Top 6 Robert Half Competitors for Hiring Remote Developers in 2024

Digital technology has become so indispensable to many business sectors that everybody needs a digital developer’s services. Estimates indicate the demand for developers will be up 22% by 2029, and the talent markets in many regions already seem to be experiencing a shortage — at least for companies relying on traditional hiring methods. If you’ve been keeping up with the times, you know that remote hiring is now the favored way to cut across any such regional shortages by connecting to developers from emerging markets in other locations. 

Robert Half is one of the oldest and most established platforms providing remote hiring services in this space. It’s an international human resource consulting company founded in 1948 in Menlo Park and San Ramon, California. Robert Half provides remote staffing for job positions in many sectors, including technology development. 

If you’ve been looking to hire remote developers for your startup or project, chances are Robert Half has been recommended to you. And if you’re considering it, then it’s very opportune that you’re reading this article. We aim to show you what Robert Half can offer, acquaint you with its limitations, and introduce you to some Robert Half competitors that will better meet your business’s requirements. 

What Are Robert Half’s Features? 

Robert Half is one of the largest remote staffing companies by size and scope, and here are the features it has to offer.

• Robert Half provides staffing for many IT infrastructure and software development positions. This includes many types of developers, from database and wireless network managers and desktop support professionals to telecommunications support specialists and full-stack developers. 
• The platform is quite flexible with its hiring options; it provides full-time, freelance, and short-term staff. If you need to, Robert Half also allows you to switch employees from temporary contractor status to full-time employees. 
• Not many Robert Half competitors have been in the recruiting market for as long as it has; in principle, it means Robert Half brings much industry experience to bear in its recruiting and hiring.
• If the developer you hire from Robert Half turns out to be a poor fit for the job or proves a headache to work with, the company will provide you with a replacement developer pronto. 

Why Should You Consider Robert Half Alternatives?

Considering everything so far, Robert Half may seem like just the remote hiring platform you need. Hold that thought for a bit and consider its shortfalls.

• In theory, the platform brings a ton of industrial experience to bear in rendering its services, but none of that experience seems to have gone into handling its website. If you tried to get on the website and request a hire as of the time of our writing this article, you will quickly find it very cumbersome to navigate. This makes the hiring process difficult from the get-go. 
• The not-so-great state of the website makes it hard to directly glean much information about Robert Half, especially its pricing. And if our experience of the site is any indication, you won’t find the info either. Let’s make that one count of lack of transparency in pricing.
• Robert Half doesn’t provide only tech development staff; it also has staff for sectors like accounting, finance, legal consultancy, and creative arts. In fact, finance and accounting roles were its original recruitment and hiring focus until it added tech, legal, and creative professionals several decades after its founding. Since the platform now has such a broad focus, it can not offer a particularly robust service in any single sector — especially tech talent hiring — as would any Robert Half alternatives focusing specifically on tech hiring. 
• It can take ages to hire a developer on Robert Half, with the duration of those ages depending on the developer’s skill level. The hiring process can take five weeks (for entry-level developers) to 11 weeks (for senior and elite developers.) By the platform’s own estimation, the 11-week duration is up 57% from 2021, which means the trend is towards longer hiring times. 
• The platform does not handle the onboarding of developers, which is partly why it has more wrong fits per developer posting than any Robert Half competitors. You have to handle onboarding your new hires by yourself, and you may have to deal with a few not-quite-right matches before you get the best fit. 
• Robert Half is not fully global in its recruitment or hiring. It only provides staffing in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, UAE, the US, and the UK. These are also the locations where it recruits its staff. 

Robert Half Alternatives for Hiring Software Developers in 2024

Returning to that thought about hiring your remote developer from Robert Half, you may still find the platform a decent fit for your needs. But if the inadequacies we discussed have made you reconsider, let us offer some alternatives. 

1. Terminal.io vs Robert Half

Terminal is one of those remote hiring platforms that identifies the fastest-growing developer talent markets, pitches its tents close by, and starts a pipeline to connect the best of such markets with companies from around the globe. With offices in San Francisco (US) and Lviv (Ukraine), Terminal.io specializes in sourcing and hiring developers from the fast-emerging Latin American, East European, and Canadian developer markets. 

Regarding hiring developers, Terminal is a superior option to Robert Half on so many levels.

