How to get WIN WIN WINS by using part-time IT Contractors

Recently we’ve seen some really great results from companies utilising IT contractors on a part-time basis.

One of our clients came back after 3 months wanting to extend our contractor with…..

‘We're really impressed with their work - they’ve really allowed our project to progress, accelerate and boost our confidence that we'll actually get the project over the line’.

We were chuffed to hear this as it really is a WIN WIN WIN for the development manager, team, business & contractor, for everyone.

In this instance instead of hiring an intermediate-senior developer we’ve had a senior developer / architect work for 20 hours per week (4 hours per day) bringing hard to find Cloud & NoSQL skills to deliver tangible results for a similar total annual cost of a permanent full-time head count, without the risk of a permanent person not working out.

There’s no doubt you need core members of your team for BAU & the intricate domain knowledge & IP but sometimes contractors can tackle some problems that have been tried & failed or to give an injection of new skills & expertise, invigorating the team and lighting the fire to ignite a project.

It also often suits professional contractors who will have 10-20 hours of on-going work from previous clients (often systems they’ve built previously which they continue to support / maintain / add features to) so it works quite nicely for everyone.

Often it’s argued by clients that ‘Our code base takes X amount of time for someone to get up to speed on ie 5 or 6 months’ so why not pair a contractor with a senior dev to work alongside them? This way there’s cover / risk mitigation when the contractor moves on. This also means where there is some skill transfer you can retain in-house.

As work cultures are moving to becoming more outcome based models, business owners, directors & managers are under pressure to achieve their goals and using short-term IT contractors on a part-time basis is a great way to create significant value by getting fast, tangible results for the business.

if you’re looking for an IT contractor to work on a project or you’re an IT contractor who’d like to catch up please feel free to get in touch for a chat over coffee on: paul@sunstonetalent.com 

I'm Paul, Founder & Principal Consultant of Sunstone, an IT Recruitment & HR company specialising in recruiting IT roles within software, web, mobile, blockchain, big data, infrastructure, security & networks in Christchurch & South Island of New Zealand.