Hiring Freelancers – Tips For Small Businesses
Growing a business is incredibly difficult and you can be faced with so many different options when it comes to adding staff. You could go down the route of bringing in an apprentice, hiring for a full-time member of staff, or even getting someone in on work experience. If you are not quite ready to make the leap (either financially or mentally!) to take on someone full time, you might want to consider outsourcing or hiring a freelancer.
Why Hire A Freelancer?
One of the most popular reasons for hiring a freelancer is the flexibility that they offer. Whether you have a one-off project that you require a little help with, or need some assistance on an ongoing basis, a freelancer can help. Large companies often turn to freelance professionals when they have an urgent need for staff cover. It isn’t just smaller businesses that use them!
Freelancers are also specialists within their field, which means they can bring skills to the table which may well be missing from a company. Rather than paying over the odds to employ a specialist for a specific role, outsourcing the work to freelancers can help fill this skill gap.
Cost of course is a major advantage of hiring freelancers. They tend to either work on an hourly rate, or for the work they complete. This means they are more motivated and driven, as they earn more if they work more! As they already come armed with the skills they need for the job, no money is wasted on training either. Freelancers depend on building long-term relationships, so motivation is not an issue for them at all.
What To Look For In Freelancers
So once you have decided that you want to hire a freelancer, you then need to work out what qualities are important to you (other than them being experts in their respective field). There are some soft skills and requirements that you should look out for too, including:
- Good communication skills
- Excellent at meeting deadlines
- They are experienced
- Not afraid to ask questions
- High standards of work
- They can operate within minimal supervision
It is difficult to fully check these things, particularly if you are browsing on freelance marketplace sites. It is always best to have a look at their social media profiles in order to gain a better insight into their character, and read any reviews they have on Google or their website too. It is also a good idea to look through their work experience, and how recently they decided to start working for themselves.
Where To Recruit Freelancers
There are quite a few dedicated websites where you can browse through hundreds of freelancers. The most common ones you have probably heard of are Upwork, Fiverr, PeoplePerHour, Freelancer, SimplyHired. The other thing you could do is actually prepare a job description for a freelancer, posting the job on LinkedIn as well as these freelancer websites.
Word of mouth is often quite a useful tool, so let your network know what you are looking out for. If you do have a virtual office space like at Venture Offices, try getting in touch with other businesses who are based there – you never know they may have some freelancers in their network.
We hope this blog has been useful for you, good luck on the next step of expanding your business! As always, if you have any questions regarding virtual offices please give us a call on 01205 809222.