• Terminal.io does not have the jack-of-too-many-trades problem that Robert Half does. Its hiring services focus entirely on developer talent, meaning it can channel all its resources toward offering a robust hiring service. One clear manifestation of this is how many more developer jobs Terminal can cater to compared to Robert Half. Terminal offers everything from full-stack, data science, frontend, and backend engineers to dev ops, design, QA, and Mobile developers. 
• While Terminal recruits developers from Canada and a few Eastern European and Latin American countries, its developers are globally hirable. In contrast, Robert Half only offers its developers for hiring in the same 20 countries from which it recruits developers. 
• Unlike Robert Half and its near-complete neglect of developer onboarding, Terminal’s full-package hiring service handles the developer onboarding process for you. Terminal also leverages Smart technology to optimize workflows, streamline testing and interviews, and aid candidate selection. Paired with Terminal’s more robust developer vetting, these factors produce a reliable hiring process that has hardly made any ill-fitting job postings since its inception. Still, the platform offers more quality assurance in the form of its 14-day trial period and free replacement policy available for the first three months after hiring. 
• While Robert Half does not appear to post its pricing scheme online, Terminal’s pricing is publicly available. It’s also very affordable, between $4000 to $12000 monthly. Additionally, the fact that the platform recruits from the regions of Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Canada results in cost savings of up to 60%.  
• Terminal.io is one of the fastest-hiring Robert Half competitors. While the latter may take up to 11 months to complete the hiring process for a senior developer, Terminal can hire a developer in less than 45 days, regardless of the developer’s skill level or expertise. 

Want to see Terminal’s developer talent instantly? View vetted engineers for free now

2. Gun.io vs Robert Half

Gun.io is an online website with a developer talent pool vetted by an in-house team of experienced software engineers. Although other platforms like Terminal also leverage AI technology to streamline hiring and vetting, Gun.io is particularly heavy on AI technology. Along with machine learning, AI tech is among the development sectors in which Gun.io software engineers are proficient. 

As one of the top Robert Half alternatives, the platform offers the following advantages. 

• Gun.io is a tech-focused hiring talent solution company, which implies that it can channel its service-offering resources more effectively. For example, its recruiting team is specially trained in tech talent hunting and can vet developers more effectively.
• Due to its more efficient use of its resources, Gun.io hires much faster than Robert Half. If you request a hire, you will meet your candidate within 24 hours, and you can finalize the hiring process in 2 weeks, tops. 
• Gun.io has more transparency regarding its pricing than Robert Half, though much less than Terminal. Gun’s non-standardized retainers begin at $5000, including the hiring fees, which are not disclosed. 
• As a global talent agency, Gun.io sources developers from more countries than Robert Half. 

Conversely, Gun.io may prove a less favorable option than platforms like Terminal for the following reasons. 

• Gun.io does not take care of the onboarding process. Should you hire from the platform, you have little assistance integrating your new developer into your team. 
• There are no trial periods mentioned on the platform’s website. 

3. Kelly Services vs Robert Half

If you prefer grand old platforms with a long track record in the remote staffing industry, you will find Kelly Solutions a much better option than Robert Half. Kelly Solutions was founded in 1946 and is based in Troy, Michigan. 

At the time of writing this article, the platform ranks as the Number 1 temporary staffing agency in the US, claiming to connect over 450k job seekers with work annually. Let’s compare Kelly Services to Robert Half to highlight where the former outperforms the latter. 

• Kelly Services has a greater geographical scope of recruitment, sourcing platforms from over 24 countries, including Australia and some African countries, and making them available to clients around the globe. By contrast, Robert Half sources talent from 19 countries and only provides staffing. 
• Just like Robert Half, Kelly Services is not a tech-focused company. However, it still provides a more robust tech talent hiring service than Robert Half. It has developers from all fields of IT, including web development, systems analysis, backend testing, and database administration. 
• Kelly Services appears to have an onboarding service, although there isn’t much information about it on the site.
• Compared to Robert Half, you can hire much faster on Kelly Services (the average hiring time is 27.8 days.)

If Kelly Services is superior to Robert Half in the areas we have just highlighted, you may find it below the bar compared to other Robert Half competitors like Terminal in the following other regards:

• Kelly Services may offer a better tech developer hiring service than Robert Half, but it still lags behind Terminal, which is more specialized. 
• Kelly Services is not very transparent about its pricing, as it doesn’t seem to have any webpage laying out relevant costs. 

