Could Nearshore Staff Augmentation Take Your IT Team to the Next Level?

Could IT staff augmentation help your organization resolve a problem, expand capacity, or achieve its long-term goals? The short answer is ‘it depends’. However, it is already clear that the Covid-19 pandemic is forcing businesses to accelerate their digitization strategies and develop innovative software products. And this transformation is impossible without the support and ideas of top tech professionals. So perhaps the more suitable question is: are you going to hire and train new software developers in-house or look outside the company for external staffing solutions?

5 Benefits of Staff Augmentation

Before we look at the potential benefits, what do we mean by ‘staff augmentation’? Essentially, it is when you supplement your existing team with additional members who can help build new products, provide specialist services, or offer more general support and capacity. These additional workers are typically supplied by a specialist staff augmentation company, like Jobsity, which takes care of hiring and training so that top-notch IT teams are ready to go as and when required.

The key difference with more traditional outsourcing is that these additional members are integrated into your existing structures and overseen by internal managers rather than treated as contract workers under the purview of a third-party provider. This is the case even when new team members are distributed off-site, which is a crucial factor given the trend towards remote work.

These are just 5 of the potential benefits this model can bring to your organization:

• Expand the talent pool: One of the big advantages of staff augmentation is the opportunity to seek out the tech talent you need without any geographical constraints. The US currently has an estimated shortage of around 1.4 million software developers and an estimated 40% of US tech roles could be located outside of the country in the next five years. Against this backdrop, why settle for whatever is available in your local area when you can search for the best developers anywhere in the world?
  
  
• Enhance your team without the hiring hassle/labor costs: Hiring and onboarding a new full-time employee can be both costly and time-consuming. In the highly competitive US labor market, with an average annual salary for an entry-level software developer at nearly $70,000 (and double this at the tech giants), it’s difficult for smaller businesses to attract and hold on to the best talent. And that’s not even counting the ‘hidden’ extras of things like pension contributions and health insurance. Staff augmentation can give you access to high-skilled developers at a fraction of the cost.
  
  
• Maintain greater control: With traditional outsourcing, you may have limited control over who is assigned to your project and how they are working. You may not even really see the quality until the final product has been delivered, at which point it becomes more costly to fix problems. Staff augmentation involves integrating new members into your team; whether in a communal space or working remotely, they will be operating under the same internal workflows, project management systems, and quality standards as your core staff. This creates more trust and transparency while allowing you to focus more energy on hiring and training a top in-house management team to direct projects.
  
  
• Respond rapidly to changing needs: Having more business than you can handle is generally considered to be one of those ‘good’ problems to have. But if you’re unable to satisfy client needs and expectations, it is still something that you need to address and fast. Staff augmentation is an affordable, efficient solution when your in-house team no longer can keep up with the to-do list. And it works both ways: with staff augmentation, companies can easily ramp up and down to meet changing demand. In an increasingly unpredictable and changeable world, the ability to quickly adjust your line-up on a project-by-project basis can be extremely valuable.
  
  
• Bring specialist knowledge to your team (when you need it): Some projects may require expertise in a specific area of software development that your current team just doesn’t have. Hiring full-time specialists may not only be expensive but also unnecessary if you only need them for certain projects or tasks. An IT staffing firm like Jobsity can supply you with the specific talent you need, either for a particular project or on an ongoing basis, without the need for a long-term commitment.

Why Nearshoring is Key to Unlocking These Benefits

If you’ve decided that IT staff augmentation is right for your organization, you still need to take the necessary steps to realize the potential benefits and maximize the competitive advantages. Offshoring, or the relocation of tasks outside the US, is a tempting option for companies with big plans but limited resources. It’s why countries with low labor costs like India and Vietnam have emerged as key global hubs for offshore software development. But this can also bring problems: working across radically different time zones can cause costly production delays, while cultural differences may lead to misunderstandings or friction within the team.

This is why nearshoring has emerged as a preferred option for many US companies. As the name implies, this means offshoring software development but to somewhere closer to home in geographical and cultural terms. And for US-based organizations, the obvious place to start looking for distributed IT teams in Latin America. Why? Well, here at Jobsity we’ve been operating in the ‘Silicon Vallecitos’ of Quito - Ecuador, and Medellin - Colombia for almost a decade, so let us outline just a few of the key reasons:

• Workflow-friendly time zones: Our LatAm developers typically operate on Eastern Standard Time (EST) - those based in Ecuador are on Central Daylight Time (CDT) during the Summer - so they are closely aligned with the work hours of many US companies. This allows for more live communication and real-time interaction, which helps forge positive work relationships and is particularly useful in an emergency. They are also just a short flight away from major southern US cities like Miami and Atlanta, for when face-to-face interaction is required.
  
  
• Cultural overlaps: Latin America may sometimes have a complex relationship with the US, but there is no denying the strong links that have been forged over more than a century. US culture is consumed across the LatAm region, and English is now widely spoken among the younger generations in urban centers (and especially in the IT sector). This makes communication more fluid and ensures new team members can be seamlessly integrated into existing work processes.
  
  
• Access to exciting talent: Latin American countries typically have favorable demographics (i.e. lots of young and working-age people) and continue to invest in improved IT infrastructure and digital startup ecosystems. The region is supplying a growing number of tech-savvy and highly motivated graduates with a range of skills and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. At Jobsity, we are proud of our robust process for finding, hiring, and training the very best of the talent emerging from these exciting local developer communities.

Of course, the most efficient and secure way to make the most of nearshore staff augmentation is through a reliable partner with detailed knowledge of the local talent pool. At Jobsity we have nearly 10 years of experience in hiring top LatAm developers and connecting them with US companies. All of our developers are vetted for both technical and “soft” skills, such as emotional intelligence and communication, while English proficiency in speaking and writing is required. To find out more about how our staff augmentation model can expand and enhance your IT team, please get in touch!

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