What is Resource and Staff Augmentation?

Lyudmila Kucher
Lyudmila Kucher

I specialize in outstaffing and staff augmentation, and I have extensive experti...

34 posts

In an increasingly online world, creating and implementing well-designed solutions quickly—sometimes faster than conventional hiring methods allow. Resource and staff augmentation is an employment model that enables you to onboard and offboard highly-skilled, outsourced talent in as little as a few days without breaking your budget.

How Does Staff Augmentation Work?

The meaning of IT staff augmentation is supplementing labor resources externally. It’s what organizations and businesses use when they want to hire expert IT talent without the time, red tape, and hiring costs. Augmented staff correlate with you and your team just like a traditionally hired employee would—and you can manage them the same way.

There is no need to worry about the typical overhead costs of adding a new employee to an IT project, like software and hardware expenses, taxes, and hiring paperwork. This is the job of the augmentation company.

Staff augmentation services are what businesses draw on to identify outstaffing professionals. Need to hire a coder online? These services specialize in helping you find, interview and hire top IT talent. Once you have identified a skill or labor gap or want to start a new project, you can begin your augmentation process by reaching out to an industry-leading staffing service.

Augmented staff are typically used for projects that are less than a year or two, but there are other outstaffing options for more extended periods. For example, say you are mid-project and realize that to meet the project deadline, you’ll need another two skilled employees to meet requirements—pairing with Talmatic is a great option.

You and your team may be ready to start a project, but you realize you need a specialist with skills in an exact language, for example, PHP or Ruby, or a special framework to get started. Instead of investing thousands of dollars and many work hours finding, interviewing, and hiring a new candidate, Talmatic can pair you with pre-vetted professionals with the exact experience you need.

This is because you tap into a global talent pool when you use a service like Talmatic. In addition, you don’t have to worry about finding someone willing to relocate for a short-term position because augmented staff work remotely—and they can start right away.

What are Staff Augmentation Services? Are They All The Same?

There are three main models that work in any industry— for short and long projects, but depending on your requirements, one type may be better suited to your needs. The meaning of IT staff augmentation is outsourcing coders–so it fits the under definition of staff augmentation.

Type One: Commodity

Commodity hiring is best when a business requires reliable workers to perform a task but doesn’t need a specific skill set. This type of outsourcing is customarily used in factory work, customer service, and hospitality.

Type Two: Skill-Based

The second level is skill-based hiring, where you are looking for candidates with skills like customer relationship management or data entry. When hiring skill-based candidates, the level of expertise in those skills is not critically important—meaning that you are planning on onboarding them in a way that works best for your organization. Skill-based augmentation is used widely across numerous industries, from healthcare to copywriting.

Type Three: Highly-Skilled

Highly-skilled hiring is often used in the IT, finance, marketing, and insurance sectors. Candidates at this level have an expert level of experience that is only found through a combination of education and hands on experience. If the skill level is essential to your project’s success, you want to hire someone with mastery of the skills you need.

When Should You Use Staff Augmentation Services?

There is no golden rule for using augmentation services. While this staffing model is definitely better than Upwork or any other freelancing approach and is most commonly used to onboard experts during a project already underway, it is equally useful to pair with an outsourcing service before you begin.

No matter your unique situation, reaching out to an augmentation service is a good idea, because it can provide consulting and support at the beginning of a project. In addition, their experts can help you develop and discover solutions to roadblocks. So, even if your project isn’t underway, staff augmentation services are an excellent tool to help you achieve your goals faster.

Your In-House Team Is At Capacity

An unexpected opportunity showed itself, but your current team cannot take on additional responsibilities. You can increase your resources quickly by outstaffing other talented developers. Say your team uses a specific framework that isn’t typical, but when you hire offshore ruby on rails developers, you don’t have to go through a difficult, time-consuming search to find the right candidate. Simply share your needs with staff augmentation, who can promptly pair you with the talent you need—no matter how niche the skill required.

