IT Staff Augmentation vs. In-House Recruitment

If you have a business and want to start development, you will face questions about choosing the right cooperation approach. Since the tech market is highly flexible, you will be able to choose from a variety of options. However, two are the key and most popular ones – hiring in-house staff members or building your own development team.

Team augmentation is a relatively new concept in the IT industry, yet it has already gained attention as of late. In a recent report provided by the resource, the global staff augmentation services market is suggested to grow at a 3.53% CAGR between 2021 and 2025, while the market is believed to reach $81.87 billion.

Remote work, digitalization, and the increased need for software development made it possible for companies to choose the best option depending on their needs and business requirements. Rapid changes in the workplace have entered almost any business, so organizations now know that they don’t need to spend millions on app development and can choose more cost-effective and easier options.

Choosing the right development approach affects not only the cost of the development but also the final result and how efficient the process will be. We created this guide to help you clear the picture, explore the pros and cons of approaches and find the one that suits you best for expected results and reduced costs.

Related: The Full Guide to Staff Augmentation.

What Is IT Staff Augmentation?

While creating an in-house team is a well-known approach, not everyone knows what exactly staff augmentation means. Let’s start with what is staff augmentation?

Staff augmentation refers to an outsourcing model that allows companies to extend their teams or create new ones using highly skilled tech talent without hiring and overhead required when hiring someone as a full-time staff employee. Depending on your needs and business requirements, you can either hire one (or a few) developers as an extension of the team, or you can hire a dedicated team while you stay in charge of the development process.

Regardless of your choice, you will need to find a team augmentation agency and send a request. The company is responsible for choosing and presenting you with candidates, making it easy and fast for you to hire new team members with no worries about hiring or documents associated with full-time staff. Even though team members hired through staff augmentations aren’t full-time employees, they still maintain the company’s culture, are full in your processes, bring ideas, and work in line with your development process and strategic goals.

What are the Benefits of IT Staff Augmentation?

Cost-Effective

Among all the benefits of T staff augmentation, most businesses like the key one – cost-effectiveness. Since augmented staff is hired temporarily and the hiring process is the task of the agency, your company is able to save costs on monthly salaries, recruitment, bonuses, health insurance, training as well as overall management.

IT staff augmentation allows companies to pay for talent for a fixed period and skills. This also helps organizations to reach broader markets and business scopes, benefiting from unique skills, experiences, extended workforce, and all in a cost-effective manner. 

Access to a Large Talent Pool

In today’s competitive market, companies compete with others worldwide daily. And one of the fighting points is getting the best talents to the team to get the best results out of their investments. However, the truth is that hiring top-notch talents is a tough task for most organizations now. 

Team augmentation comes into the picture with its vast talent pool. Agencies providing staff augmentation services have various developers with unique skills and backgrounds, allowing you to incorporate global experts skilled in most in-demand technologies. This gives the company an opportunity to hire talents from all across the world, which increases the chances of hiring experts who match your requirements. 

Flexibility in the Workforce

The most important benefit of using team augmentation is workforce flexibility. This greatly impacts the cost of hiring. This means that a flexible workforce allows companies to hire employees temporarily that work for a specific purpose or duration. 

Therefore, you can scale your team and fire developers at any time, depending on your projects, needs, and budget. In contrast to full-time employees, you won’t also need to worry about hiring questions, like compensation or insurance.

Permanent recruitment [revents the ability to hire new talents. Using staff augmentation services, you can pick the best talents based on the requirements of ongoing projects and save resources and money on more valuable things in the long term.

Improved Operational Framework

Getting skilled professionals to the team allows your organization to get a competitive advantage by improving the operational framework. These hired talents have domain-centric backgrounds and expertise, which significantly boost operational efficiency.

Thanks to a huge exposure to different technologies and tools, team augmentation greatly adds value to inner teams from the very beginning. New experts that you hire don’t require training and guarantee smooth operations. This boosted operational efficiency helps companies save a lot of time and money on development. 

