Outstaff Your Team: How Everything Started

With over 12 years of experience in the tech field, 3 years since the first client, tremendous growth in positions, and amazing expansion of our team, I look back at when Outstaff Your Team started its path. From a one-person team back then to approaching 100 in headcount, we continue growing, and our ambitious plans don't stop here.

We took risks at the time of uncertainty, and we succeeded, following our mission to fulfill global demand for technology and working for people and with people. I reflect on our values and actions during these years, excited about what the future is yet to bring.?

From Idea to Implementation

Our IT staffing company started at the times of Covid-19, when many businesses decided to move to digital space. They were in need of developers, designers, QA specialists, and many other roles. That's where our co-founders and I saw the opportunity. With the previous experience in tech and HR, I was testing new strategies and approaches.?

All big things come from small beginnings, and Outstaff Your Team is no exception. Although at the beginning of the journey I was alone, doing business development, working on 10–15 vacancies at the same time, the start turned into a fruitful journey. Thanks to our partners and our co-founder Daria Leshchenko, who believed in the idea and supported me, I found ways to bring our value to our clients and partners. We built our services on the idea that every tech opportunity starts with a talent.

I remember that as the idea of Outstaff Your Team company emerged, a colleague of mine at SupportYourApp, where I worked back then, pointed out that I was a big risk-taker. Well, probably this is what led me to where I'm today. Because if I never tried, I would never forgive myself, and I was right.??

Since more clients turned to us, I could not be the only person managing everything anymore. I started our expansion with gathering the team of the best specialists. And believe me, it was a challenge at the time.?

Our People – Our Main Asset

We had what seemed to be a more or less simple task — to find recruiters who would become ambassadors of our culture and ensure the best experience of both clients and candidates. It was also important to find the right balance between technical background and soft skills' mastery. The first recruiter who joined my team was a talented specialist with a very big potential and amazing soft skills. But she struggled with the technical aspect of our specialization. Unfortunately, we didn't continue our cooperation…?

My other attempt was to hire a recruiter who had solid experience specifically in the tech industry. But even with great knowledge of the field, the candidate lacked the cultural aspects, which prevented us from further cooperation.?

Testing different approaches, I started to question whether I had chosen the right direction. Was it the moment to get desperate? After two attempts, almost. But I was still hoping to find a golden mean. I gave myself the third attempt and promised that if this time it wouldn't work, I'd consider this idea unscalable and would give up. And the fortune smiled on us, as we happily onboarded Silviia, our first Hiring Specialist that combined all the necessary skills and was our first culture fit.?

Or maybe it's just a matter of setting the right goals? We often say that every tech project starts with the right talent. And in our work, we really mean it. Clear understanding of our goals led us to expansion that continues to grow. With more amazing people coming to my team, we have split the Talent Acquisition activities to differentiate between sourcing and talent search in one department, and cultural, tech interviewing in the other one. In synergy, these departments help us successfully close most in-demand vacancies in the tech industry.

From Hiring Specialists and Talent Acquisition to account management and marketing, our team has grown to over 100+ people in only three years. While we started in the hybrid mode of working, with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, 99% of our core team specialists moved to working remotely, foremost for the security reasons. Covering various locations across Europe and North America, they continue to provide excellent service and ensure the continuity of business operations.

Sticking to Core Activities and Exploring New Opportunities

With our main mission to connect talented people with the booming IT industry, while fulfilling global demand for technology, we carve our mastering in building long-term relationships and make talents and opportunities match. Strategically, Outstaff Your Team searches qualified people and the more projects we do, the more experienced we become. With the staffing model and a great number of various services, we help businesses grow, focusing on both recruiting and talent retention activities. With extensive experience in the tech field, I understand the сlients' main pain points and can suggest solutions for various demands, be it staff augmentation, employer of record activities, or talent management, to name just a few.

We continually move forward and develop. As the demand increases, we adapt and implement new tools that help us be more efficient. For example, we're mindful of AI benefits, especially in the field we're placed in. But we test and implement all tools with the highest precaution because the personal data we process and security measures that we take are our highest priorities.?

When we started the company and signed our first contract with a SaaS product company in Italy, we were just looking for the right people to fill the positions (at the time, these were two PHP developers). Today, in addition to recruiting, we also offer various staffing models, employer of record, and other services that save businesses time and money (e.g. pre-employment checks or handbook creation).?

Who would've ever guessed where we could go that quick if our partners hadn't believed in the idea at the very beginning?

The Benefit of Global Presence

Having global presence brings us numerous advantages. And I don't only mean our core team. Since the beginning, our IT staffing agency was globally oriented, cooperating with clients from around the world, but also finding specialists from various emerging markets.?

When we search candidates, we use our numerous databases in different countries. Global talent pool approach gives us much more opportunities and allows us to keep abreast of current market trends. At the same time, many factors are also dictated by a client's needs. For example, some businesses prefer to have specialists from similar time zones or the nearest geographical locations (subject to cultural considerations and the comfort of cooperation in the team). In this case, we limit our search by the predefined regions.?

Our global presence also challenges us to know our clients better. By diving deep into their needs, we discover rich cultural aspects and peculiarities of leading businesses in particular countries. That's also what motivates us to stretch our limits.

You Are What You Do

When I look back at the whole journey we have undertaken with the team until today, I'm happy to see that smart strategies lead to successful results. It's the mixture of hard work, of amazing talents, and courageous decisions that led us to the point where we are today.?

From one side, I think the way we grew was needed to better understand why we do what we do and how we want to do it better. From the other side, if asked whether I regret any actions or missed opportunities during this time, I would tell ourselves to try new approaches and invest in new ideas even more.?

What I clearly see from our example is that you should always try. And we continue to stick to this principle every day. Without risks, there is no reward.?

A Peek into the Future

We build our strategy in a way to continuously work on short-term and long-term projects. If for the immediate plans, we have already started repackaging our services, the long-term plans will take some time. But with the knowledge and experience that we have gained during these years, we feel that we have something more to share in addition to our regular services.

By putting our clients in the heart of our activities, we work on various solutions for them all the time. One of them will be a new product that will match businesses and specialists at the same time. Offering more options to the clients and sticking to their needs is what defines our short-term and long-term solutions.

More to come! And as we like to say with the team, every project, even the smallest, the riskiest, or the weirdest one, starts with people.