific roles, projects and initiatives. On average it takes QED National 4 days to identify and submit a qualified consultant to any given client. For many organizations, Staff Augmentation proves to be a preferred alternative for many organizations in need of both part-time and full-time workers (in lieu of direct W2 hiring) to help them complete ongoing tasks and/or specific projects, under their direction.

While Staff Augmentation resources are supplied by external third-party vendors such as QED National, they are typically under the direction of the client. This grants organizations the ability to leverage the technical skillsets and expertise of qualified professionals as needed, without having to fulfill tedious internal hiring processes. With Staff Augmentation, you also avoid paying for benefits such as vacation and sick time, which are required for W2 employees. Organizations frequently exercise the option to renew/extend consultant contracts after their assignments end, or even convert those consultants to full-time employees. Choosing to work with an IT Staff Augmentation provider offers confidence, versatility, and cost-effectiveness to help organizations achieve their important objectives and goals.

What is In-House Recruitment?

In-house recruitment is when an organization identifies and onboards desired resources directly as their own W2 employees. Most larger organizations have recruiting and human resources departments responsible for identifying and onboarding workers for internal roles and needs. This includes recruiting talent for new and existing roles, and managing all aspects of qualifying and onboarding resources. In-House Recruitment might be the better option if your organization is comfortable:

• Waiting for internal processes to complete before fulfilling your specific need/role
• Regularly evaluating unqualified resources/resumes
• Redirecting human capital from other tasks in search of highly specialized professionals

Is IT Staff Augmentation Right for You?

As provided earlier, the main benefits of IT Staff Augmentation are versatility, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Essentially, all industries use staff augmentation! Staff augmentation is extremely common in large organizations such as the Fortune 500 or within Government, but it benefits all organizations across the healthcare, education, transportation, power/utilities, and manufacturing industries. As such, how do you know if IT Staff Augmentation is the correct choice for your organization? Some reasons to consider IT Staff Augmentation for your organization include the following:

• Business/Organization Growth – to meet the increased demands of a growing organization, additional resources are needed. Staff augmentation can quickly supplement your workforce to balance workloads and scale operations on a part or full-time basis.
• Temporary Projects – if you need assistance executing temporary projects and initiatives, perhaps including skillsets not otherwise needed by your organization, Staff Augmentation is a great option. Consultants are flexible, adaptable, readily available and accustomed to working on short-term contracts.
• Work Overload – if your organization is too busy and ultimately undermanned to effectively complete work assignments, Staff Augmentation removes the burden by enabling the growth of your team quickly and efficiently.

“With staff augmentation, the time spent obtaining qualified resources is cut minimally by 75%,” says Jessica Gary, QED National’s Recruiting Operations Manager, “because, we’re not starting from scratch – we’ve built a network and pipeline of specialized resources across all types of IT roles, who are pre-vetted and ready to work.”

Why hire QED National for your IT Staff Augmentation needs?

IT Staff Augmentation allows QED National to supplement your team with valuable resources with which you can pursue a continued work relationship. Our customers refer to QED National as a trusted partner, which is why 98% of organization’s work with QED National more than once. Our proven method of identifying, screening, and presenting information technology professionals has garnered QED National a reputation for delivering the highest quality IT staffing services in the industry.

If you’re interested in learning more about IT Staff Augmentation services, please contact us a 212.481.6868 or [email protected].