Open IT Role, Live Project: What it really costs companies when recruiting takes too long.

An IT role stays open. The project keeps moving anyway. What happens in that gap and what it really costs is rarely fully accounted for.

This article shows what companies lose in the recruiting gap - and when external IT capacity can be the faster, more predictable answer.

The recruiting timeline in practice

Recruiting for IT roles is made up of several phases that get blurred in everyday conversation - and that take very different amounts of time.

Time-to-Hire describes the time from the start of the application process to an accepted offer. The XING Application Report 2025 puts this benchmark at around 70 days for the DACH region (Source: XING Application Report 2025).

Time-to-Fill describes the time until an open role is actually filled. The Bitkom IT labour market study 2025 puts the German average at 7.7 months for IT roles (Source: Bitkom IT labour market study 2025).

Two further realities are often missed in recruiting calculations: the notice period of the new hire - three months is the German standard. And onboarding, which only starts after day one and should not be confused with the first productive day on the project.

Depending on the role, market availability, notice period and onboarding, several months can pass before a new IT hire is actually productive on the project. What happens to live projects, roadmaps and teams in that window is the real question.

What actually happens in the meantime

The role is open. The project is not waiting.

What follows is familiar to most IT leaders: extra hours in the existing team. Vacations pushed back. The work that was meant for the new hire spreads across everyone else - as an additional load, not a core task.

Roadmap items slip. Initiatives stall. The backlog grows because no one has the capacity to work it down systematically. Pressure rises across departments: business units wait for results, management asks about project status, external customers notice delays.

The real damage does not show up on a single line item. It shows up in productivity, quality, customer satisfaction - and ultimately in trust.

This pressure is not an isolated case. According to Bitkom, around 109,000 IT specialist roles are currently unfilled in Germany in 2025 (Source: Bitkom IT labour market study 2025). 85 percent of surveyed companies report a market shortage, and 79 percent expect the situation to get worse in the coming years.

This is where Delvera comes in: we review external engineering and consulting capacity for specific project gaps, coordinate the start from Germany and stay involved as the point of contact for quality, communication and escalation.

The hidden costs that rarely make it onto the table

Visible recruiting costs are easy to capture. What sits underneath rarely makes it into a calculation. Three cost groups are worth separating:

Direct recruiting costs

Job ads, recruiting platforms, external agencies, the selection process. For specialised IT roles, headhunters often charge 20 to 30 percent of the annual salary as a placement fee.

Internal time costs

Every interview ties up time from team leads, CTOs and business units. Multiple interview rounds with multiple participants quickly add up to days - not hours.

Project and opportunity costs

Delayed features. Postponed customer projects. A growing backlog. Productivity loss in the existing team through extra load. These costs never show up on an invoice - and are real nonetheless.

In a vacancy-cost study, StepStone puts the average vacancy cost in Germany at around 49,500 euros and the average vacancy duration at 138 days (Source: StepStone vacancy cost study). The actual cost depends heavily on role, salary, company size, project contribution and vacancy duration - the figure is an anchor, not a template.

What if the gap is not one role - but three?

A single open role is already demanding. What happens when a backend engineer, a cloud specialist and a QA engineer are all missing at the same time?

Multiple parallel recruiting processes. Multiple onboarding phases. Multiple notice periods that overlap or shift. Cumulative project delays. All in an environment where headcount budgets are under pressure and hiring freezes are no longer the exception.

The question is not whether internal recruiting makes sense. The question is what happens to the project that needs to start now.

Decision guide: internal recruiting vs. external IT capacity

Internal recruiting remains the right call for long-term core roles. For short-term project capacity, skill gaps or backlog reduction, external IT capacity is often faster and more flexible.

When external IT capacity is the faster answer

External IT capacity is a complement - not a replacement for a strong internal team. It makes sense in specific situations:

• When the project has a hard start date and cannot wait for an internal hire.
• When skill gaps appear at short notice - a new technology, a migration project, a cloud move that requires specific expertise.
• When project peaks need to be absorbed without building up long-term headcount.
• When the backlog needs to be worked down systematically while the internal team carries the day-to-day.
• When recruiting continues but the project needs to start now.

For standard roles, a project start in under 14 days can often be realistic - depending on role, seniority and availability. Specialised roles like SAP, Salesforce or ServiceNow need more lead time.

Speed alone is not enough. What matters is that role, seniority, communication model and location model are reviewed before the start.

Duration and setup are clarified before project start. If the need changes, the setup can be adjusted or ended.

What to clarify before deciding

Before bringing in external capacity, a few questions are worth answering:

• How long can the project realistically wait for an internal hire?
• Which roles are needed?
• How specialised are those roles?
• Is Nearshore or Offshore the right fit for this engagement?
• What coordination is needed across locations and time zones?
• What is a realistic budget?
• Should external capacity bridge a gap or be a long-term complement?

After the call, it should be clear whether external IT capacity makes sense for your situation, which model fits, what budget range is realistic and what project start would be possible.

Frequently asked questions