Amid a growing global talent shortage, 76% of tech companies are struggling to fill skills gaps and hire the right people. For IT services companies — this challenge is even more complex, as their business models require being able to scale up and down on demand to meet client availability, without compromising on quality and skills.
Our latest eBook, Deliver Faster and Drive Growth with On-demand Tech Talent pulls no punches when discussing the challenges for today’s IT services companies. It provides an actionable blueprint for ensuring top quality talent while scaling your company’s growth.
Tech Companies are Stuck Balancing a Lean Team with Speed Out the Gate
Head into the break room at an IT services company and ask what’s keeping them up at night, and you’re likely to hear the words “unbillable hours.” Many companies retain an expensive bench of talented employees, just in case those skills are needed by a new or existing client. In reality, this means your business is paying full-time salaries without being sure you even need the people in place.
If this sounds familiar, you may think there’s no alternative. After all, clients expect you to be able to provide the right skills before the ink has dried on their contract, and it can take weeks or even months to find the right talent from scratch, especially in competitive verticals such as cybersecurity, cloud or AI.
The Fading Allure of Staffing Agencies
Some IT and Tech companies have chosen to turn to staffing agencies to solve this issue. They can’t afford to keep a bench of talent in-house, but they need to be able to ramp up quickly and get new hires working fast. When employees work for the staffing agency, you only need to pay them per project, hour, or day, and as they don’t need the traditional onboarding process you can get them to work a lot faster. Unfortunately, IT companies have found a number of challenges with relying this approach, including:
- Skills: Staffing agencies work with a limited and local pool of workers. You’re narrowing down your potential workforce to a very small number of people, all of whom work for that agency.
- Quality: A step removed, it’s hard to vet agency workers for skills or capabilities. As you’re sending them to a client, the first you hear of a poor fit may be a bad report from the customer.
- Cost: Did you know that the average staffing agency markup for temp workers can be anywhere from 20%-75%? This is a painful price to pay for letting go of control over your talent.
- Relationship: The workers’ loyalty will be to the agency, not to your business. There’s no way to build a personal relationship or keep those skills retained for the long-term.
How to Find On-demand Tech Talent When You’re Starting from Square One
As hiring in-house is too expensive, and staffing agencies are a poor alternative, companies are beginning to recognize the need to build direct relationships with skilled freelancers who can be pulled in on-demand as a client need arises. At Fiverr Enterprise we call this creating a talent pool of workers — a reliable source of proven Dev and IT skills, compliant, affordable, and ready to hit the ground running.
If you’re ready to start filling your own talent pool, there are five key areas to stay on top of.
1. Sourcing
How will you find the right talent if you aren’t using staffing agencies? Marketplaces can be a good step one, but they are often overcrowded and full of 5* reviews. Your own personal network might help, but this approach can be hit and miss. What is your strategy for quickly finding the right skills within 48 hours?
2. Costs
When you hire internally, you set the salary. With freelancers, the model is turned upside down, and each freelancer may have their own fees and payment terms in mind. How will you make prices transparent to all teams, and stay on top of changes if a freelancer adapts their rates?
3. Relationships
To become your freelancers’ preferred client, and ensure they always make time for you when a project comes up, you need to build a strong relationship for the long term. How will you encourage a personal relationship with workers you don’t see in the office, or who you don’t work with from one quarter to the next?
4. Workflows
Without a staffing agency in the middle, you need your own processes and workflows, from onboarding to payments. How will you give the right systems access to a freelancer who is working on a specific project, and ensure wider data isn’t exposed? What is your process for collecting invoices and getting them paid on time?
5. Information
What was the name of that freelancer who did the mobile app in 2021? And does anyone know if we can hire a developer from The Philippines? The best tools will speed up the process of working with new talent, and allow you to seamlessly pick up a relationship months or years later, with accurate and up-to-date information at your fingertips.
Hire Quality Techspertise Fast with Fiverr Enterprise
Fiverr Enterprise provides an IT talent pool, curated especially for you — one place where you can gain instant access to your own carefully vetted Dev & IT talent, that’s ready-to-hire and able to meet your business requirements. Hire any tech expertise, eliminate resource uncertainty and reduce hiring costs. Our SaaS solution enables you to confidently take on more projects, knowing you have a dedicated talent pool that’s always available.
Read the eBook to learn:
- How to guarantee client timelines, with a holistic view of resource cost ahead of time
- More about our sourcing service — and how you can instantly hire from a pre-vetted pool of tech talent
- What makes a business scale, instant talent at the right price and at the moment of need