IT contractors help companies meet changing work needs

Whether companies require specific tech talent for a project or need extra help meeting a business uptick brought by the recovering economy, corporate IT departments depend on the contract workforce.

In fact, Inside Track turned to cloud computing because it offered fewer IT demands than on-site software, he said. The company is a "strong user of innovation," not "a development shop selling a product to an end user," he added.

With full-time developers not fitting into Inside Track's business plan then, the company decided to hire contractors, vetted by IT consulting and services firm Bluewolf, for the development positions, Sue said.

With the contractors "it is very much like they are an extension of Inside Track employees," said Sue, adding that part-time staff participate in weekly meetings that include the research and business departments. The full-time workers don't view the contract staff as brought in to "fix" a broken development process. Instead, he said, regular staff view temporary workers as a way for the entire company to get "where we want to from a tech and process perspective much faster."

The bigger paycheck

With the bigger paycheck, even though, comes the expectation that contractors match regular employees in technical, application and communication skills, said Jack Cullen, president of IT staffing agency Modis. Over the last five years, and especially in 2011, freelancer salaries have increased and are now comparable to full-time salaries, he said.

In rare cases, temporary work can serve as a potential gateway to full-time employment at the Boulder, Colorado, business, said Young. Nevertheless, "you never know. If some of those individuals were a great resource on the team and they fit in so then, so if we needed to have a regular employee they might be a candidate," she said.

The project required some work to modernize legacy application architecture and Young used contractors for the job. The company didn't have a firm idea of how the revamped application would impact its business and staffing needs, she explained.

Beyond using contractors "to get [a] project off your shelf," Modis' Cullen has seen an increase in demand for temporary workers as businesses, especially financial firms, look to complete IT projects that may have been fallen victim to budget cuts while the recession. And, Cullen said, greater IT job growth, even if it is for temporary positions, can hold positive news for the overall economy.

This pick up in business is specifically why some companies are looking to temporary workers, according to innovation from Bluewolf. Improving economies bring increased labor demands as clients have the capital to buy products and services, the firm said. With the recovery's strength nevertheless uncertain, businesses need a flexible workforce that they can scale up or down to meet the changing workload, the technology said.

Platform wasn't tied to economics

While BI's use of part-time work to modernize a platform wasn't tied to economics, Young has heard anecdotes from colleagues about businesses using more part-time labor due to economic demands.

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