In the 21st century, it is more than essential to have a digital presence for your business. 70% of consumers tend to search brands, services online before actually buying something offline, therefore not being online will mean you are 70% less likely to keep up with your competitors.
Now that you know how important it is to have an online address, it is high time to expand your team and hire specialists who will assure that your digital journey goes as smoothly as possible. For having an online store or even a website which can be a simple landing page, one surely needs a team of digital specialists including software developers, search engine optimization specialists, marketers, and many more. Depending on one’s needs and expectations, specialists differ in each team. After you realize what features you need and define the budget, you can decide on whether you will hire full-time employees or freelancers. To do so, you first want to highlight the benefits and the disadvantages of each.
Online freelance marketplace will give you more flexibility, as freelancers do not work fixed hours unlike employees, they work per hour, hence they can be available whenever you need them and are able to pay for their presence. While registered employees work fixed hours (from 10:00 to 7:00, for instance) and are therefore unavailable in late evenings or early mornings. On top of that, hiring a freelancer is cost-efficient. They get paid based on the time they have spent doing their job. Even managing a large team of freelancers can cost less than hiring two or three employees.
Speaking of teams, if you happen to run a huge project, you will most probably need a team of freelancers rather than just one. But is it possible to build a team of freelancers, manage them equally and efficiently?
Well, the answer is yes and here is how to hire and manage a team of freelancers.
Define the project
If you are going to manage a team, first of all you will have to define the project not only for them but for yourself as well. By defining a project you will effortlessly set KPIs(key performance indicators) and therefore measuring your freelancers’ success will be much easier.
Defining your project, you will write a more comprehensive job description including all your expectations and the applicants’ requirements, responsibilities. This document will naturally result in more relevant applications, hence freelance hunting will get much easier. For example, if you are hiring a social media manager, what platforms are they supposed to manage? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, maybe all three of them? If you are hiring a freelance writer, are you going to give him/her weekly ideas for a blog or they will have to know SEO, do keyword research and come up with blogs? If you hire a web developer, they need to know about all the special functionality required for your website.
Interview the applicants
If your team is going to consist of several freelancers, interviewing all of them may take much time. However, this is the most essential step. Whether your project will succeed mostly depends on whether you have contacted the right people to build it.
While interviewing the applicants, ask them about their previous experience, whether they worked on a similar project, and review what their ex-clients say about them in freelance platforms.
After choosing with whom you want to proceed, sign a contract. Well, this is a fundamental part of the freelancer-hirer relationship. The contract should explicitly state that the worker is a freelancer, and therefore you are free of some conventional financial coverages such as health insurance, vacation, sick leave and more.
The contract should also mention how many hours a week the freelancers are obligated to work and home much money they get paid per hour.
Manage the team
This is where the most complicated part begins. How do manage all of them simultaneously? Well, first of all, have a workflow. If you definitely know what your primary requirements are going to be, planning the workflow will be ten times easier. Be transparent with it. Showcase the whole working procedure to all of your freelancers so that they can know how much one’s job depends on one another. That way they will be more responsible as they know how anyone else can fall behind their pace if they are late to submit their tasks. Have weekly review/feedback sessions. As most freelancers work online, communication is an essential part of success. Reviewing constantly what they have done can lead to better and more effective results.
Evaluate them
This is the logical continuation of organizing review sessions. Feedback sessions are crucial for the implementation of the project not only for the freelancers but yourself as well. What if you as a businessman want to see something but the specialist being familiar to the market clearly sees that your personal desires do not correspond to the contemporary trends? What if as a result of the mutual feedback session, you will get new and better ideas for your freelancers? This is more than a possibility and a key to success. Evaluate the job done by your freelancers but also let them express their ideas based on their expertise and knowledge. Click here to find freelancers and begin your digital journey with professionals.
