hiring a freelancer, yes or no?

Hiring a Freelancer: A Leap of Faith or Winning a Talent

It’s the age of startups, entrepreneurs, and tech businesses. The economy has had some major shifts in most of its known managing strategies. Therefore hiring a freelancer has become one of the first ways tech people will think of when they want to get a job done.

From reassessing budget and resources, to hiring resourceful smart talents. Not to mention the development stage of each company that grows the need to keep things running while taking time for progression, which weights the workload.

That’s when hiring freelancers comes into the picture, along with all its unknown territories and the liability of making a decision toward hiring one.

We searched for market demands, challenges, and hazards regarding remote jobs and hiring freelancers.

Here are 6 tactical and strategic decision-making steps we came up with to help you take a leap of faith in choosing a freelancer.

Step 1: Identification

You realize something is missing in your business. Whether its ever-expanding workload, not coming up with the utmost possible result of each task, or getting stocked in the timid routine of general work strategy with no progression on the horizon.

Whatever it might be, you can only tackle it if you determine what’s insufficient around the job. So, for the initial step through your business transformation, clearly define the nature of the decision you must make. Clarification is the basis of every achieved success.

Step 2: Information

In the rise of every determination, collecting some pertinent information is necessary before you make a decision.

This step involves both internal and external “work”.

Sniff around your network. Start with people you know in your industry, see if they have any suggestions and recommendations about the matter at hand.

You can also ask around at business networking groups or social media. Post a brief description of what you like to know about hiring a freelancer on LinkedIn. Or even ask for a consultation in an online freelancing platform.

Reading comments and engaging with fellow clients can really give you some insight into the story behind freelancing and how to approach remote work.

Then purify the collected data by assessing how many hours and what specific skills you need and how much you can pay for it.

Step 3: Purification

As you collect information, you will probably identify several possible paths of action.

In this step, list all possible and desirable alternatives. Next, write down your specifics needs according to your identified challenges.

If the project demands an in-person communication or you don’t have the time to chat with a freelancer, it makes sense not to choose a remote worker.

Since freelancers are very communicative about what they need (it’s a business skill they need to have). If you want to do routine work and have back to back meetings, you properly can’t on-board a consultant.

That said, distinct decision only comes when you purify your gathered data.

the decision making dilemma for business development
Step 4: Evaluation

Evaluate the need you identified in Step 1. See whether it would be met or resolved through the use of each alternative.

After purification, you’ll begin to favor certain alternatives that seem to have a higher potential for helping you reach your goal.

Finally, prioritize the alternatives based on your own value system. You may even choose a combination of alternatives.

This step is best achieved with an opportunity cost module and a bit of your own imagination.

Step 5: Consideration

Through assessing the possible results, you obtain a pros and cons list where you can see how taking each path bring opportunities.

Here’s an example:

Pros:

  1. you are on a tight budget, so if you choose a remote worker, you typically have no chance to offer them any benefits, such as paid time off or retirement plan co-pays. Also, taxes are often lower on your end and you won’t have to worry about severance pay or any other factors that make terminating your relationship with a worker costly or complicated.
  2. Freelancers offer flexibility and excellence when you’re in need of a specialized skill set. Whereas you bring in a full-time employee, you’re probably looking for a well-rounded person who can handle a variety of tasks. You may also invest in someone who lacks key skills currently but shows the potential to learn them over time.

Cons:

  1. It is said that freelancers have less commitment towards their employers’ principals. Different time zones and a possible distant in the global market have the effect of no commitment for the remote worker.
  2. Decreased control and supervision are a byproduct of remote work which lower the potential for training and advancement of any chosen task and skill. 

All things set aside it’s noticeably shown that in searching for a skilled talent, the disadvantages of hiring a freelancer are inconsequential. According to recent studies, 35% of U.S. workers are now freelancing in 2019., and the total number of freelancers in the U.S. has increased to 57 million.

Step 6: Action & Review

Last but not least, you’re now ready to take some positive actions by beginning to implement the alternative you chose. But all decisions are teaching moments, so take the time to see how the decision worked out (or not) and chart the consequences of your action. Evaluate whether or not you made the right choices throughout the previous decision-making steps.

We at WinATalent strive for choosing the right path for each business development. We design your challenge into becoming an iterative process which seeks to challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions to prototype, test, and deliver.

If you want to evaluate your freelancers and their rates better, Toptal offers an hourly rate calculator in their website that helps you browse every programming language and skill and view their rates in detail.

Get familiar with Global Outsourcing Rates.

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