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Noémie R. for Upway.io

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Hire or Fire ?

Here you are, you’re Chief Technical Officer at the firm you wanted. Maybe you’ve been for a couple of years now, maybe more. And you love your job, you love your teams, you love your company.

But then 2020 happened.

And with it, the lockdown and maybe less project and less work.

You may have stopped recruitments because of it, maybe like some known firm, some difficult decisions have been made.

Some study from Gartner Cabinet in july revealed that 70 000 persons had lost their jobs in the tech world. Mostly in start-up or tourism companies like Airbnb because of clients’ and project’ losses.

Firing technical staff isn’t your best idea

Technical staff is your business foundation. Even if you don’t have any idea of what tomorrow bring, here’s a certainty : computer science is needed. Everywhere, by everyone.

Let me tell you a story :

A big company had a development project planned for november 2020. It asked some Software Consulting Company to find a team of developers for this project only in january. The team was recruited, everyone agrees on the contract and was waiting for november 2020 to begin.

A few months later, the big company, given the current economic situation at this time, decided to cancel the project. The team created was split to find other projects and replaced in a smaller firm in no time by the Software Consulting Company.

Where is the problem ?

In October, the big company finally decided to re-start the project. But as it asked the ESN to make the team come-back, the answer was no. Technical staff have so much work demand that there was no place for a new project and there were no other teams with that special skill.

Technical staff with a good amount of skills, experiences, and with a good stack for your projects are so rare they should be protected. A crisis is never a permanent feature, and digital transformation is a necessity, so are computer science people.

How hiring without visibility on projects ?

Here you are now, in November, watching the IT sector coming back to life, with a lot of companies in need of IT projects and teams. In France, 78,2% of start-ups want to recruit by the end of the year, most of them want to hire developers or technical staff.

The PageGroup company, specialised in recruitment has published its annual report of job trends, and the IT sector will still be one of the most asked from now on until 2025.
Maybe you and your team are facing new deadlines to catch-up, new jobs to make-up for sales.

Maybe you and your team have too much work, and overtime hours.

How can you hire a new talent if you don’t know what tomorrow brings ? What if these jobs are not followed by others ?

Have you ever thought about hiring a freelancer ?

Freelancers are by nature a more cost-effective alternative to hiring a full-time employee. This is especially true if the task you want to be completed isn't a regular everyday need.

A freelancer can also be a temporary fix, giving you some time to find your ideal person to join your team.

When you’re hiring a freelancer, you’re hiring an expert, who, with a pretty good chance will think (and do) differently to your usual staff and can make you think outside the box and your project will benefit from it.

So, hiring or firing ?

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