How recession affects the job market

The global market has recently been nothing but rich in some turbulent activities. The supply chain crisis, high fuel costs, inflation, and the war in Ukraine have been sending shockwaves, causing companies to think long-term and invest in tech to battle the harmful effects of the economic recession.

Consequently, the job market is saturated with tech openings: last year, in December alone, more than 223,000 jobs were available, including 17,600 positions at tech companies, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But is there enough available workforce to meet the industry demands?

Various research suggests that the IT job market will grow even further in the years to come. Precisely, the demand for IT professionals is predicted to increase at an unprecedented rate of 22% by 2030, making it one of the fastest-growing occupations in the world. As a result, the shortage can reach some astonishing 85 million people—more than the combined effort of the entire American education system will ever be able to produce. 

Many companies have already considered looking for talent outside the domestic market—offshoring has become a desired solution to local job market shortages. Unlike traditional hires, offshore employees are not subject to labor law; thus, employers don’t have to deal with taxes, workstations, vacations, etc. 

At the same time, remote teams can be highly effective. Sourcing companies like Syndicode can provide candidates that fit specific project requirements. That’s exactly what they did for Le New Black—a B2B platform that brings together brands and retailers. Before Syndicode joined the project, Le New Black experienced technical performance issues and desperately needed new features.

Syndicode stabilized the platform and built new features for Le New Black. That’s indicative of how poor hiring choices lead to bad engineering outcomes—luckily, Syndicode was able to step in and save the day. Still, bad hires can result in project delays and cost as much as 5 to 27 times the amount of the person’s salary. 

Overall, in times of uncertainty, a highly-skilled workforce becomes scarce: one can expect fierce competition between companies to attract the best candidates. Given the impressive rates at which the IT industry continues to grow, hiring candidates from the internal market using traditional means becomes challenging. 

Benefits of staff augmentation

Staff augmentation is the process of sourcing external personnel to increase your organization’s capacity. This outsourcing activity can benefit organizations that generally stay outside the IT industry but need an incremental capacity. Hiring a remote team on a contractual basis eliminates undesirable long-term consequences of in-house hiring, providing the following benefits:

Flexibility

Outstaffed teams are often called “on-demand”—for a good reason. Clients can ramp up or wind down their development capacity as needed. Most sourcing companies replace a team member that doesn’t fit during the agreed period.  

Cost-efficiency

Everything is taken care of—from recruitment to motivation and retention. No need to worry about facility, hardware, software, you name it!

Quality

All candidates undergo a thorough selection process that includes hard and soft skill assessments. Clients also get the possibility to interview candidates personally if they want to.

Speed

Most sourcing companies have an established pool of candidates they can utilize to great effect! With Syndicode, you can expect the first CVs to arrive for your consideration within 48 hours after the request is made.

These are the main benefits of staff augmentation, but clearly —there’s more to it. Remote teams can be highly effective when you need to hire rare specialists (with a unique skillset) that are not available to you via conventional sources for one or the other reason.

Hiring senior software engineers during the recession: the best practices

There’s a lot we could learn from the previous recessions: when COVID-19 first hit the world, the unemployment rate peaked at a shocking 14.7% in April 2020. Companies had to respond and allocate their resources carefully, focusing on the best hires only. Of course, the negative consequences of the pandemic have been somewhat mitigated, but yet another recession is upon us. 

So what can business owners do to secure their hiring preferences? We want to share some of the best practices we use at Syndicode:

• Whenever we are looking for a specific candidate, we ask for at least five years of practical experience and three years—with key technology. The next stage of our hiring process is a technical interview, and if passed successfully, our candidate is given a test project. Upon successful completion of a test project, our client is welcome to interview and approve a candidate in person;
• A key to successful hire—invest in your current personnel and provide them with a stable learning curve. At Syndicode, we encourage and help our engineers to master new technologies;  
• As much as practical skills are essential, we prioritize the problem-solving abilities of our candidates. However, our ideal candidate is also an immense team player to ensure our remote team can make great teamwork with our client;
• Always have a backup plan! At Syndicode, we always have 20-30 specialists available to start a project at short notice. Additionally, we are responsible for hiring additional employees within three weeks if necessary; 

This list doesn’t exhaust here—if you’re interested in learning more about our best practices, please get in touch. 

