Small business owners have a hard time maintaining and updating their website content and blogs. Writing your first blog post takes a lot of work and most people don’t have the time or energy for it.
Hiring a freelancer to work for you can prove to be a great decision, especially if you have just started a new venture.
They charge a lot lesser than full-time employees, need negligible paperwork, and have the least onboarding time.
If you are looking to hire freelancers for your ongoing project, read on to find out the 11 ways to hiring smart freelancers who can deliver.
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Find out the 11 ways to Hiring Smart Freelancers
Picking the Right One
Try to interview your freelancer personally before you hire him. You could do so by means of a meeting, over the telephone, or even online.
So, some of the skills that you might want to look out for is- SEO-based writing, grammar skills, and content writing experience.
However, even if you find that the candidate is suitable for the task at hand, entrust him with a smaller responsibility at first and monitor how he delivers.
No matter what task you assign to your freelancer, make sure you do not make him work for free, not even for a small duration of time.
You can choose to begin with paying in accordance with the work being delivered and raising the pay subsequently if the results are satisfactory.
Where to Find Freelancers
You will be stunned to know that there exist over 100 freelancing websites from where you can find the kind of freelancers you need.
The most popular ones are Freelancer, Upwork, Guru, Appfutura, Angel.cojobs, iWriter, People per hour, Fiverr, Craiglist Jobs, etc.
Let’s understand some of them briefly:
- fiver.com: It is a one-stop solution for tasks related to content, marketing, editing, SEO, designing, etc.
- freelancer.com: One of the oldest websites for finding freelancers, Freelancer.com provides skilled manpower at extremely affordable prices. There is no lower limit of the pay fixed for freelancers, so if you are low on budget, this is the website for you.
- Upwork: You can hire freelancers on hourly pay, at Upwork. Freelancers are charged per client they deliver tasks for, therefore you can be sure of working with quality freelancers.
Effective Communication is the Key
Communication forms the basis of operations in any business, but it becomes even more important while working with freelancers.
A lot of times, you will be required to coordinate with freelancers over the phone.
Leave no scope for miscommunication and clearly specify milestones, expectations, payment procedures, and deliverable deadlines to avoid disputes in the future.
Release Payments on Time
Research shows that a major concern among freelancers is not receiving payments on time.
This does not only affect the productivity of your freelancer but could also result in attrition.
This is what makes it extremely important for you to pay your freelancers on time.
Do not keep the payment cycle too long, try and disburse the payments every month or even better, every fortnight.
Show Some Love
Treat your freelancers with the same level of respect as your full-time employees for they also add great value to your business, which is why you decided to hire and keep them in the first place.
With the pandemic, your entire team is working from home. In this case, things can be a little complicated. And the lack of communication can really make your team very toxic.
We have an interesting blog to help managers deal with a toxic work culture that you can check out.
Make them a part of the social events hosted by your company and help them make connections at the workplace so that they feel like an integral part of the system.
Long Term Relationships
Establish long-term relationships with freelancers who are capable of contributing quality work to you.
Keep them involved in projects as freelancers are more inclined towards working with clients who are regular with sending assignments and payments.
Work with various new marketing freelancers on many small projects to select the few capable of taking up projects of greater significance.
Set Clear Expectations
Be crystal clear about the standard of work expected, necessary skills required to complete the task at hand, and deliverable speed required for completing the particular project as per the desired deadline.
If you are not too certain of what tasks to allocate to your freelancer, refrain from hiring remote freelancers.
Set effective parameters of measuring the success of a project before you ask a freelancer to commence working on it.
Organize Video Meetings
Your primary mode of communication with freelancers will be through emails.
Therefore, try and organize video meetings from time to time so that you understand your freelancer’s personality, working style, and body language cues.
Try to establish a personal connection with them so that they feel comfortable sharing their hesitations or issues with you while working on a project.
Qualities to Look For
Be certain of the qualities that you would wish your freelancer to have before you begin the hiring process.
Apart from having the technical knowledge to carry out a specific task, make sure that the candidate is good with time management, has the ability to work independently, does not indulge in any malpractices such as copying work from other sources, and is adaptable and organized.
Seek Feedback Regularly
It is important for you to keep track of how satisfied your freelancers are when they are working with you.
Seek feedback every once in a while to understand whether they feel that they are contributing value to the organization and if they feel that the tasks assigned to them are relevant to their experience and education.
Work on the feedback collected to enhance satisfaction levels among freelancers.
Let Go
Once you have delegated the responsibility of accomplishing a task to your freelancer, provide them with the creative freedom to complete the task as they like.
Do not impose decisions or ideas on them. If you were to do the thinking yourself, then there would be no need for you to hire an external resource.
Therefore, while making sure that your freelancer is well aware of your expectations from the deliverable, give him the space to tweak them a little.
For all you know, you may be left pleasantly satisfied with the results.
