3 Tips for Hiring Freelancers
Small business owners are noticing the advantages big business found when they were forced to send workers home to do their jobs due to COVID-19. The found that the drop in productivity they expected in large part did not happen. They were getting as much work or even more than when their people worked in the office. Then they began to think about the cost savings in outsourcing rather than taking on new hires, especially since they had infrastructure in place for remote work.
If you are considering hiring employees that are not required to work in your place of business, hiring freelancers can be an excellent solution. There are several websites dedicated to matching employers with freelancers in many skill areas. From one site, the categories include:
These are the main categories at Upworki.com, and there are more than 100 subcategories within these.
Other sites include Freelancer.comii, Indeed.comiii, Fiverr.comiv, ZipRecruiter.comv, and others.
The concept for these sites is to have jobseekers and freelancers sign up and build profiles of their skills and experience. Employers and businesses can search by category and keywords to read the profiles of freelancers.
The businesses can then post jobs and get applicants, even get bids for work when appropriate.
How they Work
The employers post their requirements, range for compensation, and other details about what they need. They will get applications from freelancers, can then read their complete profiles, see reviews about their performance, and even send questions through the system. Once they select a tentative freelance hire, the details of delivery of services and payment milestones are set out and a final agreement is reached.
The site handles the deliveries of work through the site, hourly or other compensation tracking, and payment when the employer indicates satisfaction with the delivered work. This is a broad description, and there are significant differences between the sites as to the details.
The site takes a percentage of the billed work as their fee.
The site also handles disputes when the employer is not satisfied with the work and payment is withheld until the dispute is resolved.
There will be detailed agreements between you as the employer and the site as well. All will have some restrictions on if or when you can eventually make direct contact with a freelancer and work with them outside the site. It can easily be a year or longer, or even permanently.
Avoiding the Main Pitfall
The pitfall most mentioned is in disputes between the employer and the freelancer as to the acceptability of the delivered work. If you want to use one of these sites take as much time as necessary to describe the scope of work and your expectation for deliverables. Be as detailed as possible, as it is misunderstandings of what was expected that cause most disputes.
Going it On Your Own
The power of the Internet can make it possible to seek freelancers on your own. Placing ads online can be effective. There are even scraper sites like FreelanceWritingGigs.comvi that search the Web and deliver ads to their subscribers.
i Upwork.com Categories for hire, Upwork website.
ii Freelancer.com categories, Freelancer website.
iii Post a job at Indeed, Post a Job Form Start
iv Fiverr.com Freelancer Search, Website search page.
v Post a job at Zip Recruiter, ZipRecruiter website.
vi Freelance Jobs by Day, Website page for freelancers to find work directly with employers as well.