If your business needs additional workers, it’s likely a sign that your company is on the right track. But what do you do if you can’t afford to hire a team of full-time employees? Can you still grow your business and accomplish your goals?
Yes, you sure can. Today, it’s easier than ever to hire top talent from all over the world for one-time projects or recurring services. Below, we cover the ins and outs of building a productive and happy team of freelancers.
Get your ducks in a row.
Your first step will be to determine what you want from your freelance team. What precisely do you need from freelancers? What roles need to be filled, and which tasks are overwhelming you?
If you start hiring people left and right without having a clear idea of what will help your business move forward, you will end up wasting money and find it difficult to develop healthy relationships with your team members. Furthermore, you will need to ensure that you have the processes and systems in place to deliver assignments and pay your freelancers.
Get out there and find some freelancers.
It is relatively easy to find freelancers. Online job boards abound; the key is to find one or more that meet your specific needs.Many business owners begin on general freelance sites like Upwork, Freelancer.com, Fiverr, etc. However, you might benefit from creating profiles on job boards that cater to specialties, such as SalesJobs, AngelList, Stack Overflow, WorkingNotWorking, and ProBlogger.
Using social media is also an excellent way to connect with freelancers. You will want to work hard at building your online presence and garnering a following on social media. A big part of engaging consumers on social media sites is posting quality content regularly. For example, if you’re posting on Instagram, you could use a resize image for Instagram tool to quickly modify the image to the appropriate size when posting images. You can then upload the images to your social media pages instantly.
Be thorough when hiring.
The easiest way to collect a list of potential candidates is to post a job on your platforms and provide a brief overview of the skills and knowledge the position requires. Be sure to leave your post live for a few days so that multiple people can apply for the job. This way, you will have options to sit through to identify the best candidate.
Consider asking questions in your post; ask one or two related to the specific job and one random question. Attention to detail is a critical skill for any position, so you can weed out the applicants who do not answer your questions.
After you have narrowed down your list of candidates to three or four, ask those people follow-up questions. This is an excellent time to request work samples and get to know the candidates more thoroughly. Many business owners and entrepreneurs send sample assignments or request that the freelancers do a trial run to see how their abilities and processes fit in with the company.
Manage your team well.
Managing freelancers is another ball game. If you do not have a dedicated product manager on staff, you will need to ensure you have the proper project management software. In fact, this software is useful even if you have a project manager. You may need some freelancers for one-time projects and others for recurring services.
For one-time freelancers, messaging through your project management software should suffice. For the team members who will be providing services for the foreseeable future, you may need to use a different communication platform such as email or a team chat app. Lastly, you will need to ensure that you provide any details each of your freelancers needs to satisfy project requirements and that you securely pay them on time.
Many entrepreneurs and business owners are building freelance teams because of the flexibility, savings, and work quality it can provide. Keep the information and advice above in mind as you come up with a strategy for hiring skilled and dedicated workers to jump on your projects. You will learn a lot as you go in terms of keeping your team happy and productive.
Check out Dee’s Books about Project Management and Moving Forward