Over the past decade, the demand for high quality candidates for IT positions has grown as technology has grown and emerged as a fundamental concept for a business’s success.
Due to the fast-paced and highly technical nature of IT, finding and hiring qualified IT professionals has become a huge challenge for many organizations.
What is IT Staffing?
IT staffing is a proactive approach of augmenting your hiring process by engaging an outside vendor to help your company find qualified candidates for information technology (IT) positions. These positions can include:
- Cloud computing engineers
- Computer network specialists
- System engineers
- Computer support specialists
- Helpdesk support
- Database administrators
- Etc.
IT staffing companies can provide the right solution for your IT needs, whether it is a permanent or direct hire, contract or temporary, or a retained recruiting services arrangement.
What is IT (Information Technology)?
IT is short for information technology which includes the management, storage, infrastructure, networking, security, and other processes associated with the electronic data on a computer and/or other physical devices, that help businesses run smoothly, safely, and efficiently.
IT typically refers to the use of this technology in a business setting as opposed to using computers or other devices for personal use.
Examples of IT
- Management of a network of computers
- Creation of original web pages
- Production of videos digitally
- The design of computer systems as a consultant
- Vendors that sell products on the internet
- The design of 3D artwork
- The administration of a company’s database
- Creation of software
- Technical support
- The management of projects and budgets for IT
- Creation of technical documentation
- Data networks
- Users, PC’s & software
- Telephone and radio equipment
- Traditional computer applications
- Software and support for office automation
- Voice response systems
- Video conference equipment
Why Use IT Staffing?
Deloitte’s analysis of connected small businesses in the United States found that relative to businesses that have low levels of digital engagement, digitally advanced businesses realized significant benefits. These benefits include:
Because of these benefits and the fact that technology has become a fundamental component of every business, high quality IT candidates are being sought after by businesses across the globe and are becoming harder to find.
This high demand for high quality IT professionals has IT staffing companies, IT staffing agencies, and IT staffing recruiters working harder than ever to help organizations find the IT candidates they need to succeed in the digital era.
What is an IT Staffing Recruiter?
An IT staffing recruiter specializes in helping companies fulfill IT positions with qualified IT candidates.
These recruiters can be independent contractors, in-house employees, or individuals working for an IT staffing agency.
What is an IT Staffing Agency/Company?
An IT staffing agency – also known as an IT staffing company – is an organization that matches employers with IT candidates.
The benefit that an IT staffing company offers is they have an established pipeline that helps you to save time and money by quickly finding candidates that have specific IT skills that may be hard to find. IT staffing agencies come in a variety of forms to meet the specific needs of clients from short assignments to full-time hires.
Types of IT Staffing Services
Around the world today there are many different types of IT staffing services including:
- Direct/permanent placement
- Temporary/contract
- Retained recruiting services
- Contract-to-hire
What is Direct/Permanent Placement IT Staffing Services?
A direct/permanent placement IT staffing service brings together IT candidates and potential employers to create permanent employment relationships.
This process includes the creation of a job description, creation of a job post, the review of applicant resumes, and the review of potential candidates. Because the Spry Squared IT staffing team works closely with your HR department and/or hiring manager and we prescreen all candidates; we ensure that you only see the best of the best candidates.
An example of a simplified version of this process can be seen below.
Temporary IT Staffing Services
Temporary IT staffing services is when a staffing firm hires its own employees and assigns them to support or supplement a client’s IT workforce.
This type of IT staffing service is ideal for situations that involve:
- Employee absences
- Temporary skill shortages
- Seasonal workloads
- Special projects
4 Other Times You Should Use Temporary IT Staffing
1. When a Staff Member is Out on Family Leave
It’s important to give those in your IT department the time they need to start a family and bond with their child before they return to work. Your staff may also be in a position where they need to care for a loved one who is sick.
Whatever the reason, you may need temporary coverage when someone from your IT department is on extended leave. The time when your employee is out can be tough for your organization. Temporary IT staffing services is the perfect solution to ensure the work gets done until this employee returns.
2. When You Need to Hire New IT Staff
Finding new staff for a permanent position in your IT department may take months to accomplish. When these positions lay vacant for a long period of time, employees become frustrated and are less productive.
Turnover rates may increase when overwhelmed IT staff quit their jobs rather than keep up with increased workloads at the same pay rate. Temporary IT staffing services are a great solution to help your organization fill in this new position until a permanent IT staff member is hired.
3. Key IT Staff Quit Unexpectedly
No manager likes to lose a good employee, but it happens. Employees eventually move on and a two weeks’ notice just isn’t enough time for most business to find a good replacement.
