How "Upstaffing" Works

How Upstaffing Works

Over the past 5 years, the Upstaff team has been helping to expand teams of software engineers when standard engagement methods are not effective enough and do not produce the desired results.

Upstaff’s clients are a variety of product companies, from young, growing startups to mature companies. Some clients cooperate with Upstaff directly, and others do so in collaboration with powerful IT service companies under their brand (white label).

When to contact Upstaff

• Hard-to-fill positions:
  experts with a rare specialization, to whom it is not so easy for recruiters to get out, find a common language, command respect, and convince that this is the new dream team.

• “Fire on the project”
  a crisis, peak load periods, a developer quits, etc., and you need to respond quickly.

• Convenient contract engagement format
  In cases where it is more appropriate to contract an engineer than to hire one (long-term guarantees, benefits, bonuses, etc. are not distributed), there is the possibility to withdraw from the design without additional obligations).

• Specific vacancies
  such as an irregular schedule, timezone, location, relocation, or other conditions, can make such a vacancy not the most convenient for the work of recruiters.

• Ordinary, hardworking developers
  When it is necessary not to burden recruiters with requirements, but simply to find a good developer.

Cooperation models

• Team expansion (good old full-time 40 hours a week)
• Flexible engagement (part-time or time and material)
• Fixed-cost project

Why Upstaff

What sets Upstaff apart from other companies or agencies that help recruit and engage developers, such as Toptal or Turing? 3 important components can be distinguished:

• Dive into Porjects – What has to be done?
• Pre-Vetted Experst – Who can start today? 
• Save on Hidden Recruitment and Hiring Costs
• Upstaff Platform – Additional Advantages 

1) Dive into Projects – What Has to be Done?

Algorithms are similar, but it’s all about execution: the devil is in the details. With experience working in delivery positions, the Upstaff team brings to the fore those things that are often ignored by recruiters, technical skills testing systems or AI vetting algorithms. That attention to detail and passion invested in the work ultimately brings satisfied customers and trust. AI tools certainly help to qualify developers, but it is the human factor and experience in the selection of developers for projects that become decisive.

A considerable role in the selection of developers is given to the culture of the project team, ethnic characteristics, diversity, and the rhythm of the project. For example, the type of developer for a start-up project in the field of Web3 is not at all similar to the integrator of ERP solutions from Microsoft, as BioTech devices will differ from the team of SEO and WordPress specialists of the B2B marketplace. The people who make the biggest contribution to the project, who really make the “difference” are not always the most senior, have the most years of commercial experience, or have the highest test scores. 

It should also be noted that Upstaff’s talent experts have experience in delivery work for various product and software companies, and therefore primarily seek to understand the details of the project. Experience in building distributed teams for more than 20 years, even before the pandemic, comes in handy. In comparison, some companies are still considering whether they should consider distributed teams as a form of collaborative organization and continue to invite employees to the local office every day.

2) 80% Deduction in Time-to-fill with pre-vetted experts

In practice, according to statistics from Upstaff clients and open sources, average industry time-to-fill position varies from 4 to 8 weeks.  Upstaff suggests going this route in one week. This is a significant difference, either in the case of set production plans or in the race with competitors.

Time to hire is a vital recruiting metric that measures the number of days from a candidate’s initial application to the moment they accept the job offer. The longer this duration, the more likely top talents will drop out, fearing it reflects the company’s overall approach to decision-making or, worse, that it does not value their skills and time.

Robert Half, a leading staffing firm, found that 57% of job seekers lose interest in a job if the hiring process is too lengthy. Additionally, nearly one-quarter of candidates lose interest in a company if they do not receive a decision within one week after the initial interview, while an additional 46 percent lose interest if there’s no status update between one to two weeks post-interview.

There are no secrets, just hard work. Such a difference is achieved due to preparatory work on building a network of developers and updating information about them. Think about it – recruiters start the whole process, while Upstaff has already gone that route with every candidate (that’s actually a tremendous amount of work):

• Assessment of communication interview, assessment of personal traits, search for candidates who are enthusiastic and fully involved in their work,
• deep technical skill assessment, interviews with experts, live coding, and test tasks
• reviews from previous employers and colleagues from previous workplaces,
• constant updating of the profile, while working on Upstaff projects.
• Discussion of the legal framework of work and signing of the cooperation agreement. Only the latter takes about a week.

According to the data of the Applicant Tracking System, through which millions of applicants pass

• 20%-25% of candidates have a current place of employment and have an obligation to work for 2-4 weeks.
• About 10% actually turn down a job offer, either to make sure of their value in the labor market or to accept a counter-offer from their current employer.

As such, Upstaff does a huge amount of pre-customer work and is constantly updating information to provide qualified, available developers to start onboarding now. All the above preparation results in 80% deduction in time-to-hire with pre-vetted experts from 4-12 weeks to 1 week. 

3) Save 100+ hours on hidden recruitment costs

Have you ever calculated the cost of all the resources a company spends to hire or engage a developer? According to various sources, this number varies from 40 to 160 hours to find a developer to hire.

• Preparation of a super-detailed description, without which recruiters simply will not start working.
• Screening resumes, and profiles, viewing projects. Perhaps the most striking example is marketplaces such as Fiverr or Upwork: a Red Ocean of various freelancers and agencies that have been using AI bots for bidding and submitting applications for several years already.
• HR Talks with each of, say, 50 candidates
• Rounds of technical interviews and tasks to be handled by the customer company’s engineers.
• DM/CTO calls
• Explanation of legal documents

4) Upstaff Platform and Service: Additional Advantages

• A platform for the convenience of working with candidates, tracking the hiring process
• Adaptation to the customer’s hiring processes
• Free replacement during the test period
• As you get to know the customer’s project, the task of expanding the team by a few more developers becomes even easier.

Conclusion

I often compare recruitment options: internal recruitment, agency, marketplace, and software development company.

Each has its pros and cons

• Internal recruitment:
  Long hiring time, hidden cost of hiring, high cost of hiring error (fire, etc.)
• Agency
  Insufficient technical education, lack of support
• Marketplaces
  Unlimited time for viewing profiles, communication with AI bots, and additional cost in case of work through an agency.
• Service Software Company
  Adequate expertise, the possibility of working under a contract, but the price is usually x2 of the developer’s salary, and there is no possibility to scale if necessary (the developers have run out, we enable the same recruitment = time)

Sometimes companies do not use all available methods of attracting software engineers (due to lack of time, political views, lack of contacts, lack of experience in building and managing remote developers, and lack of a reliable search partner) and either give up and hire the first best in the absence of an alternative, or do not find one at all.

People are one of the most valuable assets in software development, this is the force that will drive the project to success with incredible force. I will never tire of saying this and encourage you to consider all available developer engagement mechanisms: Consider Upstaff as your developer engagement partner.