4. TEKsystems vs Robert Half

TEKsystems is a globally operational IT solutions company based in Hannover, Maryland. The company aims to accelerate business transformation by providing solutions to complex business issues through expert staffing and technology. Though a much younger company than Robert Half (having been launched in 1983), you may find it a better tech staffing option in the following regards. 

• As the name already implies, TEKsystems is a more technology-focused talent-hiring platform than Robert Half. It covers multiple industries, from Telecommunications, technology enablement, and energy to media and gaming. Developers from the platform are also skilled in many more technologies. 
• Like the other Robert Half alternatives we discussed, TEKsystems is a faster hirer. It typically takes 18.44 days to hire a developer from the platform. 

Sadly, there are some boxes TEKsystems doesn’t tick: 

• The platform does not have quality assurance measures like trial periods, nor does it take care of the onboarding process.
• The platform is not transparent about its pricing structure. 
• The hiring options are not very flexible, as only full-time and part-time options are available. You’ll have to turn to other Robert Half competitors, such as Terminal.io, for freelance, contract-to-hire, and project-based arrangements. 
• While a more tech-focused company than Robert Half, TEKsystems still provides staffing for business sectors like transportation, healthcare, and retail/consumer packaged goods. Jack-of-many-trades limitations consequently apply. 

5. Aerotek vs Robert Half

Aerotek is a global remote talent recruiting and hiring company with offices in the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The company offers everything from clinical solutions and government services to workforce management in tech, construction, manufacturing, and production. It also does distribution, logistics, and maintenance business with over 13,000 companies worldwide. 

Here are some reasons to consider Aerotek over Robert Half for hiring developers.

• Aerotek boasts enhanced onboarding capabilities in addition to its experience in recruitment and hiring. 
• Aerotek has many more hiring options than Robert Half. According to the website, the platform has previously offered remote and hybrid remote jobs on part-time, freelance, temporary, and alternative schedule arrangements. Although, it is not clear that it hasn’t dropped any of those since. 
• Aerotek still focuses a great deal on tech talent, which places it ahead of Robert Half regarding the quality of service in that area. 

While Aerotek may offer these advantages, the following shortfalls are worth considering. 

• Aerotek is not a tech-specialized hiring company, making it inferior to tech-specialized Robert Half competitors like Terminal.io.
• Aerotek offers no information on its pricing — at least, not until you apply and start discussing terms for a new hire. 
• Aerotek has no trial periods or similar quality assurances. 
• While not as bad as Robert Half regarding hiring time, Aerotek is still quite worse off than all the other Robert Half competitors we have listed. The platform does not list its hiring time, as far as we could find, but client reviews indicate it can take up to 3 months to get a hire.

6. BairesDev vs Robert Half

Based in San Francisco, Cordoba, BairesDev is a nearshore and offshore tech talent hiring company that sources clients from Latin American countries like Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil. It provides nearshore hiring in Canada and the US and offshore hiring in and beyond Western Europe. 

Here are some reasons to consider BairesDev over Robert Half. 

• BairesDev specializes in recruiting and hiring digital tech developers. As such, its candidate vetting is much more rigorous, and it has developers for way more tech jobs, including QA assurance testing, UX/UI design, and custom software development. 
• BairesDev is a faster hiring platform than Robert Half. It takes up to 37 days to hire a developer on the platform. By comparison, Robert Half’s time is just a month shy of a year. 

BairesDev may be a better alternative to Robert Half, but it does have the following failings. 

• Clients are price-blind going into negotiations because the platform does not make its pricing known on any of its pages. 
• BairesDev has neither trial periods nor onboarding services to offer. 
• BairesDev does not offer the same flexibility as the other Robert Half alternatives. It doesn’t cater to short-term, full-time, freelance, or contract-to-hire options. 

Final Thoughts on the Top Robert Half Competitors in 2024

Competition can be very cutthroat in the world of digital technology development. That’s why it’s essential to always be ahead of the curve in developing digital products and services — a difficult thing to do while mired in talent recruitment problems. 

From our assessment of Robert Half, the platform has too many inadequacies, making it a poor hiring choice compared to Robert Half alternatives. So, if you want to get the best value for your hiring expenditure, you should try the alternatives, and by most metrics we have touched on, Terminal.io clearly takes the cake. 

Terminal offers a more flexible and robust developer hiring service that covers everything from recruiting and initial vetting to matching, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding. Its pricing is the most affordable and transparent for so many services offered. It additionally provides solid quality assurances should the developer you get turn out to be a poor fit — not that that’s likely to be necessary.