How To Best Extend Your Tech Team
An analysis of the most common situations where development projects are lacking tech specialists and suggestions for the optimal team extension solution for each case.
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Join For FreeThere are numerous ways to hire a new member for your business’s tech team. The global market is full of great software engineers. However, finding the right way to extend your development team isn’t always easy. This guide will help you prioritize your needs and ultimately find the best way to hire developers for your projects.
In this 4-minute read, we will explore the different ways to hire your next developers. Moreover, we will analyze the most important questions you should ask to determine which type of hiring is best for you. Finally, we will provide some tips that help when hiring a software developer.
Ways To Hire Developers
In-House Developers
By hiring in-house developers, we mean the traditional means of hiring—when you seek local talents to work for you. This type of business relationship is one of the most stable ones. When adding an in-house developer to your tech team, you have to offer a monthly salary. This solution is more expensive, but is also risk-free because you will add a motivated person to your company.
Outstaffing
By outstaffing, we mean a business relationship where you are “renting” a specialist from a development company in such a way that they work in your team (receives tasks and management).
However, you do not pay a monthly salary to the developer, and thus you are not committed to an employment relationship. All you have to do in this kind of hiring is pay a commission for the services to the specialist’s company.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing, like outstaffing, is another way to transfer your software development. Nevertheless, with outsourcing, you transfer the entire process, including the tech team and project leadership to a software development company.
IT outsourcing and outstaffing services are an excellent solution for companies that can't afford the expensive US salaries but need to hire a great team of developers or an individual.
Freelancing
By hiring a freelancer you will be working with an individual specialist on a contractual basis. Due to the competition on freelance platforms like Upwork, you can find and hire a freelance developer who will do the job at a lower price than in-house or outsourced developers.
On the other hand, while hiring a freelancer is cheaper, delays, time zone difference difficulties, or even project cancellations make this a riskier choice than in-house or outsourcing services.
Questions To Ask Yourself To Determine the Best Type of Hiring
It becomes obvious that each type of hiring has its advantages and disadvantages. That’s why evaluating and understanding your objectives is critical to cut out the inappropriate options for your business. Let’s dive deeper into the questions you should ask to identify what best suits your needs.
What Is the Complexity and Importance of the Workload?
If you need to extend your tech team for the consummation of complex and important tasks, you need options with maximum control over what is happening. Thus, in-house and outstaffing are the best ways to go.
Outsourcing could also be a great way of hiring for important projects, but only if you have found an outsourcing partner that you trust. On the other hand, freelancers are not the ideal type of hiring for complex and long-term projects.
What Is the Scope of the Work?
By identifying your scope of work, you will gain an understanding of whether you need a team or an individual specialist. You will also anticipate how long your upcoming project(s) last and how much effort is needed to manage either option. Likewise, you will assess whether your company has the resources needed or if it’s better for you to look for external models, such as outsourcing.
How Quickly Do You Need Results?
This question directly affects the number of developers you need. In theory, all mentioned methods allow you to recruit the required number of new developers, but some of them (outsourcing/outstaffing) will help you do this faster. This is very important if the speed of work is a key necessity for you.
Do You Have the Resources You Need?
This is a crucial question that you should answer honestly. More often than not, outsourcing becomes the choice of companies that cannot (or don’t want to) invest additional time, human, or money resources in managing additional technical specialists.
What Is Your Budget?
Last but not least, identifying the development costs is one of the most important factors, and should always be considered. This will affect whether you can afford to work with a team (which is faster) or with an individual developer; with local staff, or offshore software developers.
Also, answering this question will help you understand if you can spend extra money on recruiting, or if you need a ready-made solution from outsourcing companies.
Freelancer |
Outsourcing company |
Outstaffing |
In-house developer |
|
How fast you can hire a developer |
+++ |
+++ |
+++ |
+ |
Ability to hire a team (2+) of developers |
+ |
++ |
++ |
++ |
How fast you can hire a team of devs |
+ |
++ |
++ |
+ |
Hiring (recruitment) costs |
+ |
+ |
++ |
+++ |
Development costs |
+ |
++ |
++ |
+++ |
Average duration of cooperation |
+ |
++ |
++ |
+++ |
Safety of cooperation (less risk) |
+ |
++ |
+++ |
+++ |
Tips To Help With Hiring
The tips below will help you optimize your hiring reliability. Asking for recommendations from someone is the most reliable way to find a good employee, regardless of the format of work. Trustworthy platforms like Upwork (for freelancers), or Clutch (for B2B), and YouTeam (for outsourcing services) provide this kind of recommendation or carefully select the developers on their platforms (talent vetting).
Going beyond local hiring is also beneficial because of: cost savings, a greater choice of specialists, and the ability to fill a vacancy faster. You should not be afraid to ask hiring platforms for advice. Upwork has an AI that can suggest potentially interesting candidates for your required task. Likewise, YouTeam will match candidates to your project for free; the only thing you have to pay for is the chosen developer's salary.
Conclusion
In this article, we identified the best ways to extend your tech team. To do that, we first mentioned the different employment types you can choose from. Then, we explored why the complexity and scope of your work and your budget are crucial to finding the best type of hiring. Ultimately, we concluded that asking for recommendations and advice, and going beyond local hiring are valuable tips for any hiring process.
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