Your Project Needs Staffing Flexibility

You’re about to launch a startup and are uncertain about the outcomes of your planning—and things tend to change fast when creating a new business. So instead of extending resources to find and hire candidates traditionally, staffing services can find talent for as little or as long as you need.

For instance, when you hire offshore web developers, you won’t only be building up the core of your business, but you will be growing your web presence much quicker than many other startups—giving you an extra competitive edge.

Other good examples of when to use these services are:

  • Complete time-sensitive projects successfully
  • Diversify your team’s software expertise and experience
  • Reduce turnover
  • A bridge for hire or interim hire
  • Accelerate delivery time
  • Close a skill gap

What are the Benefits of Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation is a powerful tool that can give your business the agility it needs to keep up with a fast-paced global market—and this is especially true for IT.

Market analysts say that the software as a service industry is expected to grow by more than 10% each year for at least the next five years. Over 100,000 IT positions are currently unfilled in the United States alone, so imagine the labor need in five years. Head off the labor bottleneck by outstaffing from an agency that can easily find developers online right for your demand.

Maybe you want to hire a unit3d developer but haven’t been able to find the right candidate because they are so in demand. Staff augmentation service can pair you with a list of candidates quickly, due to their global reach. So, what other perks are there?

Staff Augmentation is Cost-Effective

When working with a staffing service, you have the opportunity to choose talent from all over the world. Due to different economic circumstances, exchange rates, and other financial aspects, the rate of compensation for developers varies while the skill stays the same.

For example, when you hire sharepoint developers from Belarus or Ukraine can save you as much as 60%. This is because the hourly rate for their skills, adjusted for their market, is lower than the compensation expected of developers in the US or Western Europe. This doesn’t mean that they are less skilled—in fact, the opposite is true. Offshore programmers in these countries are highly trained and backed by governments who invest heavily in IT. Just refer to Toptal company reviews to compare the costs of outstaffed remote developers to the salaries of freelancers worldwide.

Staff Augmentation is Convenient

If you’re mid-project, the last thing you want to do is reallocate resources to start finding the talent you need. Traditional hiring methods can add thousands to your costs and take months—with no guarantee that it’ll be a good fit.

Staff augmentation, like nearshore custom software development, permits you to find a candidate with the exact skills you need without the wait time—and if you find yourself needing another candidate, augmentation services can help you build your perfect team.

Resource augmentation services also test their candidates to verify the competency presented in their resumes, and they are pre-vetted to guarantee reliability and dependability. In short, convenience is the meaning of staff augmentation services.

Are There Augmentation Challenges?

There are some setbacks to resource augmentation, but if you are working with a dependable service, you can be assured that they are also aware of those risks. That is why Talmatic offers a trial to ensure that the candidates are the best fit for you and your business.

Dependability & Turnaround

Hiring offshore developers may raise concerns over the dependability and turnaround time. Different time zones and language barriers might present a challenge, but many remote developers are fluent in English.

Although the staff might come from a second international company, you can consider these employees as part of your team. Staff augmentation means more resources for you, not more work. You oversee their productivity just as you do to your in-house team. It’s not hiring a contractor for a small project and only seeing the result, all while at the mercy of their timelines.

Security

Some have previously voiced concerns about the security risks of collaborating with another company on sensitive or internal projects. This is a valid concern, but a top service will have support, documentation, and quality assurance throughout the entirety of the project. So reach out today and hire your next developer with a risk-free trial.

Read also

More Arrow right

Best Upwork Alternatives

Lyudmila Kucher

Calculate the costs of hiring top developers with our free estimate.

No obligation to hire. No commitment from you.

Photo manager
George Fironov
Co-founder & CEO
  • Skype
  • Linkedin

This 20-Minute Call Will Change How You Hire Developers

Discover how Talmatic can help you solve your hiring headaches. In this personalized call, learn how we match you with developers that fit your technology and team needs.

In a short call, we would like to:

  • Learn about your development needs
  • Explain our process to match you with qualified, vetted developers from our network
  • Share next steps to finding the right match, often within a few days

Not sure where to start?
Let’s have a chat