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If you are looking for IT consultants with specialised skills, a team extension service offered by a software development consultancy is a viable alternative to the traditional recruitment service supplied by an employment agency. Here are some advantages of using a software development consultancy to recruit IT specialists.
Even if they specialise in recruiting for IT-related positions, most recruitment agents supply large numbers of candidates to a variety of client companies in different sectors. They therefore have a broad range of knowledge rather than in-depth knowledge of a particular IT skill set or area of expertise.
A software development consultancy, on the other hand, has specialist knowledge and understanding of the exact skills, combination of skills, and level of experience needed to successfully fulfill a particular role. This is based on past experience of carrying out similar projects. The consultancy is then able to search its database of consultants and find those who have the precise combination of skills and experience required.
Since each consultant on the software development consultancy’s database has worked on projects for the consultancy in the past, it has insider knowledge of each person’s strengths, weaknesses and personal qualities. It is therefore in an excellent position to select the most suitable candidates for a particular project in the minimum amount of time. By contrast, a recruitment agent can only rely on references and feedback from previous employers.
A software development consultancy with expertise in a certain industry, such as banking or the public sector, is well-placed to understand the exact parameters and requirements of an industry-specific project, having been involved in many similar projects in the past. A recruitment agency, on the other hand, will not have had hands-on involvement in an industry-specific project.
Although a software development consultancy has access to a smaller pool of consultants than a recruitment agency, those consultants have more specialised IT skills, including skills that are difficult to find among people on the books of the mainstream recruitment agencies.
For example, a software development consultancy that carries out projects for clients in the banking sector is more likely than a recruitment agency to have access to IT specialists who can integrate new online or mobile banking services into existing systems.
A recruitment agency offers candidates who are available for work either immediately or in the near future. A software development consultancy can also help you to recruit people for future projects. For example, if you plan to carry out a project in six months’ time and you know that it will probably be difficult to find the right people for the project team, you can ask the consultancy to select them and book them in advance.
A software consultancy can provide you with a project team that meets your exact requirements and fits in with your budget. The team could, for example, consist of any combination of the following:
. Consultants working on-site.
. Consultants working remotely from their home offices in the UK.
. Consultants working from an offshore location, such as Eastern Europe.
Using both UK-based and offshore consultants helps to keep costs down while at the same ensuring high quality of work and timely project completion. Recruitment agencies do not usually offer such wide-ranging solutions to the problems of finding the best people for a project team.
If you are looking for a relatively small number of people with specific IT skills and experience, a software development consultancy’s team extension service can enable you to find the best candidates quickly, easily and cost-effectively.