Empowering Full-Time Employees

If you will use team augmentation as a way to extend your exciting team, this benefit is for you. You may consider new talents for complex projects that require specialized skills. In this case, hiring augmented teams and extending your in-house team is an ideal solution. 

Reducing the load that you put on full-time employees will help them prevent mental burnout and promote motivation. In addition, new experts with fresh and unique skills can help your in-house members to explore new opportunities and learn new technologies, which will also help your business reach new heights.

When Should Businesses Direct Hire?

When You Need an Expert 

Team augmentation allows companies to hire specialists in different fields. That is why if your project requires specific skills or expertise, you need to find specialists with relevant backgrounds. There are many team augmentation companies that specialize in specific industries, like blockchain or Fintech, allowing you to quickly hire experts with no long hiring process.

When Budgeting for Projects, not FTEs

In most cases, companies have fundraising only for one project. And the mount doesn’t cover all questions associated with full-time employees, like insurance. That is where IT staff augmentation is a perfect choice, offering opportunities for companies to hire talents with no need to spend money on hiring and related issues.

When you Want to Hire In-House

When the company starts development, it needs to hire developers. So if you want to try in-house recruiting, consider choosing a team augmentation approach. Check how it works and what the benefits are, so maybe you will find that this approach is best for you at the current moment. You won’t be able to know someone in depth or observe how they work just using the hiring process, while team augmentation allows you at least to try with no obligations.

To Avoid Additional Costs

As we mentioned, team augmentation allows for cost efficiency. So if you want to save money that you can invest in more valuable things, hire augmented experts instead of creating your in-house team. In addition, resource augmentation may also be a type of recruiting business that includes finding and hiring employees.

Cons of Team Augmentation

Before you make your final decision, it is also vital to know about not only benefits of staff augmentation, but also cons of IT staff augmentation:

Oversight and Management

Any team extension requires oversight and processes. This also applies to staff augmentation and their supervision for some time.

Onboarding Talents

Even though augmented teams do not need training, they are still new members of the team, so you will need to take care of their onboarding. A successful and smooth onboarding leads to the best results.

No Inner Knowledge

Some projects require inner knowledge about the client or previous work to deliver expected results. That is why when you hire augmented employees; you will also need to provide as much information as you can.

Higher Long-Term Labor Costs

When you use resource augmentation services, the agency also provides fees aside from paying employees. So, in a long-term perspective, staff augmentation contractors may be costly or have the same cost as in-house teams.

Staff Augmentation vs. In-House Team

Staff Augmentation	In-House Team
No need for hiring from your side	Hiring is on your side
Cost-effective	Requires to pay employees for more than their work
Temporary work	Full-time and permanent work
Vast talent pool	Requires months to find experts in the field

Why Choose Interexy?

Interexy is a web and app development company that offers clients to choose a suitable cooperation model based on their needs. We don’t believe in rigid guidelines for everyone, so we offer flexible options, including outsourcing, IT staff augmentation services, and a dedicated team. 

We are experts in a variety of fields, yet the focus is on the blockchain, healthcare, Web3, FinTech, and more. Our services allow clients to hire developers, designers, and other experts with specific skill sets, expertise, and backgrounds, which adds value to the business and allows companies to achieve expected results cost-efficiently.

We start the hiring process upon request and provide candidates within 5 business days. In case the candidate doesn’t fit your business, we change him/her within 10 business days, improving the skills and meeting your expectations. 

Final Thoughts

Since the modern world is about digitalization and competition between various companies, every business wants to get the best talents and get a competitive advantage. With a vast range of cooperation models, it could be hard for companies to find which one is best. Here we explain the differences between the two most popular approaches – team augmentation and using in-house recruitment to clear the picture. Book a call with our experts to see what we can offer for your business.

FAQs

What is the difference between staff augmentation and an in-house team?

Staff augmentation means hiring experts from external companies to work on a specific period while creating in-house teams means hiring full-time employees from the market.

When should I consider Staff Augmentation Services?

Staff augmentation services are great for businesses looking for unique skills, cost-efficiency, speed up the hiring process, and improved workplace flexibility for better business outcomes.