What to discuss with potential IT staff augmentation providers?

If you’re looking to augment your IT staff, you’re likely on the hunt for the right IT staff augmentation provider who can help you find the right talent to meet your specific needs. But with so many vendors out there, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. Before you jump in and start working with a provider, it’s important to have a clear understanding of what you need and what you should be looking for in a partner.

Let’s explore the key things you should discuss with a potential IT staff augmentation provider to ensure you find the right partner for your business. From understanding your specific needs to assessing their capabilities and experience. We’ll cover everything you need to know to make an informed decision and find a provider who can help you achieve success. So, let’s dive in and explore what to discuss with a potential IT staff augmentation provider.

How to select a remote IT staff provider that meets your needs?

So you may be wondering how to choose a staffing partner that will meet your software development needs. There are a few things you need to discuss such as whether can they provide you with as many developers as you need. Also, do they have team members that specialize in the 👉 tech stack 👈 you are looking for? The answer to these questions can help you hire the best-augmented staff from the right service provider.

Can they provide you with the number of developers you need?

One of the most important questions to ask when choosing 👉 staff augmentation services 👈 is whether they can provide you with the number of software engineers you need to increase your team’s capacity. You want to have certainty that as your project grows or changes, you can add talented software engineers as needed.

You don’t want to end up in a situation where you want to hire more developers from the same company, but they do not have enough individuals to meet your demands. Because you also want to avoid working with multiple staff augmentation companies.

Does the staffing agency have specialists in the area that you need?

Another question to ask an IT staff augmentation company is whether they have developers that specialize in the tech stack you need. You want to ensure that they can provide you with developers for web development or mobile app development. Or whatever other custom software development process you are running.

Not every staff augmentation firm is created equal and some only offer specific types of talent. So, you definitely want to make sure that the profile of the staff augmentation vendor fits the needs of your software development company.

Aspects to discuss with a potential IT staff augmentation provider

Here are some aspects to discuss with staff augmentation providers to help you 👉 choose the best staffing solutions 👈. The top three questions you want to ask include:

1. Does the staff augmentation service have an internal recruitment process?
2. What will your relationship look like with the service provider?
3. How much does it cost to hire via staffing services? Also, the location & engagement model of augmented software developers?

Let’s dive in deeper as to why these questions are necessary when looking for the right partner to help augment your IT company.

Ask about the internal recruitment process – do they have one & what does it look like?

It is worth asking whether the staff augmentation vendor has an internal recruitment process. Many companies will hire developers that haven’t been pre-vetted. Therefore, you cannot be sure of the quality.

Here at Swyply, we pre-vet coders during our internal hiring process. This way we vouch for their technical skills and soft skills. Moreover, when you interview them during the lending out process it’s usually strictly a formality.

Our internal recruitment process allows us to analyze the technical skills and soft skills of developers before hiring them and lending them out. Our in-house recruitment process consists of multiple different stages.

Stages such as:

1. Preliminary introductions
2. Getting to know your technical skills
3. Feedback
4. Job offer

Get to know what your relationship with the staff augmentation vendor will look like. How involved will they be?

You may come across an IT staff augmentation provider that is looking to rent out developers for you and that’s it. They don’t really care to have much of a relationship with their customers. Moreover, they may or may not have a relationship with the developers that they lend out. For many tech companies, this can be problematic as they can feel alone with everything.

Here at Swyply, we want to be involved throughout the entire 👉 IT staff augmentation project 👈. We want to remain in contact with you or your human resource department or even with your project managers. In fact, as part of our staff augmentation model are checking in once a month to see if you are happy with our cooperation. We want to resolve issues as soon as they come up. Also, we want to be able to provide you with more staffing solutions when they pop up.

Ask about costs, location, & engagement model

Some other valuable aspects to cover with potential IT staff augmentation services are cost, location, and engagement models. The 👉 price of working with a staff augmentation partner 👈 will vary. Typically you will pay a daily rate for the developer you hire. This rate is then multiplied by the number of days they will work on your project in an entire month. Based on that calculation the company will send you an invoice.

You may also be curious about the location of the software engineers you are hiring. You may want a nearshore software development team. Or perhaps you want to use offshoring developers to fill your in-house team. Moreover, you may want to know if the developer you are hiring is from the staff augmentation company or is rented out from a partnering Software House.

The last aspect you want to cover is the engagement model. You want to ask whether you can hire full-time employees or part-time employees on a temporary basis. As a business owner, you want to be able to add developers to your in-house team members in a way that works best for you. Therefore, you want to make sure that the staff augmentation partner can accommodate that for you.

What to discuss with augmented software developers before hiring?

Since we have covered the aspects you should ask the staff augmentation provider, let’s cover some things you want to go over with potential hires. While interviewing highly skilled remote developers from a staffing agency may be a formality, there are a few things you need to ensure:

1. Is their experience the right fit for your software development company?
2. Do they have the right technical skills to fit your project needs? Also, do their soft skills align with your overall company culture?
3. Go over your custom software development project to see if the developer or dedicated team can meet the demand.

Interview potential software developer candidates to learn about their experience. Is it the right fit?

