Searching for Tech Specialists on Your Own or Using an IT Sourcing: What’s Better?

If you’re looking to fill a tech role in your company, we bet you would like to know what hiring strategy would be the best to follow. But while there are a lot of creative options to attract tech talent, the first decision that you have to make is whether you will search for the candidates on your own, or partner with an IT sourcing vendor. 

In this article, we will overview the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, plus provide a checklist to help you make the final decision. Without further undo, let’s get started. 

Common challenges companies face when hiring technical talent

In our recent article, our tech talent sourcers, Anastasia Shviatsova and Karina Shamaeva, discussed the challenges companies face globally when hiring technical talent. For you to make a more informed choice between a self-developed and vendor-supported IT sourcing strategy, let’s briefly cover them. 

The Global Challenges of Searching and Hiring Tech Talent (And How to Overcome Them)

• Global tech talent shortage. ​​The tech talent shortage is a serious issue that companies face currently. Its main reasons are technological advances, the aging population, the growing demand for ICT specialists caused by the pandemic, and increasing competition between companies eager to hire them.
• Consequences of the Great Resignation. In response to software developers massively fleeing their workplaces, many companies raise salaries and offer better perks. However, these aren’t the only things that matter for software developers — more on that in the next section.
• Rising developers’ salaries and demands. Because of the tech talent shortage, fast innovation development, and growing demand for excellent problem solvers, analytical thinkers, and coders in one bottle, modern software developers feel more confident than ever about their value on the market, which means they’re starting to ask for much higher salaries. They would also like the projects they work on to be meaningful and challenging. 
• Slow and costly hiring process. While the average cost per hire is $4700, it also takes from 3 to 4 months to hire a single employee. For companies on a budget or those with urgent positions to fill, this cost and time per hire can become crucial. 
• Cultural differences with international candidates. Hiring globally is a great tactic to unlock untapped talent pools, access specific expertise, and cut hiring costs. Still, communicating with international candidates and keeping the entire hiring process effective can be a challenge for recruiters with no international hiring experience. 

How to Communicate With IT Candidates From Different Countries

Hiring tech specialists on your own vs IT sourcing partner – the pros and cons

Now onto the main question: what are the benefits of IT sourcing compared to hiring technical talent independently? Let’s review the pros and cons of both strategies. 

Searching for tech talent independently

Since the option to build an engineering team on your own is usually the most obvious and intuitive one, let’s get started with discovering its advantages and possible pitfalls. 

Pros

• The opportunity to save money. If you have an easy-to-fill position, for example, you need to hire a Junior Java developer or UI designer, it is unlikely to cost you a fortune. Sometimes, publishing your opening on a local or global job board for a small fee is enough to gather a pool of entry-level or easy-to-find candidates. In this case, you also avoid paying recruitment agency fees. 
• You get to know your candidates from the very first point of interaction. When you hire software developers on your own, you get a chance to review their CVs firsthand, take a look at their social media profiles and get to know them as a person. This benefit is especially important if you need to hire engineers for a tech startup, since in this case, a personal and cultural fit is as important as technical background and required skill set.
• You control the hiring process completely. When hiring on your own, you are in full control of the tools you use, the processes you follow, the budget you spend, and the ROI you get. As for one more plus, you can ensure a better cultural fit since nobody knows your company’s values better than you. 

Cons

• It is easy to get lost in a global talent pool. There are a lot of destinations to hire software engineers, plus there are a lot of apps, websites, and platforms to use. Getting lost in such an abundance of choices is easy if you don’t know where to look for top-tier and rare experts, in particular. 
• The chances of getting a bad hire increase if you have no prior recruitment experience. The matter is that when hiring software developers, you should have both recruitment and technical expertise at once. Only in this way, you will be able to build a valid IT sourcing strategy and ensure your potential hires have the necessary tech skills. 
• Fierce competition in the labor market. When hiring on your own, you will have to compete with other companies, which, in turn, may have practice-proven recruitment experience, hiring automation tools in place, or more benefits to offer your potential candidates. 

