More and more companies are hiring freelancers rather than employing extra staff. It provides flexibility and access to a large range of skills, some of which a company may only need occasionally. And the best way to access those freelancers may be to find, hire and work with them via an online marketplace.
A Move to the Marketplace
In December 2016, Inovaro conducted a survey of 1,004 workforce hiring decision makers on behalf of online freelance marketplace Upwork. 48% used some form of a flexible workforce (temporary workers, freelancers or agency workers). 55% of those who had used freelancers in 2106 expected to increase their usage in 2017.
Freelancers were most typically used to scale up quickly for a project (56%) or to access skills not currently in-house (49%).
Significantly, only 1 in 10 hiring mangers believed physical presence in office was important to a new hire’s success. 46% of managers who hired freelancers in 2016 had used online resources to do so and on average, freelancers hired via online sources started contributing to their team 40% faster than those hired offline.
So, should you join the revolution and begin hiring freelancers online? Here are our five reasons to hire freelancers via an online freelance marketplace:
It provides access to a large number of available freelancers – often, for free
Online freelance marketplaces provide access to thousands – or in the case of larger companies like Upwork and Guru.com, millions – of freelancers. You can quickly find available freelancers with the skills you need. It’s ideal for quickly finding freelancers to complete short-term and/or rarely occurring tasks.
Often, this doesn’t cost you, the hirer, a penny. Many freelance marketplaces make their money by charging freelancers a fee and/or a percentage of their earnings.
It provides access to a diverse range of talent
Freelance marketplaces offer freelancers with a huge range of skills – skills that may be difficult for you to source locally and easily. A freelance marketplace lets you filter your search for freelancers with the particular skills and experience you need.
It pre-evaluates potential talent
Most online freelance marketplaces have a ranking system, based on some or all of these criteria: feedback score, reliability, successful/timely task completion, onsite tests, money earned. This gives you a quick way to find reliable freelancers with a great reputation.
You can already see they can get the job done without working your way through a CV or interview, or spending time and money going through an agency.
It can simplify your payment processes
Rather than setting up an array of payment methods for freelancers around the globe, you can quickly and easily pay all your freelancers through the online marketplace. Most of them will allow you to bring existing clients or freelancers on board, so it could even make paying your existing freelancers easier.
It can streamline your freelance admin and communication
An online marketplace can help you manage communication and work submission through their online workstreams and messaging systems. Rather than wading through emails or using a variety of communication methods, you can just keep one tab open on your device and deal with your entire freelancing team through the marketplace.
Most sites will have inbuilt terms and conditions of hiring (e.g. payment terms for invoices), so both yourself and your freelancers will be clear on what’s expected and when.
If things go wrong, these terms and conditions also mean you’ll have recourse to a third party – the marketplace.
If you’ve never considered using an online marketplace to hire your freelancers before, hopefully you can now see that it can be a very simple way of accessing great freelance talent. Why not give it a try?
