Comparing the Costs of Staff Augmentation Around the World

Hiring talent outside of the U.S. could be saving you money and time

If you’re looking to scale your IT staff (aren’t we all these days? Hello, rapid digital transformation), you’re likely running all the numbers:

• How many employees do I need to hire?
• What’s my budget?
• How much time will it take? These are all key questions to ask yourself as you get started. But as you dig in—especially if you’re considering outsourcing some of your staff—there’s more to consider than just salaries. In our chart below, we’ve broken down the costs to consider when hiring traditional internal staff vs. hiring a staff augmentation agency either onshore and offshore.

Take a look to see how the costs add up:

Software Developer Staffing Costs

*Traditional Staffing accounts for one employee. With staff augmentation, you have access to a team of experts.
**Based on 1% of overall contract price. May vary with inflation, number of employees traveling, and frequency of travel.
***Based on 2% of overall contract price. May vary with inflation.

It’s important to note this chart does not include the potential productivity losses associated with time zone differences, communication barriers, and/or working with unskilled (or overly literal) talent. Of the regions above, Latin America often comes out on top in terms of cost combined with language, cultural affinity, and communication with general US business workers. Read more in our infographic.

Another key factor to consider is with choosing traditional staffing, you’re hiring a salaried, full-time employee who you must pay for the entire year. With staff augmentation, you can choose to utilize employees only for the project duration in which you need them, allowing greater flexibility.

Talent Acquisition

Equally important to consider is your business’ talent attraction capabilities. Depending on what skill area you’re recruiting for, talent acquisition itself can be a full time job.

Here’s a list of steps someone on your staff will need to perform if you choose to coordinate staffing in-house:

• Designate (and pay) a hiring manager

• Subscribe to (and pay for) recruiting tools such as Linkedin, Indeed, etc.

• Sort through sometimes 100+ resumes to find qualified candidates

• Coordinate interview scheduling

• Conduct interviews with a technical interviewer (AKA someone who is going to ask the right questions for the role)

When you choose to work with a staff augmentation partner, on the other hand, you can avoid having to pay for and coordinate these duties in-house. Instead, your agency partner will recruit, vet, and sometimes even train top talent, and then only send you top candidates for the roles you are looking to fill.

Turnover in the tech industry is also high compared to other sectors, measured at an overall 13.2% (and 21.7% for software engineers specifically). With skilled technical staff in high demand, it can be common to lose employees to a more attractive opportunity elsewhere. Given the high cost of recruiting and training talent, this can become a large burden to address in-house.

Staff Augmentation in Latin America

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can build a highly skilled team for you in just 4-6 weeks, please reach out.