How long does it take?
According to a new study conducted by Dr. Andrew Chamberlin, the chief economist at the career site Glassdoor, the average time to hire workers in the USA was 22.9 days.
The results of this study for the most common IT positions can be seen on the graphic below.
As you can see, tech jobs have a longer than average time to hire which can lead to issues in productivity for your IT department.
4. Unexpected Rush
Seasonal businesses often invest in new IT staff when they are amid their busy season.
However, seasonal businesses aren’t the only ones that experience an unexpected rush. Non-seasonal businesses may find themselves suddenly overwhelmed with the amount of work your IT team needs to tackle when:
- You get a new client
- Experience frequent technical glitches
- Computers are slow
- Printers break
- WIFI won’t work
- You update an old environment
Temporary IT staffing services can help your organization through these busy times without the commitment of a full-time employee.
Contract Staffing Services for IT
Contract staffing services for IT is a service provided by a staffing agency that brings together IT consultants for the duration of a contract that is on a contingent project-by-project basis for your organization. The clear advantage of a contractor is there is no long-term commitment for your company.
What is Contingent Recruiting for IT?
A contingent IT recruiting contract is when the recruitment agency collects fees from clients only after a qualified IT candidate is found and hired for the IT position contracted. These fees are usually based on an agreed upon percentage and paid monthly. Typically, the IT recruiting firm will negotiate the salary for the candidate and pay for the employee’s benefits.
Contingent recruiting can be done with direct/permanent placement, temporary, long-term, or contract staffing services.
9 Reasons You Should Use Contract Staffing Services for IT
1. Access to Specialized Skills
Contract staffing services for IT allows you to hire a targeted and highly skilled employee for a short duration that brings a valuable set of skills to your IT department. These skills include:
2. Fulfill Short Term Business Needs
When companies look for a workforce to fulfill their short-term needs, full-time employees don’t always make sense.
Instead, contractors or temporary IT staffing services can be your perfect answer. Your company will have access to a skilled workforce for a shorter duration of time without any commitments.
3. Access to Larger Talent Pools
The benefit of working with an experienced IT recruiting company is they have access to a large pool of potential candidates.
As specialists in IT recruiting, they have established pipelines of highly skilled candidates. Most companies don’t have the resources to establish and maintain these pipelines.
4. Find the Right People for a Project
It is incredibly difficult to evaluate whether an IT candidate will be the right fit for your company. Do they have the right skill set? Will they fit into your company’s culture?
Contract IT staffing services can help solve this issue with an IT contractor that works for your organization in the short term, to see if it makes sense to hire them in the long term.
If they aren’t you can remove them from the project and get a replacement without all the complications of a full-time staff member.
5. Avoid Layoff of Full-Time Employees
There are many instances when it makes sense to hire full-time IT staff for a short period of time. Examples include:
- Technical support
- Application development
- Cybersecurity
- Fulfillment of short-term projects
Hiring full-time staff is time consuming and costly. It’s difficult to attract full-time staff when the expectation is for a short-term project. Most candidates are looking for long-term employment. However, contractors have different career goals. Many contractors prefer short-term assignments that fit their lifestyle.
Contract IT staffing services can help your organization avoid these situations as contractors are only hired for a short duration of time without the obligation to pay them unemployment benefits, paid time off, or other employee benefits.
6. Take Some Responsibility Off the HR Department
Hiring a new IT employee requires a lot of time from you and your HR department. Many Human Resources departments are already running at 100% capacity even before they take on the added task of finding and hiring new staff.
Utilizing a contract IT staffing agency helps relieve the burden for your HR department so they can focus on your existing employees.
7. Accommodate ACA Requirements
In the USA, companies that have over 50 employees must provide health insurance to their employees to meet the requirements of the affordable care act. These health plans are required to provide these 10 essential benefits:
Small companies that are near this threshold may not have the resources to fulfill this requirement. Contract staffing services for IT allows companies to avoid this issue since IT candidates who are recruited using this method are not considered employees, but contractors instead.
8. Education for Preexisting Employees
IT professionals hired via contract staffing are experienced, knowledgeable, and often have very specific skill sets.
Aside from task efficiency this very specific skill can bring added value to your organization. By training your existing IT staff your employees will learn new skills, becoming an even more valuable asset to your company.
9. You’ll Save Money
Contract IT staffing services helps companies save money with the reduction of costs associated with:
- Employee benefits
- Pension
- Sick days
- Health insurance
- Vacation time
- Payroll taxes
- Unemployment insurance
- Workers’ compensation
- Disability
Long-Term IT Staffing Services
Long-term IT staffing services recruit and screen candidates to work on long-term IT projects for their clients.
