Anyone who has hired someone unfit for a job, whether a poor fit, an underperformer, or perhaps ill-equipped can relate. The consequences of hiring the wrong individual extend far beyond the time and energy put into hiring but also include onboarding, training, lost productivity, management, and the fallout of terminating employment- a very costly mistake.

In the case of hiring software developers, this can result in product and project issues including a lack of timely delivery, engineers not meeting your quality or speed of sprints, bad communication, or junior and inexperienced hires. The problem is that one wrong hire comes at a significant cost to the business. On average, organizations spend 3 to 9 months from initial contact, interviewing, and onboarding a new hire. And what happens when it's not the right fit? You are back to zero.

Extensive vetting adds complexity without necessarily solving core issues. Do you add more steps to the interview process? How do you pre-determine and assess for possible pitfalls? Do you run 10 different personality and technical challenges? These methods of hiring are still risky and time-consuming for the business.

As we scaled and grew HiddenLevers (later acquired by Orion), there was one method of hiring that proved to be the most effective, fractional hiring or “fraction to hire”.  It was so successful we modeled our current business after it and still use it today with most of our staff working fractionally.

Advantages of Fractional Hiring

You get access to a larger pool
In the standard approach to full-time hiring, engineering managers and CTOs struggle to find specialized, senior-level quality engineers with the right mindset and culture fit. The engineers you want to recruit are happily employed, paid well, and not looking to make a move. By offering a fractional opportunity, these engineers are excited and motivated to tap into your product and make an impact on their own terms.  

You get access to expert talent
Tapping into expert-level engineering talent is hard enough as it is with the large majority of capable developers already employed. Industry-specific experts can further narrow your prospects unless you look for fractional developers. Solving complex challenges across the financial, healthcare, AI and ML, and logistics sectors, developers who are currently employed in an industry can provide immediate value as there is little to no ramp-up time needed.

You save money for the business
This is typically the quickest and easiest ROI to assess. By hiring fractionally, you can bypass the expense of benefits, time off, and even employment taxes that can burden the business. Additionally, you can limit the administrative overhead until you are certain this hire is a good fit for your organization. Billing and administration of agreements, contracts, and tax documentation are often included, making this the simplest and easiest way to hire.

You get qualified expert talent
In addition to having gone through the entire hiring process at a top company, fractional engineers must pass rigorous screening measures to be considered. In the case here at Fraction, only 10% of those vetted are able to pass to be considered for projects. Engineers must also have prior experience working for large-scale, robust applications – dealing with a variety of technical challenges across the stack, showcase strong communication and independence, and/or are founders themselves and can intuitively step into any environment and begin making immediate contributions.

You reduce your risk of incompatible hiring
There is little to no risk for you. Once the engineer is integrated into the environment, you can quickly assess if the engineer can keep up with your organization's demands and expectations. Since the engineer is experienced, there is minimal overhead required and little to no ramp-up needed. Fraction enhances this with our risk-free trial period, and if the engineering alignment is not there – we simply swap them out for you.

You create a low-risk opportunity for your candidate
Engineers love working fractionally. They don’t have to quit their full-time jobs and can quickly engage in unique and innovative challenges outside of their day job. The same engineers are almost impossible to find freelance or on platforms like Upwork as they personally don’t want to engage in the sales process of vetting a new company, evaluating the project, and price negotiation. Instead, they turn to organizations like Fraction to mitigate this risk for them and bring them world-class opportunities.

On the flip side – what can go wrong?
‍The worst-case scenario of hiring fractionally is that they don’t convert to full-time once you make them an offer. In this case, you are still able to keep the engineer onboard, by continuing a fractional basis. When additional support is needed, simply add an additional fractional engineer who specializes in a complementary skill set. Together, they are able to attack the challenges in your engineering environment equivalent to a Full-Time hire.
Hiring fractionally is the future of work and the most risk-free approach. Feel free to reach out to us for an assessment of your engineering team, upcoming growth strategy, and how Fraction can help.