Hiring vs. Outsourcing – The Pros And Cons

The needs of a business often don’t necessitate in-house hiring. When requiring specific skills and equipment or short-term, limited, or seasonal needs, hiring freelancers generally makes more sense. Outsourcing refers to hiring a service provider, consultant, or agency to manage some aspect of a business. Commonly outsourced tasks include administrative tasks, marketing, and social media, customer service, IT, and accounting to name a few. As a general rule of thumb, smaller businesses will need to outsource more often than larger ones.

Hiring for both in-house and outsourced positions can be time-consuming and stressful. Depending on a company’s needs and size, it may be necessary to recruit the recruiter as the talents of a great recruiter will have a lasting impact on your company.

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The Pros Of Hiring In-House

If you find yourself doing the hiring, coming up with a list of phone screening interview questions is a must to find employees who are easily engaged and want to take an active role in projects. Engagement in projects is a huge plus to progress and can be helped along immensely by face-to-face interaction.

This type of team synergy simply isn’t possible online. Solid candidates can often be lured with a respectable salary and room for growth, not to mention salaried employees don’t require extra pay when projects run long. Another boon to in-house hiring is the likelihood of the employee keeping business ideas to themselves since they tend to be more invested.

Any position that is essential to a business should be an on-site position, perhaps with the option to work from home at times. Maintaining a specific work culture that must permeate all levels of a business, its products, and brand is also served by hiring in-house. Building a team where the free-flow of ideas advances all involved is well-suited to the core members who will comprise a full-time staff.

The Cons Of Hiring In-House

Permanent employees are often looking for health insurance and savings benefits, and such costs can be quite high to maintain for an employer. It can also be difficult to find candidates who are the right fit depending on the position and the size of the city. Hiring an under-skilled employee can indeed end up costing more in the long-run than hiring a candidate with more suitable expertise. Not to mention, the many steps of the hiring process, from procurement to training, can be quite expensive as well.

Full-time and even part-time employees are often not fully utilized, and the expenses associated with them are a fixed cost whereas the number of freelancers needed at any point in time can be adjusted as needed with much less fuss. Freelancers tend to work faster as well since they are used to the need to always be looking to secure more work. Firing a worker is never an easy task, but it is much less costly and less burdensome to sever ties with a remote worker as opposed to an on-site permanent one.

The Pros Of Outsourcing

In-person interaction isn’t necessarily required for some tasks, which makes remote workers a good fit in this capacity. Freelancers are also cheaper to hire due to the lack of expected benefits and flat rates. When outsourcing, the hiring pool becomes global, which makes finding qualified candidates much easier. Plus, strategically hired contractors in various time zones can mean enabling a company to maintain a 24/7 presence.

Expenses related to performing a job will be carried by the freelancer, so this is another plus for companies. If any question exists over whether or not the immediate work will be permanent, this is another reason to assign the associated tasks to a temporary worker.

The Cons Of Outsourcing

The possibility of exposing a company’s intellectual property to an untrustworthy source is greater when outsourcing. It’s also more likely that a freelancer might bolster their abilities with false information, so it’s essential to fully vet such candidates. Being based in numerous locales can also equate to significant differences in how to approach work tasks as well as marked communication difficulties due to spread-out time zones.

Some consultants, while worth every penny, can be quite expensive. The savings are still often huge when compared to the cost of full-time employees. At times, a freelancer may have a higher-paying gig that will need to be prioritized over yours. Or worse yet, the best service providers tend to be booked way in advance.  Maintaining consistent communication with potential candidates is also essential and can be helped along with recruiting email templates.

Outsourcing – Conclusion

The decision to outsource or keep tasks in-house is a continual process because the needs of a business inevitably change over time. Learning how to choose the best contractors and freelancers is a skill that improves with experience, but such hiring practices come with lower risks than acquiring in-house employees.

What pros and cons have you considered when it comes to hiring vs. outsourcing?  Tell us in the comments.

If you are interested in even more business-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels then we have a lot to choose from.

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