How to Choose the Right IT Staffing Company
Table of Contents
Are you interested in working with an IT staffing company? The first and most obvious question is how to find the right one and build trust.
Your best practice is to have a guide that navigates your decision-making at each step. This blog presents you with tips that might help you to choose the right staffing agency.
Tips to Choose the Right IT Staffing Company
Here is a detailed checklist containing a step-by-step guide to making the best choice:

1. Define Your Requirements
The very first yet often overlooked step. According to a survey by McKinsey, fewer than 50% of the organizations surveyed have a clear understanding of their current skill sets. Existing skill set understanding is a must for determining what skills need to be augmented to meet the evolving organizational needs. Therefore, your search for an IT staffing agency should begin with an internal assessment.
Beyond the technical skills set evaluation, pay equal attention to soft skills. According to Leadership IQ, a lack of soft skills results in 89% of hiring failures, while technical skills account only for 11% of hiring failures. So, beyond technical skills assessment, evaluate the soft skills requirements.
Your IT staff augmentation requirements should also consist of the experience a candidate needs to have. For example, if you have a simple project, then hiring a professional with 1 to 3 years of experience might be the right choice to meet the project requirements. This will help you reduce IT staff augmentation pricing, as experience is directly related to the price you have to pay for each resource.
In summary, before you begin staffing augmentation ensure to have a clear understanding of:
- Technical skills
- Soft skills
- The years of experience augmented staff should have
- The number of resources you need.
2. Shortlist IT Staffing Companies With Expertise Specific to Your IT Domain
Not every IT staffing company has the professionals with the skills you need. You have to shortlist the companies that have expertise in your IT domain. For example, if you want to hire Salesforce experts, then you should choose a company that has resources readily available and has expertise working on the Salesforce platform.
Narrow down your search to companies that have specialized expertise in the technology you’re working on.
3. Evaluate Shortlisted Companies
The next step is to verify the expertise of the shortlisted companies. You can begin by reviewing their website, and reviews on third-party websites like Clutch, GoodFirms, and more. These third-party sites publish only verified reviews, therefore you have the assurance of genuine customers and their experience.
The additional evaluation point is to know the number of resources they have with the skill set you need. This will allow you to scale your resources up and down conveniently. If they have limited resources at the time of scaling you might face difficulties. Also, confirm their experience level to ensure you have the candidate with the right skills and experience needed for your project.
You should also invest time to understand how the staffing company sources and vets their talent. A rigorous vetting process ensures that candidates are qualified to work on your project.
4. Have an Open Communication
After having all the required information about the shortlisted companies, reach out to them. Have open communication with them discussing your requirements, and how they can meet them.
Here we have compiled a list of the questions you can ask the staffing agency to evaluate their capabilities to meet your needs:
- How do you ensure that the augmented talent integrates with our existing in-house team?
- How does your onboarding process look alike, and how long does it take?
- How do you ensure the different time-zone adaptability?
- How flexible you are to scale up and down based on evolving project needs.
- Are there any penalties or limitations for scaling down an augmented team?
- What support options do you have for augmented staff?
- What key performance indicators (KPIs) are there to measure staff performance? Can we set custom metrics to measure performance?
- What if we’re not satisfied with the augmented staff performance?
Have all your doubts answered, and make an informed decision about which staffing company is the right choice for you.
5. Interview Suggested Candidates, and Verify Their Experience
The next step would be the company suggesting the best-fit candidate matching your requirements. Don’t blindly trust the profiles of the candidates submitted to you. It would be in your best interest to interview each candidate and verify their experience to ensure you get what you’re paying for.
Carefully evaluate the resumes of candidates to find out the inconsistencies like mismatched dates, unexplained job titles, and more. Additionally, you can check the LinkedIn profile to confirm the information provided to you.
If you are hiring two or more resources, then you can do a group interview to learn how proficient they are to work together and fit with your existing team.
6. Review Contract Terms & Conditions
Once you have finalized the IT team you want to onboard, the next step is to sign an agreement with the staffing company. Some several terms & conditions might not be readily disclosed but significantly can impact your relationship with the company.
When working with an IT staff augmentation firm the following contract should be reviewed carefully to find hidden factors that might have an impact on your project:
Intellectual Property Rights Protection
This contract is meant to protect your ownership of the work completed by the augmented team. The contract should explicitly define what falls under intellectual property like inventions, design, software, trademarks, or copyrights. What actions can be taken in the case of a violation that clearly outlines the jurisdiction, and applicable laws, along with an internal process a staffing firm will follow to solve the IP-related disputes?
Non-Disclosure and Confidentiality Agreement
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) ensures that the sensitive information you share with the staffing company can only be used for the specified purposes only.
The agreement should explicitly state the sensitive information, and what can and cannot be done with the information shared. Additionally, you should define how long this agreement will remain in effect.
Payment Terms
An IT staffing agency should be transparent about its payment terms, and hidden charges that might occur to set clear expectations from the beginning. The contract should explicitly state the payment terms i.e. weekly, or monthly, along with a clear process for submitting and processing payment.
The payment terms should include information regarding how payment-related issues can be raised, and resolved.
These are just a few of the most commonly signed contracts between staffing companies and clients. You should choose a company that explicitly mentions the terms & conditions, and help you understand them. This will allow you to have a successful contract for both parties.

Ready to Take the Next Step?
These best practices will help you to make an informed selection for an IT staffing agency. Be informed at each step of your selection process, and ask questions to be confident that you are choosing the best.
Smart IT Staff is a staff augmentation company with 8+ years of experience serving 710+ global clients to fill the skill gap or meet short deadlines. We have a team of 400+ pre-vetted IT professionals having expertise to work across Salesforce, ServiceNow, Nintex, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP. Let’s schedule an obligation-free consultation with us to understand how we can help you onboard the best talent.