Hired External Engineers? Here’s How to Make The Most of Them

So, you hired external engineers to help with your project — but now you realize they didn’t provide as much value as expected. This can of course have many reasons, but you can avoid some of them by following these tips.

Know Your Onboarding Process

In large enterprises, onboarding external consultants can take weeks, and many people don’t fully understand the process. Make sure you know every step, requirement, and approval needed ahead of time. You don’t want your consultants to spend their first weeks coordinating their own onboarding, because the person approving their system access is on vacation.

If possible, start the onboarding process before the official project kickoff.

Invest Time in Onboarding

For external team members to be productive, you need to invest time upfront.

Even if you’re busy, taking the time to guide them early on will save you effort later. Teach them how to navigate your systems and introduce them to key colleagues. They shouldn’t be spending their first weeks learning about your environment on their own.

Communicate Effectively

Newcomers will have many questions, so provide clear channels for communication:

• Set office days once or twice a week.
• Create a dedicated Slack or Teams channel.
• Hold daily check-ins.

Make sure everyone knows who to contact for specific topics to avoid unnecessary delays.

Provide Clear Expectations, Tasks, and Priorities

Having skilled consultants is pointless if they don’t know what to do. Ensure they understand their tasks and priorities.

Consider assigning multiple tasks at once (with clear priorities) so they can switch if they get blocked. If using a backlog like Jira, make sure tasks are well-documented — otherwise, they’ll keep asking you for clarification and spend a lot of time structuring their work instead of solving your problems.

Summary

These may seem obvious, but in complex, fast-paced environments, they’re often overlooked. A little preparation goes a long way in making consultants effective and ensuring you get the most out of their expertise.