Depending on the nature of your business and the niche it is in, you might find that you need to hire IT professionals on a short-term basis for limited-time projects. It can be difficult to find people who are willing to work as short-term employees, but outsourcing is a great alternative. Below are some tips and tricks for finding the right professional for the job.
Examples of Short-Term Projects
When your business is very small, it can be difficult to imagine the types of projects that might call for short-term employment of IT professionals. However, there are several. They include:
- Designing your network and infrastructure from the ground up
- Office 365 migrations
- Upgrading servers and workstations
- Installing, upgrading, or migrating firewalls and other important security measures
- Workstation or server data recovery following disasters or hardware failures
- Cabling services and conduit work
- Wireless network infrastructure
- Security cameras and monitoring
- Setting up virtualization or remote access as needed for your employees
Of course, this is not an all-inclusive list, but it does represent some of the most common short-term projects that call for access to IT professionals.
Outsourcing Short-Term Projects
There are several benefits to outsourcing your entire IT department, but in this case, you may only need consulting and project help for a short time. Once again, outsourcing is often the best way to accomplish these goals. To do it, make sure that you look for a local company with years of IT experience and one that has the time and desire to help your business succeed. This way, you can overcome common issues such as language barriers, team management issues, poor quality work, and data security issues just to name a few.
Problems with Hiring Internally
Depending on the size and type of business you own, it is often best to leave network-related and IT projects to the professionals who best understand them. When it comes to hiring someone to help with one of the short-term projects listed above, you have two options. First, you could go through the process of trying to hire someone internally, which often involves putting ads in newspapers and on websites. Not only does it cost you a great deal of money to place these ads – money small businesses simply don’t have to spend – but it also means you will spend a great deal of time interviewing candidates for a project that you may not fully understand.
Hiring staff for an IT project means managing the project remains internal. With expanded project needs, this often means increased management and training costs for the business. Also, an individual hire would not have the combined IT experience of of an outsourced IT department. Individuals also take vacations leaving you understaffed unless you hire multiple support technicians. An outsourced IT department would not have the same issue.
Focus on Your Business – Not the Short-Term Project
Leaving IT projects to the professionals is beneficial because it allows you to rest your mind at ease. When you choose to outsource your short-term IT projects, and when you pick a local company with a solid reputation for quality, you can continue to focus on more important aspects of your business and leave the upgrades, installations, migrations, and more to the people who have the education and experience to handle them on your behalf.
Though outsourcing IT projects was once a terrifying prospect, today’s outsourcing is much different. Look for a local provider that understands your business needs and can provide you with professionals who will get the job done right – and in a timely manner – so you can focus on running your company.
