Technical assistance: the alternative to recruitment

Recruiting is not always the right solution, especially when it involves skills outside your core business. In this case, hiring a technical assistance consultant is an excellent alternative for gaining greater flexibility. 

Here are 4 advantages of technical assistance over recruitment.

• Advantage n°1 : Better responsiveness to industrial needs
• Advantage n°2: Benefit from the best skills, even outside you core business
• Advantage n°3: Stay focused on the project and avoid administrative issues
• Advantage n°4 : Better project cashflow management

Increasingly, industrial clients are entrusting their projects to a limited number of players, and committing them for the entire duration of the project. This enables them to reduce the number of people they deal with, and to transfer responsibilities outside their core business to an external player.

For companies, this means being entrusted with projects that often go beyond the internal skills and resources available at the time of signing. This means rapidly expanding the team and adding new skills. But recruiting specifically for a short-term assignment raises real questions:

• How can we make the most of this resource once its phase in the project is over?
• Should we take the time to train them in new skills that will be useful for the rest of the project?
• Should they be further specialized in their area of expertise for the future?
• Will there be other assignments that are consistent with their profile to entrust to them in the near future?
• ...

If recruitment is clearly not always the right answer, calling on technical assistance often proves to be the most flexible, relevant and realistic solution.

Advantage n°1 : Better responsiveness in industrial needs

Conventional recruitment usually takes between 45 and 90 days from the expression of need to the start of the new recruit's assignment. Conversely, a technical assistance company is usually able to deploy a consultant or a team of consultants within a very short timeframe of between 5 and 30 days. 

As the interface is direct between the project team with the requirement and the technical assistance company, which has its own network of consultants and experts, an introductory meeting can be organized within a few days, and a decision taken quickly on the consultant's integration into the team.

Read: 6 steps to hiring technical support talent with Easy Skill.

Advantage n°2 : Benefit from the best skills even outside your core business

As we saw above, recruiting profiles with skills outside the company's core business means running the risk of having employee profiles that are out of step with their long-term missions. This means training them in new functions, or constantly pushing them out of their area of expertise. 

Thanks to its in-house pool of consultants and its network of pre-qualified external experts, a technical assistance company like Easy Skill is able to match your needs with the right profile in terms of skills and experience across a wide range of specialties. 

Whether it's systems engineering, IT & software, mechanics, instrumentation, civil engineering, process engineering, project management, cost controlling... if you only have a one-off requirement (for 6 to 24 months, for example), Easy Skill can provide the technical assistance you need.

You can also put an end to the search and recruitment of profiles that are outside your core business, and for which you may lack the reference points to select the right candidates and ensure their technical relevance.

Discover our guide to de-risk our projects!

Advantage n°3 : Stay focused on the project and avoid administrative issues

One of the great advantages of technical assistance is that between you and Easy Skill, it's a service contract that you sign, not an employment contract between you and the consultant. This is a key point that frees you from a large number of complex formalities, and allows you to remain focused on your project.

All the administrative aspects (salary, contract, health insurance, visas, accommodation, etc.), particularly for international projects, are the responsibility of the technical assistance company, since the consultant has an employment contract with it.

The contract with a technical assistance company is therefore much lighter and less restrictive than a hiring contract. By entrusting the mission to Easy Skill, you remain focused on what matters for the project, and on integrating the consultant into the project so that he or she is up and running as quickly as possible.

Advantage n°4 : Better project cashflow management

Good cost management is critical on industrial projects. It is therefore important to allocate budgets in the best possible way to each phase of the project, and to avoid "over-staffing" or "under-staffing" an assignment.

In this respect, technical assistance makes it possible to manage projects as closely as possible to requirements, and to always have the most coherent team of in-house staff and external consultants. 

Also, since it's a service contract rather than an employment contract, payment for the service is deferred over time, which improves project cashflow.

In conclusion, when the assignment concerns your core business and the business prospects are promising, it is often appropriate to think in terms of recruitment, as the integrated resource will most certainly be able to contribute its skills to other projects. However, when the mission involves new, specialized or one-off expertise that you don't want to integrate over the long term, technical assistance makes perfect sense.

Whatever the situation, Easy Skill can help you benefit from its network of technical assistance and recruitment experts.