Staff augmentation is a form of outsourcing approach in which a corporation hires temporary personnel to fill short-term job openings. It enables organizations to select only those who meet their needs and eliminate or expand their augmented staff as needed.

In many cases, a company's staffing needs to be augmented. For instance, a company is working on a tech product with a group of programmers and needs to hire new engineers. They are looking to expand their search to other countries because the professionals they want to hire are scarce in their country.