Technology Tip
Dave Pelland has extensive experience covering the business use of technology, networking and communications tools by companies of all sizes. Dave's editorial and corporate experience includes more than 10 years editing an electronic technology and communications industry newsletter for a global professional services firm.

Finding Contractors and Freelancers for Your Small Business

Finding Contractors and Freelancers for Your Small Business

Hiring contract and freelance workers to perform specific projects or for limited time periods can help small businesses increase productivity and save operating costs.

Unlike full-time employees who have to be recruited, trained and paid regardless of a company’s workload or revenue, freelancers are brought in for specific reasons and remain only until those needs are filled.

Hiring outside workers for limited projects or time periods can provide several benefits for small businesses:

  • Specialized skills or expertise. You can hire someone with skills in graphic design, writing, marketing or other specialties.
  • Cost savings. Paying someone for a specific project is usually less expensive than a full-time hire because they won’t receive benefits or paid time off, and you won’t need to provide a workspace or equipment.
  • Access to a global talent pool. Online job boards for freelancers allow you to attract workers internationally, potentially at lower costs than in your local market.
  • Staffing flexibility. If your company has busy periods, use contract workers to ramp your employee count up and down as needed.

In addition, using contractors frees up time that you can devote to working with customers and business development. While support tasks and marketing are important to your small business, there are many tasks you probably don’t need to perform yourself.

Suitable Projects and Tasks

The most common projects and roles that are outsourced to freelancers include:

  • Website design. You can provide guidelines and let a professional handle the nuts and bolts of how the site works.
  • Marketing content. This can include blog posts, videos, social media posts, case studies, white papers or other content assets. You’ll probably need to be involved in reviewing content before it’s shared, but won’t need to create everything yourself.
  • Data entry and reporting. If you have to, for example, transfer data from a client’s bank statements to financial software, using an outside worker can save staffing costs and time.
  • Scheduling sales calls. Freelance sales development representatives can perform prospecting, lead qualification and appointment-setting, letting your sales team focus on building relationships and closing deals.

Finding Help

A great starting point for finding freelance help is the various online job boards designed to match workers with employers. While these boards have varying focuses, the basic idea is that you post listings for the projects or tasks you need to be performed, and freelancers who have registered with the sites apply for your work.

Popular sites for finding freelancers or contract workers include Upwork, Guru, Fiverr, Freelancer and others.

The job boards include information about the workers and their skills through profiles that list relevant experience, rankings from previous clients and other information. You can reduce the number of unqualified candidates who bid on your jobs by specifying your desired skill level.

While creating your job posting, it’s important to describe your project as clearly as you can so you can find the best worker and set expectations appropriately. List not only what you want to accomplish, but why, and include any milestones (such as rough sketches or first drafts) as well as how often you’d like to hear from the worker - and, of course, your project’s deadline.

If you’re looking for ongoing business support, it’s a good idea to start with one or two discreet projects to get a sense of how well a contractor delivers.


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