Now, let’s discuss the second opportunity — namely, collaborating with an IT talent sourcing company. 

Partnering with an IT talent sourcing vendor

Using IT sourcing services is another tactic you may want to consider, so let’s discover its pros and cons as well. 

Pros

• Get access global talent pool risk-free. The most obvious plus that an IT talent sourcing agency knows how to source technical candidates, taking the specifics of an ICT labor market into account. They have established practices to search for the best-fit specialists, outreach to them, and communicate with them, sparking their interest in your job opening, and so on. You, in turn, access the practical experience and expertise of a talent sourcing agency, decreasing the risk of a bad hire significantly. 
• Save costs in the long run. If you plan to build large engineering teams for different projects, grow your existing one, or just have a qualified tech talent pool at hand, partnering with an agency will be more cost-effective than finding each candidate on your own. 
• Save time. Partnering with a tech talent sourcing vendor also promises a better time to hire. Usually, such agencies already have databases of pre-screened candidates and use hiring automation tools. For example, with Bridge,  you can get the first pre-vetted candidates within a few days. We speed the outreach process up to 5 times by running automated, yet still customized email or LinkedIn campaigns.

Cons

• Finding a reliable vendor can be a challenge. There are many companies that claim to find the perfect candidates for your business, but not all of them are equally reputable or have a proven success record. That’s why you have to research an online reputation of a company you’d like to partner with, read their case studies, and if possible, ask for a reference from their previous customers.
• You have to stay on the same page with an agency. Regardless of the process you outsource, clear and effective communication comes first. When partnering with an IT talent sourcing agency, communicating your job requirements and business goals is also paramount. Otherwise, it can lead to misfires in candidate selection. Clarifying and writing down your job requirements even before getting in the first touch with an agency will decrease the risk of such miscommunication. 

Making a final decision – the checklist for independent vs vendor-supported tech talent sourcing

Still in doubt whether you have to hire software programmers yourself or partner with an IT talent sourcing agency? Take a look at the checklists below to make the final decision. 

Hire tech talent on your own if:

✅ You have a very small number of positions to fill

✅ You’re interested in skills that are relatively easy to find

✅ You are looking for Junior to Mid-level candidates

✅ You have some extra time and resources to look for candidates on your own

✅ You have experience in talent sourcing and hiring

Use IT sourcing if:

✅ You have multiple positions to fill

✅ You plan opening new positions in future

✅ You are looking for niche specialists

✅ You are looking for Senior-level engineers or executives

✅ You have no hiring automation tools in place

✅ You have a limited hiring budget and strict deadlines

✅ You hire from a very competitive market or location (like California)

If you feel like IT sourcing matches your business needs best, you are at the right place to address them. At Bridge, we help fast-growing companies build remote and scalable engineering teams using the power of tech-enabled talent sourcing. A data-driven engine is at the heart of our sourcing-as-a-service which offers an innovative approach to hiring technical candidates globally. With its help, we can carefully filter the candidates according to their location, expertise, and salary expectations and tailor the best specialists to your current hiring objectives. 80% of our talent sourcing process is automated, and that’s why you will be able to get the first candidates in just a few days. 

We also did our best to make our service highly predictable and efficient. While our data analysts, local talent sourcers, and client’s managers work as a fully functional unit, you can focus on other, no less important business tasks. 

Don’t struggle with hiring tech specialists on your own anymore. Instead, try our sourcing-as-a-service in action and get qualified candidates for the most difficult-to-fill positions! 

Conclusion

There are a lot of benefits to hiring tech specialists on your own, but it’s not always the most efficient way to go. If you’re looking for a single-tasker, like a manual tester or designer, or a developer to perform quite simple tasks, then going solo is probably an option. However, if you need someone who can handle several aspects of your business’s IT needs, for example, a DevSecOps specialist or an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer), it might be better to use an IT sourcing agency. So, make the final choice depending on your current business goals, and keep in mind that Bridge’s tech talent sourcing team will be glad to help you anytime.

Let’s get in touch!