How to Work With Freelancers
If you are a business owner, you have likely thought about hiring freelancers at some point. Freelancers can help you out with one-off projects or whenever your regular employees cannot take the time to a specific project.
Plus, people from all walks of life are freelancing, which means that you should not have any trouble finding someone to help you out.
But before hiring freelancers, you have to consider a few things. Let us take a look at how you should hire and manage freelancers.
Define Your Project
The first thing you should do is define precisely why you are looking for a freelancer, and what you are trying to achieve. You do not want to find someone and tell them to do the work.
You have to strictly define precisely what it is that you are trying to achieve. That way, you will have a clearer picture of precisely what kind of a freelancer you are looking for.
Find Your Freelancer
Once you have defined your freelancer project, you are ready to start looking for your freelancer. Start by running the info through your network and see if someone in your circle knows someone that can help you out.
If you are not successful in that, you can post an ad on one (or more) of the freelance platforms designed to bring freelancers and business owners together.
Matched up Skills
Make sure that the freelancer has the skills you are looking for, as you do not want your freelancer to have sub-par skills or too general skills that you cannot use.
While it makes sense that the capabilities of your freelance match with the expertise of your employees, you are hiring someone to help you out with short-term tasks, not full-time employees.
Start Them Small
Once you have found the right freelancer and hired them, it is time to give them a project to start working on. While it may make sense that you can give them the same project you usually give to your full-time employee, it is wiser that you start them with something smaller.
For instance, if you are hiring a social media marketer, you should give them a smaller task, something like researching the competition. That way, you can more easily follow their progress and assess how they are working and whether it is worth giving them more obligations.
Outline Your Bigger Project
Once you are satisfied with how they did the smaller project, you are ready to offer them something more. It would be best if you defined how exactly and what they should do.
Provide the freelancer with as many examples as possible to better understand precisely what you are looking for. It will help you avoid having multiple back-and-forths and revisions with the freelancer who will immensely save you time and lower the risk of jeopardizing your project.
Monitor Their Progress
No matter your arrangement with the freelancer, you need to be sure that they are doing the work you are paying them to do. The best way to do this is to use employee monitoring software. Employee monitoring software is perfect for monitoring your freelancers and the work they do.
Many companies working with freelancers rely on tools like these to ensure that their freelancers are actually doing the work they are being paid to do.
Final Thoughts
One of the smartest financial decisions you can make is to work with freelancers, as it generally costs less to have someone as an outside consultant to help you out on specific projects than to hire them full time.
However, if you want to ensure that you get the most out of working with freelancers, you need to take your time to find them, start them small, and monitor and measure their progress.
