Staff Augmentation: Everything You Need To Know As a Beginner
This post was originally published in technext.it See the post here: Staff Augmentation: Everything You Need To Know As a Beginner
We all know that the ever-increasing cost and regulations of in-house hiring have created pressure on business leaders, particularly when they require specific skills for a short period or need to expand quickly. The on-demand hiring models like staff augmentation and outsourcing software development have given the founders a breathing space.
Even big names such as PepsiCo, Dell, and Reddit have adopted staff augmentation to swiftly and flexibly recruit software developers for their short-term or specialized needs. This hiring model is also gaining popularity among startups as they prioritize budget and time.
You may be wondering why not every company adopts the staff augmentation model if it’s so beneficial. What are the limitations? Is it a suitable model for my business? And how can I implement this hiring model to scale quickly and effectively? Yes, These are essential questions to consider before going for staff augmentation, and in this article, I will answer them so that you can make informed decisions.
What is Staff Augmentation?
Before we dive deep into this topic, let’s clarify what staff augmentation actually is.
Simply put, staff augmentation is an outsourcing or hiring model in which you can bring additional workforce from different companies and integrate with our existing team without the hassle of recruitment.
I have a story to share with you about X Corp (alias) that serves as a good example. X Corp created an order management application designed specifically for restaurant owners. They have a team of skilled backend and front-end developers who use Laravel and Vue js to develop their software.
At one point, their customers requested a new module that needed to be built using React. However, at that time, No one on their team had experience with React.
To address this, the CTO of X Corp reached out to Technext. After conducting a thorough screening and interviewing process, X Corp hired two React developers who worked remotely from the Technext office in Bangladesh. These developers worked alongside X Corp’s in-house team to complete the project successfully.
3 Types of Staff Augmentation to Choose From
Staff augmentation is categorized into three types: commodity, skill-based, and highly skilled. Let’s discuss each type a bit more.
1. Commodity Staff Augmentation
Commodity staff augmentation refers to hiring employees with basic, entry-level skills. These employees are typically easy to find, and the associated hiring costs are lower. For example, commodity staff augmentation is mainly practiced in areas like customer service, data entry, and administrative assistance.
Therefore, this type of staff augmentation may involve basic IT support, manual labor, and administrative support, among other things.
2. Skilled Staff Augmentation
It’s a hiring process where a skilled staff augmentation service provider offers a team of expert professionals in certain areas with special skills to meet the client’s specific needs. The skilled staff augmentation work includes typing or data entry for clerical work, basic copywriting, transcription, and many more.
For example, suppose you need web developers, graphic designers, and software engineers particularly. In that case, you can easily onboard developers with those particular skill sets through staff augmentation providers.
3. Highly Skilled Staff Augmentation
We know how much its difficult to find highly skilled staff for any large-scale projects. But through an IT staff augmentation provider, you can find a team of highly experienced staff. Those teams are made up of highly experienced professionals with specific skills and abilities who can easily carry out your robust and large-scale projects. Also, they have the skill to work agilely, and flexibly and deliver high-quality work to your organization. Besides that, highly skilled staff augmentation examples include hiring data scientists, machine learning engineers, AI developers, product designers, content designers, etc.
Finally, it can be said that the last type highly skilled staff augmentation process, will help you to bring additional project value and guarantee high process efficiency to your organization.