You want to make sure that the experience and expertise of the developer fit your project requirements. You do not want to hire someone who will be mismatched technically or is not a cultural fit. So during the interview, you can ask the developer more about their experience to see if the work they have done aligns with your company.

For example, let’s say you run a mobile app development company and you are looking to 👉 hire a flutter developer 👈. You want to make sure that they have experience in this tech stack. Moreover, you want the individual to have 3 years, 5 years, or more experience. Perhaps you also want the coder to have projects that are similar to your mobile app development project. Hypothetically you want someone who has experience in creating an online shop mobile app. So you look through the portfolio of the software engineer to see if it aligns with your company’s needs.

Here at Swyply, before interviews, you will receive Blind CVs to review and pick the candidates that are the most compatible with your organization. Moreover, you can use the interview to verify the info from the CV.

Evaluating technical skills & soft skills

So top staff augmentation companies will run coders through a 👉 rigorous recruitment process 👈 to check out their technical & soft skills. But as a customer of staff augmentation services, you will be given the opportunity to evaluate these skills yourself.

Here at Swyply, we facilitate for our customers to meet developers that they may want to hire. During this time you chat to evaluate soft skills and you may also request that our developers do a skills test. The skills test can be in the form of a live code test or a take-home assignment. It’s up to you, we will be happy to organize all interview stages for you.

When you use our staff augmentation services you gain pre-vetted developers, and you can interview them. So you have a bigger shot at hiring the right person the first time. Moreover, we offer a 👉 14-day risk-free trial period 👈. This way within the first 14 days you can switch the developer if something is not right. Or you can terminate our cooperation and not pay a cent.

Discussing your software development project demands

It is important to discuss the demands of your software development project before hiring programmers to work with your development team.

During this time you want to discuss:

• project scope
• the role & responsibilities of the developer you are looking to hire
• the duration of the project
• working hours, team meetings, etc.

This will give the developer a better understanding of what they are signing up for & make them excited to join your team. Moreover, they can ask any questions they may have about the things you are mentioning.

Why choose Swyply for staff augmentation services?

So knowing now all the valuable questions to ask an IT staff augmentation company, here are some reasons why you should 👉 pick Swyply 👈.

Talent pool

Here at Swyply, we give access to a wide talent pool of tech specialists. We have an in-house team that consists of various developers. We have programmers that specialize in front-end development, back-end development, and mobile app development. Moreover, we also work with over 50+ partnering Software Houses that have amazing developers who you can hire as well.

Tailored solutions to your skill gap

Plus we try to find coders that are tailored solutions to your skill gap. So, if you are looking for a developer with very niche skills. Or perhaps someone who specializes in more than one tech stack. We will go above and beyond to find something that fits that exact puzzle piece. You are bound to hire the right specialist the first time. Whereas with traditional recruitment you may be hiring a sheep in wolf’s clothing without knowing it for the first little while.

Pre-vetted software developers

Moreover, our developers are pre-vetted by us, so you know that their technical skills are at a certain level. Not to mention we all have killer soft skills. You won’t have trouble communicating with us or getting along with us. We will fit your company culture pretty seamlessly.

Support every step of the way

Another reason to hire developers from Swyply is we are involved every step of the way. We check in every few weeks to make sure that you are happy with our cooperation. Moreover, we also check in with our programmers to make sure that they are enjoying the development project they are currently working on. We are here to help resolve any issues before they become big problems. Moreover, we can always help by switching coders, adding more coders, or removing coders. If that is something you need because your project is changing. We understand the unpredictability of the development process, so we try to make your life easier by lending a hand when needed.

TL;DR: What should you discuss with a potential IT staff augmentation companies

Before working with any IT staff augmentation company you need to make sure of a few things. First of all are they able to provide you with enough developers to fill your team’s capacity as much as you need it? Secondly, you want to make sure that they have programmers that meet your needs. You want to avoid a situation in which you are hiring subpar candidates because you choose the wrong staff augmentation services.

Now let’s go over some of the things you should ask a potential IT staff augmentation provider.

1. Ask if they have an in-house recruitment process. Are the developers that they rent pre-vetted or not?
2. Get an idea of what your relationship will look like with the staff augmentation vendor. Will they be hands-on? Or will they rent a developer and end their role at that point?
3. Ask about the cost of hiring augmented staff. Along with the location of the staff and if they are available to work for you full-time. Or perhaps you need a development team to work part-time? Ask if either or both are possible.

Now that you have chatted with a staff augmentation provider, it’s time to chat with potential software developers for hire.

There are some key things you want to go over with potential candidates.

Firstly, you want to get to the developer’s expertise and experience level. You want to make sure that they are the right fit. Perhaps they have done projects similar to yours making them the exact person you are looking for.

Secondly, you need to evaluate the software engineer’s technical & soft skills. This can be done during the interview process. Here at Swyply, we enable our customers to run technical skills tests if that is their wish. This can take place in the form of live coding or as a take-home assignment.

Lastly, you want to go over project details with the developer. You want to share what they will be doing, for how long, etc. This will get them excited about your project. Also, the developer will probably ask you some questions about the project.

Final takeaway

If you are interested in learning more about staff augmentation services & perhaps choosing Swyply as your vendor, drop us a line. Let’s have a free no-obligation chat about how staff augmentation can help you with your business.