Benefits of Long-Term IT Staffing Services
Save Time
Filling a position and on-boarding a new in-house employee is time consuming. Once you have defined the position and written the job description, you must post the position on job boards, review dozens, if not hundreds of resumes, schedule and conduct interviews, conduct background checks, and track down references.
You and your staff already have a full schedule and may not have the time to deal with all these tasks. An IT staffing agency can do this for you and let you and your staff focus on your business instead of a very time intensive hiring process.
Cut Recruitment Costs
Your HR department is an overhead expense, so it’s to your advantage to ensure that it is running as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Recruiting for IT positions is especially challenging as it is very competitive and can be very specialized.
Hiring an IT recruiting firm may seem costly at first, but when you consider the time and resources needed to find the right candidate for your company, you may be surprised how affordable outsourcing your IT staffing needs are. A major benefit of hiring IT contractors is that you won’t have a huge upfront fee. Instead, you are charged a percentage each month, which is much easier on your budget.
Retained IT Recruitment Services
Retained IT recruitment services are a great alternative for companies that have staffing needs on a retained, or on-going basis.
With retained IT recruiting services your business will receive high quality candidates on a consistent basis based on your needs. Essentially, the recruiting firm becomes your in-house recruiting team.
Advantages of Retained IT Recruitment Services
Focus and Pre-Allocation of Resources and Time
Like most businesses, your company is a busy environment, where priorities change day to day.
Retained Recruitment Services usually comes with a certain level of exclusivity, which enables a recruitment firm to allocate the time and resources necessary to find the perfect candidate.
Consistent Communication of the Clients’ Employer Brand
The retained model enables the recruitment team to really understand not only the requirements of the position, but also understand the company’s values, culture and brand. This allows the recruiting team to laser focus on the best candidates that are not only qualified for the position, but the best fit for the style and environment of the company.
One Agency Team to Liaise With
They say that “time is money.” When your HR department has to deal with multiple IT staffing agencies, they are not only burning your time — but more importantly — your money!
With a Retained IT Recruiting Services agreement, you will have a dedicated account manager. A dedicated account manager affords you quicker communication and better time management so that you have more time to do your “real” job.
Greater Efficiency and Effectiveness
One of the things that makes the recruiting team at Spry Squared, both efficient and effective, is our recruiting process. Unlike other recruiting firms who might send you a dozen resumes; we prescreen and pre-interview all candidates to find you the best fit.
We will only send you 2 or 3 candidates because we know they are a good fit for your company. We won’t waste your time on candidates that don’t have the right skill set or may not be a good fit for your culture.
Predictable and Transparent Costs
Many hiring managers realize that in order to hire the candidates with the skill set they need; they need to raise the salary requirement to acquire the talent they need. With a contingent recruitment agreement, this increase in salary will also result in a fee increase. With a retained IT recruiting agreement, the fees charged are set. If the number of positions increase or salaries increase, the fee does not change.
With a retained IT recruiting services agreement, you won’t incur unexpected price hikes. In some cases, particularly for multiple-hire projects, you could end up with significant savings compared to the per-hire contingency fee model.
Guarantee of Completion
Filling some roles are like finding a needle in a haystack. For whatever reason, there are some roles that are extremely difficult to fill. The benefit of retained recruitment means the agency keeps searching until the position is filled.
A contingent recruitment firm may opt out of the challenging roles if they feel the reward isn’t going to balance the effort they put in.
Ability to Move the Goal Posts
At Spry Squared, we work with many clients whose priorities in hiring are always shifting. What was the major focus can quickly change. We are nimble and quick in adapting to our clients’ needs to ensure that their priorities are recognized and implemented.
An Executive Search Approach for Senior Hires
To work on an exclusive basis allows the agency to make discreet approaches and present a more professional service to the candidate throughout the process.
This model ensures that all possible candidates are long listed, which guarantees a complete market search for the client.
The Key to Successful IT Staffing Services
The key to a successful IT staffing service is finding an agency or company that:
- Has an extensive network of qualified talent
- Has a reputation for quality driven solutions
- Offers comprehensive service options
- Is adaptable and flexible according to your needs
- Specializes in the IT industry
By working with a staffing and recruiting firm that implements all the points listed above, organizations can streamline their hiring process while attracting top technical talent.
Here at Spry Squared, Inc. we understand IT. Our team of IT recruiters come with years of IT experience to help your organization find the high-quality IT professionals that align with your organization’s culture, goals, and objectives.
Schedule a quick call to learn more about how Spry Squared, Inc. can help your organization find your next IT staff member.