Staff augmentation process explained

Having explained our best practices, it’s time to dive deeper into the staff augmentation process. While there are many ways to go about it, we have fine-tuned the process of matching clients with relevant experts. Here is how it goes:

Discovery phase

Syndicode conducts thorough research to learn more about the project, objectives, users, stakeholders, operation process, etc. As a result, we provide a backlog and a project roadmap to ensure we’re on the same page with our clients regarding project deliverables and deadlines. 

Planning

Once we have a clear and unified project vision, we can plan our resources accordingly. That includes defining the scope of technologies and allocating human resources to reach the project objectives. We typically check the first availability of our specialists internally and start the recruitment process if necessary.

Interviewing

We use our expertise to provide the best fit, but our client has the final say on the selection process, of course. We welcome our client to join us in the interviewing process or leave the process entirely in our hands. 

Team onboarding

Once the team is approved, it’s time to onboard. We sign an NDA and TOA, and we’re all set to go! To ensure everything goes smoothly, our account manager is always there to facilitate the process and resolve any issues. 

This process is something that we’ve got used to doing over and over again—it drives results! If you still have doubts, our portfolio is a testimony to that. 

Questions to ask before you get started

Choosing a vendor shouldn’t be taken lightly: after all, you’re committing to a business relationship for a certain (probably quite extensive) period. Sometimes, a poorly chosen third-party vendor can deliver a product that doesn’t perform according to the selected criteria. In that case, another team has to come in and fix the problem.  

That’s exactly what happened with Le New Black—a B2B platform that brings together brands and retailers. Before Syndicode joined the project, Le New Black experienced technical performance issues and desperately needed new features.

Syndicode stabilized the platform and built new features for Le New Black. That’s indicative of how poor hiring choices lead to bad engineering outcomes—luckily, Syndicode was able to step in and save the day. Still, bad hires can result in project delays and cost as much as 5 to 27 times the amount of the person’s salary. 

Thus, asking a question beforehand is important to determine whether there’s a cultural fit and if the experience matches your expectations. Here are some questions we recommend asking; we’ve also provided examples of how we would reply to these questions, so you have something to work with.  

Q. How long have you been in business?

A. We’ve been around since 2014. Starting small, we grew into an international company with over 80 full-time globally distributed engineers in Lisbon, San Francisco, Warsaw, and other locations worldwide. 

Q. What is your experience?

A. We’re a full-cycle company providing everything from design to mobile and web development. Our technology stack includes (but is not limited to) Ruby on Rails, Node.js, React JS, React Native, and Python. We predominantly work with e-commerce, e-learning, and retail clients. 

Q. How do you make sure your team can communicate efficiently?

A. We always check the soft skills of our candidates as well as their English knowledge. Our employees have at least an upper-intermediate level with extensive work-related vocabulary. In case of any emergency, our account managers will be happy to assist!

Q. How do you charge?

A. We either use a flat fee or charge on a time & material basis.  

Q. How do you report on progress?

A. We provide regular sync-up calls, scheduling them at your convenience. 

These questions will help you get started. Although, it’s important to continue doing your due diligence thoroughly—check some online reviews, ask for client references, and consider talking to a few senior managers. 

Bottom line

If you’re in a line of business that requires some temporal development capacity, there is a lot to take in! Hiring is challenging in 2023, and it won’t get better soon. It might sound all dark and gloomy, but there is room for optimism.

In case you’re struggling to meet your hiring objectives—perhaps, it’s time to reconsider your strategy in favor of a fast, flexible, cost-efficient, and quality strategy that wields results! Add a thorough recruitment process to this, and you have a remote team tailored to your specific needs, ready to start in no time.  

Although if you want your project to be successful in the long term, we strongly encourage you to plan and start with a discovery phase. Once the team can see the project through your eyes, it’s all set for success! You can start accessing our vast network of IT specialists right now.