What do recruitment and onboarding look like when outsourcing IT in Poland?

IT outsourcing can seem like a leap in the dark, so naturally, you may be wondering what happens next. How do you ensure that the IT outsourcing company understands your requirements and finds the right candidates for your assignment? When will they start coding? And if you have an in-house development team, how do you make sure they collaborate with the new colleagues efficiently and productively?

You probably have many questions, so let us shed some light on software developer recruitment and onboarding.

You can’t find what you don’t know that you’re looking for. That’s why at Scalo, we take great care to learn about your needs and requirements precisely before we start the recruitment process or even create a candidate profile.

This is to say that one of the first things you can expect from us will be a proper briefing. It’s only when we understand your specific project objectives and challenges that our delivery manager can start assembling the right team for the job–either engaging some of the existing team members or acquiring new specialists. In the latter case, they translate these requirements into actionable points for our IT recruiters who then ensure fast and professional delivery of talent for your project.

Quite naturally, technical skills seem to be of paramount importance in the recruitment process, however, at Scalo, we tend to look beyond the technology stack of a given candidate and focus on their soft-skills too. Working in diverse, multicultural project teams, we ensure that our developers possess not only a good command of English, but also impeccable interpersonal skills, courtesy, and awareness of cultural differences.

Almost half of the European companies surveyed by global consultancy EY lack digital skills–from cybersecurity to artificial intelligence, and robotics. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that with a steadily growing demand from businesses, the field of IT recruitment can at times seem like a battlefield, with numerous agents competing for scarce talent.

That’s where adaptability becomes essential. As a medium-sized company, we have the flexibility that larger IT service providers may be lacking. Once we start a project, we can immediately start recruitment processes in several locations–apart from our HQ in Wrocław, we are also present in 4 other major Polish cities, including the capital.

Since we are not a small company either, we have a pool of trusted specialists who can move across projects should a project emergency occur.

And yes, we‘re ready to experiment with diverse recruitment methods when needed to get you the right talent on time, just as we did for this leading European Banking Group. By applying an assessment centre–a method rarely used in IT outsourcing–we managed to build a team of 10 specialists within one month, achieving an outstanding client acceptance rate of 92%.

Many clients expect the development work to commence immediately. While some minor assignments can indeed start from day one, most will require some time to get started. Depending on your project complexity and the amount of documentation, onboarding can take anywhere from half a day to even two or three weeks.

You should use this time to make more precise arrangements with your IT outsourcing before the project kickoff. Some of the things you can come to terms with to include timelines, quality standards, working hours, as well as communication tools and frequency.

This is also the right moment to agree on travel arrangements. The more face-to-face contact you can get with the team, the better understanding of your requirements they will get–so it’s definitely worth bringing up.

Last but not least, you should get down to discuss notice periods. Not only may they work differently in Poland than they do in your country, but also significantly impact the start date of your project and its further delivery. Your contract should include reasonable periods to ensure smooth implementation, handover, but also ramp ups or down of a team.

An important thing to bear in mind is that new team members usually join at the beginning of each month rather than mid-month–meaning that in September, we are already recruiting for an early November start. Getting a candidate approved in October will result in having them start in December.

The way your onboarding process looks will depend on two key factors.

First, your product. The process will be different if you begin building it, to when you’re looking to add additional features to an existing product. If it’s brand new, your onboarding will most likely include workshops aimed at identifying the most suitable architecture and tech stack, as well as creating an initial backlog.

Second, your internal tech team. If you have in-house developers, it’s important to ensure smooth communication and eliminate any friction early on by getting your developers to meet the external team. That’s where face-to-face contact is essential. It helps build positive relationships and removes potential tensions between your internal and outsourced developers.