“Should we hire a consultant or bring someone on full-time?”
I get asked this question regularly, often by the same organizations considering hiring me. It’s an important question, and the honest answer is: it depends. Neither option is universally better. The right choice depends on your specific situation, timeline, and goals.
Here’s the framework I use to help organizations think through this decision.
When Consultants Make Sense
Specialized Expertise for a Defined Need
If you need deep expertise in a specific area for a limited time, consultants often make more sense than hiring. Building a mobile app but your team is web-focused? Need to integrate with a legacy system nobody on staff understands? Migrating to a new cloud platform?
These projects require specialized knowledge that you may not need permanently. Hiring a full-time expert for a six-month project means either letting them go afterward or paying for skills you won’t use.
Speed to Impact
Good consultants can hit the ground running. They’ve solved similar problems before and bring proven approaches. When you’re facing a critical deadline or urgent problem, the ramp-up time for a new hire (recruiting, onboarding, learning your systems) may simply take too long.
I’ve started projects on Monday and delivered meaningful value by Friday. A new employee, no matter how talented, needs time to understand the organization, build relationships, and learn the codebase.
Outside Perspective
Sometimes you’re too close to a problem to see it clearly. Internal teams develop blind spots. “We’ve always done it this way” becomes invisible. Politics and history cloud judgment.
An outside consultant has no stake in past decisions. They can ask naive questions that insiders wouldn’t think to ask, or wouldn’t feel safe asking. Fresh eyes often spot opportunities that internal teams miss.
Uncertain Scope
When you’re not sure exactly what you need, consultants provide flexibility. You can engage for an assessment, get recommendations, and then decide on next steps. If the project grows, you scale up. If it shrinks, you scale down.
Full-time hires are a commitment. Getting it wrong is expensive: not just in salary, but in time, morale, and opportunity cost.
Capacity Without Commitment
Sometimes you just need more hands temporarily. A big launch, a critical integration, a backlog that’s gotten out of control. Consultants let you add capacity without the long-term commitment of expanding your team.
When Internal Hires Make Sense
Core Competency Work
If the work is central to what makes your business successful, you probably want that expertise in-house. Your competitive advantage shouldn’t depend on external resources who could work for your competitors next month.
Build internal capability for things you’ll need to do repeatedly and that differentiate your business.
Ongoing, Open-Ended Needs
If you need someone for the foreseeable future, the math usually favors hiring. Consultant rates are higher than employee salaries precisely because engagements are temporary. Over a year or more, an employee typically costs less, and you build institutional knowledge that stays with the company.
Cultural Integration Matters
Some roles require deep integration with your team and culture. If the work involves heavy collaboration, mentoring others, or representing the company externally, an invested employee often performs better than someone who knows they’re leaving.
You Need to Build, Not Just Do
Consultants typically focus on delivering outcomes, not building capabilities. If your goal is to develop your team’s skills, create institutional knowledge, and build long-term capacity, you need people who are invested in the organization’s future.
A good consultant might help you build these capabilities, but eventually you need internal people to own them.
The Hybrid Approach
Often the best answer isn’t either/or. Consider these combinations:
Consultant + Junior Hire: Bring in a consultant to do the heavy lifting while a junior team member shadows and learns. The consultant delivers immediate value; the employee builds long-term capability.
Assessment First, Then Hire: Engage a consultant to assess your needs and define the role clearly. Then hire with a much better understanding of what you actually need.
Consultant to Bridge: Use a consultant to cover immediate needs while you recruit the right full-time person. Don’t rush a critical hire because you’re under pressure.
Knowledge Transfer Engagement: Structure the consulting engagement explicitly around transferring knowledge to your team. The consultant should work themselves out of a job. This is a key part of my technical leadership approach.
Questions to Ask Yourself
When making this decision, work through these questions:
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How long will we need this capability? If it’s less than a year, lean consultant. If it’s indefinite, lean hire.
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How specialized is the need? Highly specialized, short-term work favors consultants. Broad, ongoing needs favor employees.
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How urgent is the timeline? Immediate needs favor consultants. If you can wait 3-6 months, you have time to hire.
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Is this core to our business? Core capabilities should eventually be internal. Support functions can often stay external.
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Do we know what we need? Uncertainty favors the flexibility of consulting. Clear requirements favor hiring.
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What’s our budget reality? Consultants have higher rates but no benefits, overhead, or commitment. Run the real numbers for your situation.
Red Flags to Watch
Consultants Who Create Dependency
Be wary of consultants who make themselves indispensable without transferring knowledge. Good consultants aim to solve your problem and leave you better equipped than they found you.
Hiring to Avoid Consultant Costs
Don’t hire a full-time employee just because the day rate seems expensive. Factor in recruiting costs, benefits, management overhead, and the risk of a bad hire. Sometimes the “expensive” consultant is actually cheaper.
The Permanent Consultant
If you’ve had the same consultant for years doing the same work, something’s wrong. Either convert them to an employee, transfer their knowledge to your team, or question whether the work is actually necessary.
Making It Work
Whichever path you choose, set clear expectations:
For Consultants:
- Define scope and deliverables explicitly
- Establish success criteria upfront
- Build in knowledge transfer
- Maintain enough internal expertise to evaluate their work
For New Hires:
- Be realistic about ramp-up time
- Invest in onboarding and training
- Have existing team members available to support
- Set 30/60/90 day milestones
The Honest Truth
As a consultant, I benefit when organizations choose outside help. But I’ve also told plenty of prospective clients that they’d be better served by hiring internally, because it’s true, and because giving honest advice is how you build lasting relationships.
The right answer depends on your specific situation. Think it through carefully, and don’t let urgency push you into a decision you’ll regret.
Trying to figure out the right approach for your organization? Let’s have a conversation. Even if the answer is that you should hire internally, I’m happy to help you think it through. Check out my IT consulting services or read more about my approach.