IT Staffing Models: Which One Will Be Best for Your Business?

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Mariia Bolgar Head of Eastern Europe Partnership

A suitable actor for a relevant role has never been as important as today’s changing business requirements. Especially when the next digitalization wave is gathering momentum each day, and businesses need robust tech solutions that will handle the workload, complete all business tasks, and meet clients’ needs.

It’s often the case when a company doesn’t have enough resources, and it has to address the IT staffing services. These constant needs have shaped the strong IT staffing market, estimated to reach USD 39 bln by 2024 in the US.

So, in this article, we’ll talk about IT staffing and its models, how to understand that your company needs it, and how to approach the choice of the one you need.

What Is IT Staffing and How to Do It Right?

So, what is IT staffing itself?

IT staffing is a service providing talent in a contractual, consulting, or permanent position to match the short or long-term goals of the software development project. 

The fundamental goal of IT staffing is to relieve a company or HR dept from the burden of searching and screening a vast amount of applicants.

Read also: Why Do You Need the Project Discovery? Read more

The perfect cooperation of an IT staffing provider and a company searching for talent is based on trustworthiness and a shared goal of finding and integrating suitable experts into technical and cultural environments.

How to Recognize the Need for an IT Staffing Provider?

There may be many signs and cases, but consider the following ones for starters:

1. You don’t have enough time for searching and vetting applicants;
2. Your company can’t complete staffing at the proper time with the instruments available in the company;
3. Your HR Dept doesn’t fully understand the IT requirements and skills needed from talents;
4. Your company doesn’t have total staff level, budget, and payroll support for continual IT staffing;
5. The company can’t support all the mentioned points regularly.

Once you spotted at least any of these points, it’s time to address IT staffing.

How to Approach IT Staffing?

When referring to IT staffing providers, it’s not only about their capability, it’s first of all about covering YOUR needs. So before picking up any provider and model, do your homework and fulfill research.

1. Classify business or project goals. They must be in line with your strategic plan so that you could align your decisions accordingly.
2. Assess your current staffing environment. Collect the staffing information from all available resources. When drawing all data into one pool, pay special attention to such points as team size, skills and competencies, and performance leaders. All the insights will ensure a better understanding of your staffing demands.
3. Estimate your future needs. Make wise conclusions on further demands considering the factors that may impact staffing decisions, such as business goals, product launches, economic shifts, and others.
4. Analyze your current and prospective gaps. Assess the condition of your staff and where it is supposed to be, including any mismatches, lack of staff quantity and quality.
5. Given all the analysis results, make up a staffing plan. Address all skills gaps and shape an action plan that matches the project business goals.

Once preparing the platform, let’s proceed to the next section.

Common IT Staffing Models

Now let’s take a look at general IT staffing models.

Project-based Model

Summary: It’s a perfect match if a company has specific projects, not similar to their normal operation activities. This is a great, cost-efficient practice that simplifies the termination as soon as a project is completed.

Best fit for: Covering specific roles on a project for a short-term period.

Contract Model

Summary: It’s a flexible approach where contracted members fit into the size of a client’s team based on short-term rates and turnover rate. The contract may last up to 12 months and make it easier to finish mutually beneficial cooperation.

Best fit for: Short-term projects and temporary covering of other positions and short-term needs. 

Contract-to-Hire Model

Summary: It’s a model that suggests cooperation for a specified period with a possibility of permanent employment. The approach is considered to be an intermediate option between temporary and permanent hiring. During an agreed period, the client evaluates the contract employee and decides on offering a permanent position.

Best fit for: Companies that have an open permanent position and like the candidate for this role but yet hesitates. 

Mark-Up Model

Summary: The model implies that the fees charged above a contractual employee’s salary already include taxes, employee’s insurance, health benefits, and others. The client decides on the employee’s pay rate.

Best fit for: Companies with open job positions offering open salaries or having specific salary ranges.

Hire-Train-Deploy Model

Summary: It’s an industry-specific model suggesting that IT staffing providers enroll applicants for particular projects. After screening and vetting candidates as per job descriptions, a provider creates a mentorship group for better support and then trains employees to work in a particular company.

Best fit for: Short and long-term IT-based projects to match the trained skills and potential with the corporate needs.

Why Go IT Staffing? 

To round up all we’ve learned before, let’s outline some benefits of IT staffing. 

• Accelerated hiring process. As talent research and screening get more time-consuming, teaming up with trustworthy staffing partners becomes a time-saving strategy. Staffing providers can initially preview and qualify applicants to provide the best-fitting candidates.
• Flexible selection. Due to ever-evolving market needs, the business now prefers focusing on leaner operations. Agile specialists that can integrate into any company’s needs and tasks are now more valuable.
• Lower risks and responsibilities. The employment of permanent workers comes with many duties, such as labor laws and taxes, which implies certain risks. IT staffing suggests that a provider carries out the entire responsibility, covering all these points, which relieves a client company from all related burdens.
• Dedicated talent. IT staffing implies that contracted employees have a suitable combination of hard and soft skills to complete specific tasks. Thus, the total commitment to streamlined processes and goal achievement are ensured.
• Cost-saving solution. The hiring of a permanent employee involves constant expenditures besides the salary itself. These include insurance coverage, workspace maintenance (even virtual ones), accountant services, etc. With the permanent employees, it may cost a pretty penny in the long run. IT staffing providers usually bear all those costs. 

Well, with this article, we had only tipped a toe into a significant and extending IT staffing market. I hope now you have a brief understanding of what’s going on there. 

Read also: IT staffing in 2023: is it worth it?

As for me, I can only add that at CHI Software, we constantly search and apply new models that are beneficial for our clients.

About the author

Mariia Bolgar Head of Eastern Europe Partnership

Mariia is a technology enthusiast passionate about transforming the corporate landscape with cutting-edge technology.