How to Properly Staff Your IT Team and Fill Your Skill Gaps

As digital work becomes increasingly specialized, many companies are left wondering how to stay current. With the accelerating speed of the technology cycle, there may be new skills that your IT team needs now that didn’t exist before, or skills they will need in the future that have yet to become apparent.

Hiring additional full-time professionals to handle all of the technical details of your business isn’t always feasible. Either way, it is unlikely to provide a long-term solution due to the changing landscape.

To a certain degree, it may be possible to train existing workers on new technology as the need arises, but this may require a breadth of talent that can’t be expected of any single person. It’s also difficult to achieve a deeper knowledge or skill set from short-term training. Not only that, but your current workforce may struggle to incorporate additional training into their current set of duties.

You need talented individuals who can work alongside your current IT workforce to complete projects and overcome technological hurdles. A hybrid team, made up of members of your core team and the specialized skills of independent professionals, can provide the adaptability and expertise you need.

In this article, we outline some IT staffing tips and important considerations along the way.

Hybrid IT teams: Employees and independent talent

It’s worth noting that going the route of creating a hybrid team keeps you in good company. Top tech companies are relying on independent talent to fuel big initiatives. By pairing your current team with top independent talent, you get the best of both worlds—workers who know your business inside and out and talented professionals with the skill sets to take on the next big project.

Contrast the hiring of specialized independent talent with trying to hire additional generalists onto your team full time. Have you ever heard the phrase, “Jack of all trades; master of none”? That describes such a scenario. The way that technology is currently evolving, specialization is increasingly important. It has become impossible for any one person to maintain the proper level of knowledge across such a broad field.

You also don’t want to hire a new worker with a very specialized skill set if that skill set is only needed on one project or may become outdated in a few years. This is why engaging independent contractors just makes sense.

Hybrid teams of employees and independent talent can help organizations surmount a wide array of technical challenges and resolve important skill gaps. This approach provides agility and flexibility that may be difficult to achieve any other way.

6 IT staffing tips to successfully build your team

When assembling and staffing an IT team, consider the skills needed for a particular project, what skills your current team members possess, what might be taught to the existing workforce, and where you can utilize top independent talent.

Transitioning to a hybrid approach may be easier than you think. Here, we outline six steps to achieve an ideal IT staffing arrangement. ‍

1. Identify your goals and needs

Before you can begin building your hybrid team, you need to have a clear picture of what you are trying to accomplish. Create a list of projects and goals. Then, determine what skill sets are required to achieve each goal.

You may also want to list your needs chronologically and/or by order of importance so that you can understand the big picture more clearly, leaving you better prepared for making staffing decisions.‍

2. Assess the strengths and skills of your current team

The next step involves determining what skills your current team already has. You may want to speak with each team member and ask what types of technology they are most comfortable with and where they feel their strengths and weaknesses lie.

During this process, it’s helpful to keep in mind the trainability and adaptability of your current team members. It may be easier to train a current worker than to engage someone else for a particular task in some instances. It also makes sense to get a good picture of each team member’s current workload to determine the feasibility of requiring additional learning.

3. Identify IT skill gaps

Now that you have identified what you need and what you have, it is easy to determine where the gaps lie. For example, you may identify a lack of cybersecurity expertise among current team members. Or you may need someone with cloud engineering or data science experience. Make a list of all required skills and responsibilities that are not currently covered by your existing workforce.

Once you have this list, you may break it into two sublists—one that includes skills that you can train your current team members on and another that includes skills that may require an independent contractor.

4. Create a training plan for existing team members

If there are skills that will come in handy in the long term for your company, taking the time to train your current team members might be the most efficient plan. This training can be done in-house if you have experts on the subject or outsourced to a training company or contractor.

Make sure the training is in place on the right timeline for your projects’ needs. Schedule plenty of lead time so that everyone can plan accordingly.

5. Establish clearly defined roles for prospective team members

Independent contractors will cover the remaining technical skill gaps on your list. You will want to consolidate these needed skills into coherent bundles so that each bundle would make sense for a single expert to tackle.

Make sure that the skills go together in some way when bundling them. You are likely to have better luck finding someone who can tackle related skills than someone who possesses the desired depth of knowledge in disparate skill sets.

Create job descriptions to go with each needed position, clearly laying out the required skills and associated duties and expectations. Don’t forget to include soft skills, such as the ability to work well in teams, since this will be important too.

6. Engage the right independent talent

Another IT staffing tip is to fill all remaining skill gaps by engaging the right independent talent. Utilizing top independent talent allows your company to bring in skilled professionals for each project without creating long-term job positions that you don’t necessarily need in the long term.

Finding the right independent talent to onboard for short-term projects s also tends to be much easier and faster than hiring full-time employees. This is particularly true if you make use of platforms like Upwork.  

‍Upwork provides the opportunity to identify and evaluate the skills of independent professionals with ease, helping you to bring on top talent quickly. And if you are at all concerned about hiring independent contractors for high-security projects, many other businesses have successfully done so before you and figured out how to keep things safe.

Fill your skills gaps with global tech talent

When creating an IT team, you need team members with talent and know-how, group cohesion, and efficient communication. After all, your team’s effectiveness will directly reflect on the outcome of what they can produce.

Creating a hybrid IT team allows you to bring in skilled workers alongside your permanent team in a way that can fill any skill gaps. With technology changing so rapidly, you can anticipate that these skill gaps will exist with any new project.  

At Upwork, you can find the right independent talent to meet your ever-changing needs. Our specialty is specialized talent. The agility and flexibility gained by assembling your teams with this hybrid model can unlock for your business the tools and skills needed to increase productivity and keep your company at the top of the market.