Most staff augmentation companies sell the same thing: engineers on demand. The difference is in how they vet, how they price, and whether they own the outcome with you. Here is what separates a good one, the questions to ask, and the red flags to walk away from.
The commodity version forwards CVs from a bench and bills you a markup. The good version does the work a great in-house recruiter would: understands your stack and stage, screens candidates on real work, checks fit with your team, and stands behind the placement.
The gap between those two is the difference between spending interview slots on people who ship and burning weeks on keyword-matched résumés. It is worth a few questions up front to tell them apart.
A good partner sends 3-5 pre-screened candidates, not a stack of CVs to sift. Screening is their job, not yours - if they push the filtering onto you, they are a résumé pipe, not a partner.
Before shortlisting they ask how your team works, your seniority bar and your process - because a technically perfect hire who cannot work your way still fails. If they only ask for a JD and a rate, that is a flag.
You should understand exactly what you pay and when. Clear rate, clear terms, clear replacement guarantee - no vague markups or lock-ins that punish you for scaling down.
If the first deliverable is twenty résumés to filter yourself, they have moved their job onto you and are competing on volume, not quality.
Vetting only for stack keywords guarantees mis-hires that pass the interview and fail on the team. Fit is the part cheap providers skip.
Long minimum terms, opaque markups or penalties for scaling down all work against the flexibility you are paying for. Clarity up front predicts a clean engagement.
We place senior engineers on a success fee - you pay when you hire, not for the search. Every candidate is screened on real work and run through a structured work-style assessment powered by JobCannon, our own assessment platform, so you see how a person works before you commit an interview slot.
No CV walls, no account-manager relay, no lock-ins. If a placement does not stick within the guarantee window, we replace it. That is the standard to hold any staff augmentation company to - ours included. See exactly how it works.
It sources, vets and places skilled people to work inside your team on a flexible basis. A good one screens candidates on real work and for fit before you see them, prices transparently, and stands behind the placement with a replacement guarantee.
Ask how they vet, what happens if a hire does not work out, who manages the engineer day to day, how fast a shortlist is, and whether you can scale down without penalty. Good answers: real-work plus fit screening, a replacement guarantee, you manage the engineer, days to shortlist, no lock-ins.
A wall of CVs to filter yourself, vetting only for stack keywords with no fit check, and lock-ins or vague markups that punish you for scaling down. Each signals a volume résumé pipe rather than a quality partner.
Models vary - hourly or monthly rates with a markup, or a success fee paid only when you hire. What matters more than the model is transparency: you should understand exactly what you pay, when, and what the replacement terms are before you start.
Need the work done rather than staffed? We don't just place people — Make It Real also runs the work end to end. Same team, two ways in.
We reply within one business day with a shortlist plan. Success fee — you pay only when you hire.
