The staff augmentation trifecta: high quality, on-budget and on-time.
Vincent Bull has seen it all. From insurance to banking, from print to healthcare, from transportation to Canada’s Department of National Defence, he’s helped manage relationships, solve problems and deliver technical services for more than 25 years. Now, as an International Account Executive with Meta IT North America, he continues his work helping companies across sectors find the technology support they need to grow.
Read on to learn more about what Meta IT brings to businesses in North America, the benefits of staff augmentation, and the real difference it makes in our clients’ success.
META: What does staff augmentation mean to Meta IT?
Vincent: Meta IT is more than a staff augmentation company. We’re first and foremost about technology, digital transformation, and software development that supports human growth for our clients. Staff augmentation is one avenue we use to do that, and the service is centered around those values.
Talking about staff augmentation, the thing that our customers like about Meta is that we’ve got a large and deep pool of qualified professionals. And this pool of qualified developers allows us to augment their staffing with people that they can’t hire locally. Our team’s ability to jump into and start solving problems with technology that they haven’t seen before, that they haven’t worked with before, is fantastic. And they don’t just have the right project background – they also know how to deliver. The only way to do that is with qualified professionals.
META: What does Meta’s staff augmentation bring to the North American market?
Vincent: For one, lower recruitment costs, management costs, and infrastructure costs. Think of everything it takes to hire, onboard, and monitor the performance of a new employee. We do the heavy lifting of finding the right candidates from our growing pool of talent, both in Brazil and Canada, and handle all of the HR, commercial and technical management once that professional gets placed.
One of the things that our Brazilian resources can bring is that exchange rate advantage and access to talent in a location with a lower cost of living, in a similar time zone to the clients we support. Brazil’s a country with over 200 million people, where there’s a strong collection of professionals that we can work with, at a reasonable and competitive price. Our Canadian talent pool has the same high standards with the added benefits of local knowledge and culture, and the ability to work on-site, directly alongside a client’s team.
Staff augmentation is also a great way to scale a team. Sometimes you need more people here and fewer people there as your company grows and priorities change. And as priorities change, so do the positions you’re looking for. That’s the kind of thing staff augmentation makes really easy for our clients. And it doesn’t take all that long to place the right person – there are times when we’ve placed someone in under a week!
We’ve got 30 years of experience behind us. As a company, Meta has always adapted to new technologies in our own operations and in the professionals, we bring to our clients, whether it’s software developers working on a card-not-present transaction solution or building a frictionless customer experience.
Vincent Bull, Meta’s Senior Sales Executive:
“We help our clients grow by putting the right people in the job while making sure they have all the tools to be successful.”
META: How do you make sure you pick the right professionals for the job?
Vincent: We start out by talking to clients and really listening to what they need. Then we try to understand more than just the talent requirement – we try to understand the project, the architecture, the technology, the systems, and how they all connect. We look at the main business challenges, the delivery milestones, and the processes and methodologies our clients are using, like agile or traditional models. We really dive into the client to understand everything we can, as early as we can.
From there, we select the best candidates, do the upfront interviews, make sure their language skills are good, make sure they have the right skill set, and prep them for the interviews with our clients. We have to make sure that what we’re providing to our customer is going to allow them to achieve their goals and finish their projects at a high quality, on budget, and on time.
But there’s more to it than that, because our professionals are people who love what they’re doing. They’re passionate about it. If they’re not somebody who’s going to care, that’s going to show up in the project. We’re trying to help our clients grow, and one of the ways to do that is by putting the right people in the job while making sure they have all the tools to be successful. Care and passion make up a big part of it.
READ: How does staff augmentation with Meta work? Here’s a sneak peek.
META: What are the biggest staff augmentation myths that businesses should be aware of?
Vincent: A big one is working remotely. If we were talking about this last year, there could have been a possible argument for not hiring remote staff in either a different time zone or in a different location. But I think today, we’ve seen that it is totally possible to do anything remotely in the tech world. It really doesn’t cost you more. There’s no loss in efficiency. There’s no increase in price – if anything, working remotely means a decrease in price. The quality is there, and in many cases could be superior, because you’ve got mobility in your workforce without all the barriers of working in – and hiring from – one location.
Sometimes people talk about language barriers too. Language hasn’t really been a barrier for us or our clients. We do the upfront interviews, make sure their language level is a good fit for the project and the client. And a multilingual workforce can actually be a huge benefit, especially if you’re working on an international scale, or on a multi-cultural, multi-language project.
And when it comes to staff augmentation, it’s not the industry that matters. It’s quite literally our ability to go and find the right qualified person to fill the role – and we know how to do that. A good developer, for example, can figure out your technology stack quickly. They can move from healthcare to oil and gas. They can learn your industry’s environment and your business’s culture. And the right dev, they will learn the environment. The most important thing is that they listen and understand the problem.
META: What kinds of results have you gotten for businesses based in North America?
Vincent: When you think about what clients are looking for when they reach out to us, at the end of the day, it’s this: they have a project, and they want it done well, with no surprises. They want to know that you’re there to answer questions when they call. And they want to know they’re not getting sandbagged – they’re working with a company that respects them, delivers on its commitments and is clear about what to expect. It can be as simple and logical as that.
READ: Commitment’s at the core of everything we do for our clients. Here’s why.
META: Thanks, Vincent! Any final thoughts to share?
Vincent: My comment to the North American customer would be this: you have to try us. You might be apprehensive about taking on a remote professional because you’ve never done it before, but you never worked from home for so long before. And you’ve never had to wear a mask going to a grocery store before. All these things we’ve had to adjust to over the past year are firsts. This, too, is a first… and you’re going to be pleasantly surprised.
