Regardless of size, all businesses can benefit from IT staffing to help grow their company. Whether it’s bringing on a senior developer to ramp up capabilities for your next bridge round or building a new nearshore office to support your HQ 1 teams, IT staffing services are a critical part of scaling for many companies.
However, depending on the size of the company, the product or service they provide, and their current technical needs the way they deploy these services can vary greatly. While startups and small businesses mostly shoot for tech ramp up, looking for labor cost efficiencies or tech roadmap completion, medium and large enterprises focus on long-term growth and efficiencies of scale.
The Small Business and Startup Perspective
Small businesses and startups are at times reluctant to tap into IT staffing given their limited capital resources and the bad reputation outsourcing and staffing has had over the years. However, those who decide to employ these tactics with trusted partners find that they are able to complement their existing tech team or build a tech team.
This applies to all types of businesses that exist in the small business and startup realm – from tech startups, hardware startups, to marketing agencies and small service companies.
These companies often have one or more of these goals:
- Continue company growth into a midsized company with costs in mind
- Continue or accelerate product launches or expand their service or product to obtain a bridge round
- Keep labor costs low to improve ROI and cash flow
- Delegate non-essential tasks to a secondary team for completion
- Augment current team based on demand-spikes and skill-sets
Specific tactics small businesses and startups employ come in the form of hiring for specific skill sets, hiring on-demand for tech roadmap peaks, or building 1-5 person teams of the complete development cycle.
The most popular roles startups, small businesses and marketing agencies hire for are:
- Front End Developer
- Full Stack Developer
- Back End Developer
- UX/UI Designer
- Mobile Developer
- Web Developer
- QA Engineers
- DevOps Engineers
For small companies or startups wanting to utilize a staffing agency to help expand their capabilities, here are a few things to consider:
- Find an agency that specializes in what your company needs. There are a lot of generalized staffing agencies that can promise to help but don’t know the market well enough to find specialized talent. A niche staffing agency, like one that focuses specifically on tech talent and developers, is more likely to not only understand what you need, but have the depth of connections to find the right candidate.
- Be clear on what you need and how much you’re able to spend. Working with a staffing firm is a chance to build a long term relationship with an agency that can help you scale in the long run. Because of this, communicating needs and setting budget expectations helps keep agencies from wasting time bringing you candidates that are either not quite right or out of budget.
- Have a plan for onboarding. Hiring the right people is only half the battle. Once a staffing agency helps find qualified candidates in your budget, it’s important that you have a plan in place for how to get the new hire up to speed. Fortunately, a lot of staffing agencies have resources that help outline onboarding processes.
Again, too many small businesses see hiring an IT staffing service as out of their league and unnecessary for their goals. But that simply is just not the case.
If you don’t use a staffing firm, the limited staff and resources of a small company will need to be spent on sifting through resumes, vetting and interviewing potential candidates, navigating the cultural and linguistic challenges of near sourcing. In the end, small companies will often pay more in time and get a less qualified candidate to fill the role.
The Medium and Large Business Perspective
For medium and large businesses, there’s a high probability that they have someone on staff or even a team dedicated to recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new developers. However, some companies decide to complement their existing efforts with specialized firms that allow them to hire faster, to find specialized talent, and reduce their recruiting costs. On the other hand, companies who’re looking to build outsourced nearshore teams, tapping into an existing specialized IT staffing agency in the region simplifies the whole process drastically.
Medium-sized companies have similar needs. IT staffing not only helps them find the right people to expand their team but can also help in managing the intricacies of operating that team as the company scales.
For large companies, IT staffing can help establish a long-term tech team to help support ongoing growth needs. This can be in areas like customer service, support with front-end or back-end development, or even just overflow work as the company grows.
The above considerations apply to large and medium-sized companies as well. However, there are a few additional things to consider:
- Communicate long-term goals for the team you are needing to hire. Depending on the goal, the staffing firm can not only help find the right people, but also the right structure for building the team. This is particularly important for companies wanting to hire long-term employees and build a presence abroad.
- Cultivate the relationship with your staffing agency. There is a good chance you will be working with your staffing firm for a while, possibly on multiple different hiring projects. To get the most out of your staffing firm, see them as an extension of your own company. Make sure there is good communication and investment long term.
For companies that want to establish a nearshore office in a relatively fast timeline, the Build, Operate, Transfer model provides a particular advantage when partnering with a staffing agency.
The Build Operate Transfer model (or BOT) is a unique service to help medium to large businesses scale through dedicated teams abroad without the need for relocating staff to build out the infrastructure necessary for success.
It starts with building. The IT staffing firm helps build a team through their network to put the right people in the right spots for the long-term growth of the company.
Once done, the IT Staffing firm effectively operates the HR and management of the remote team as it gets started. That means the company expanding into a location outside of the U.S. can learn the ins and outs of operating a foreign team while the team is already working and growing.
As the company gets to a point where they feel comfortable bringing the team into their own HR structures and practices, the IT staffing firm transfers responsibility back to the company.
At its core, BOT is about minimizing the risk of developing a foreign team and maximizing long-term effectiveness.
A common misconception medium to large companies have is that IT staffing firms are only helpful when trying to find specialized talent in a foreign market. Although that is definitely a benefit, there is a lot more an IT staffing agency can do for larger companies wanting to utilize the low cost of foreign developers to scale and augment their capabilities.
CodersLink – Growing Remote Tech Teams in LATAM
CodersLink empowers scaling companies to build, grow and manage remote tech teams in Latin America. Through remote staffing and direct placements, we ensure the best companies find the best talent to continue growing their technology teams, fill skill gaps and respond to scaling needs.
To understand how CodersLink can help your company grow through low cost, high skilled LATAM talent, connect with one of our staffing associates.
