Hiring tech and IT talent is tougher now than ever. Demand outpaces supply in most regions. According to industry commentary, many employers cite a lack of skilled tech professionals as a significant growth constraint. Job seekers are facing a high level of competition for open positions, prompting a response to cast a wide net. As a result, employers are receiving an inundation of applications, creating an enormous challenge in processing a high number of applications. Indeed recently published a report, Smarter Hiring With Data-Driven Insights, that provides further details on these trends. What has emerged is a Tech Talent War that has created significant challenges to both candidates and organizations seeking to fill open positions.
Candidates have multiple options and high expectations. Organizations must move fast, offer compelling experiences, and maintain high standards. Each is now leveraging AI tools to add further complexity, such as in assessing skills accurately and determining whether a culture fit is real or fabricated.
In short: the tech talent war is real – and internal teams are feeling the heat.
Internal teams are overburdened
Your internal talent team likely already wears many hats. As the pressure to hire more – and faster – increases, bottlenecks emerge. Below are three common pain zones and how outsourcing parts of the hiring process can ease strain without losing quality.
1. Sourcing
The burden: Internal recruiters or hiring managers often spend countless hours mining resume databases, job boards, niche forums, and professional networks. They build candidate pipelines, chase referrals, and then do cold outreach. That time is diverted from strategic tasks (employer branding, team alignment, process improvement).
The cost: Sourcing drains mental focus and can lead to burnout when repeated cycle after cycle.
What an outsourcing partner can do: A specialized IT staffing provider (like Axis Technical Group) can take over candidate sourcing. They bring access to curated pipelines, passive candidate networks, and niche communities. They continuously nurture those relationships so that when roles open, candidates are already engaged. Your internal team gains more time to refine role definitions and evangelize culture.
2. Screening and technical assessment
The burden: After sourcing, your team must vet candidates. That includes resume review, phone screens, coding tests or scenario assessments, and sometimes reference checks. For technical roles, assessments must be rigorous and role-specific. All of this demands domain knowledge, test calibration, and test administration. Internal staff may lack time or subject matter depth.
The cost: Screening steps slow down hiring, lengthen time-to-offer, and overwhelm internal resources. Overburdened teams may cut corners or allow weaker candidates through, hurting quality.
What an outsourcing partner can do: An IT staffing partner can manage screening and assessments end-to-end. They can:
- Conduct initial phone or video screens
- Administer technical tests or benchmark tasks
- Score results and filter to a shortlist
- Validate certifications or past project claims
Your internal team then deals only with well-vetted finalists. That protects your time while maintaining rigor.
3. Onboarding and conversion
The burden: Once a candidate is selected, internal teams often handle all onboarding logistics. That includes coordinating offer letters, background checks, paperwork, orientation, equipment provisioning, and initial training handoffs. For tech roles, you must ensure further access to systems, codebases, and configuration. If many hires start concurrently, your internal team becomes the de facto operations and HR bottleneck.
The cost: Onboarding overload saps bandwidth, leads to delays, and degrades the new hire experience. If new hires see chaos, retention and morale suffer.
What an outsourcing partner can do: A talent services firm can manage much of the onboarding process. They can:
- Draft and dispatch offer letters
- Coordinate background and compliance checks
- Handle HR paperwork and systems setup
- Facilitate first-week orientation, including logistics
- Serve as liaison between the client and new hire through the ramp period
Your internal team can focus on mission-critical integration, not administrative chaos.
Balancing outsourcing with control and quality
Delegating parts of the hiring process doesn’t mean you lose control. A well-structured partnership preserves your voice, values, and oversight.
1. Define clear role profiles and standards
At the outset, set detailed role definitions, skill requirements, evaluation rubrics, and cultural criteria. The outsourcing partner should align with those standards.
2. Collaborate on candidate feedback loops
Require that the staffing provider deliver feedback from candidates across stages. Share notes, interview results, and debriefs. This ensures transparency and continuous calibration.
3. Co-own the employer brand
The partner should present your brand faithfully, including messaging, tone, and culture. Align them with your candidate experience standards.
4. Monitor metrics and SLAs
Track time to hire, quality of hire, interview-to-offer ratios, and candidate satisfaction. Assign service levels to the outsourced tasks to ensure accountability.
How Axis Technical Group can help you win the tech talent war
Here’s how a partner like Axis can ease strain and help you win the tech talent war:
- Axis maintains proprietary pipelines of passive tech professionals. They engage these networks continuously, so you don’t start cold.
- Axis handles multi-level screening – phone, technical assessments, reference checks – filtering down to high-quality finalists.
- Axis coordinates offer processing, compliance, onboarding logistics, and handoffs to the client’s internal teams.
- Axis aligns with your brand and evaluation criteria to maintain consistency.
- Axis provides reporting dashboards and regular check-ins to track progress against hiring goals.
By outsourcing sourcing, screening, and onboarding, you free your internal teams to do higher-value work: strategic hiring planning, stakeholder alignment, training, process improvement, and retention.
Strategic gains from this approach
Speed to hire: Outsourced sourcing and screening shorten lead times. Your internal team receives ready-to-evaluate candidates, not raw piles.
Reduced burnout: Internal teams avoid repetitive administrative overload. They stay energized for strategic tasks.
Quality control: Because an outsourcing partner specializes in tech recruiting, the candidate funnel is stronger. You reduce false positives and mis-hires.
Scalability: Whether you need one hire or fifty, the partner scales pipeline, screening, and onboarding capacity without overloading your core team.
Cost effectiveness: While you pay for the external service, you avoid expensive internal overtime, hiring of additional full-time recruiting headcount, and opportunity costs from slow hiring.
Tips for firms considering this path
- Start small. Outsource one function at first (e.g., sourcing) and validate the results.
- Maintain parallel internal oversight while ramping trust.
- Keep communication tight between your hiring managers and the partner.
- Retain final decision authority in your own, internal hands.
- Use data (KPIs, feedback) to continuously optimize the mix of internal vs. outsourced tasks.
Winning the tech talent war does not require burning out your internal teams. You don’t have to force your HR and recruiting staff to be superhuman. By strategically outsourcing sourcing, screening, and onboarding to a specialized partner like Axis Technical Group, you can preserve internal energy, maintain quality, and scale your hiring. What results is that you stay in control, but you offload the drudge work. In a fiercely competitive market, this balance may be the key to hiring excellence and team sustainability.