Now more than ever, freelancers are in demand. Before the pandemic hit, there was often tough competition among freelancers to land the best jobs. However, the tables have turned over the past few months and businesses are now competing for the top freelancers amongst a pool of super talented professionals. What has caused this change?
Big companies and startups alike are hiring freelancers for roles which, under normal circumstances, would have been filled by full time employees.
This shift in recruitment strategy has largely occurred due to the economic uncertainty brought about by the pandemic. Countless businesses have had to make redundancies and furlough staff in recent months. As a result, many freelancers have been drafted in to fill massive skill gaps and to share their expertise with businesses to help them stay afloat.
If you’re looking to hire an experienced freelancer, you’ll need to make sure your job brief stands out from the crowd.
Implement the three tips below to ensure that it does:
1. Be clear about what exactly you're looking for
There’s nothing worse than an ambiguous job description.
Freelancers generally work with a few clients at the same time. To do this successfully, they need to have a clear sense of what their role entails and the tasks that are required of them from the outset.
If your job spec is vague, freelancers will likely scroll by pretty quickly. In my experience, sparse job specs mean one of two things. Either a business just wasn't bothered putting the time into writing a decent job brief or they don’t know themselves what they’re actually looking for.
If the company doesn’t know what exactly they want a freelancer to do or just haven’t been bothered to communicate it clearly in their job spec, how is the freelancer supposed to know if they have the capacity to take you on as a client?
2. Highlight what makes your company unique and interesting
If you want a freelancer to respond to your job ad, you should give them some kind of insight into what your business is all about. It’s not all about the cash, you know! You need to emphasise the reasons why a freelancer would like to work for you, so highlight a few elements that make your business an interesting and exciting place to work.
You don’t have to write a whole paragraph about your company and its offerings. An engaging two line summary about why a freelancer should work for your business could be the difference between the top freelance talent looking at and responding to your ad, or completely disregarding it.
3. Post on job sites that freelancers actually use
So there’s two things I always advise startups to avoid when looking for freelancers: spend hours scrolling on social media or spend crazy money on an agency. These recruitment methods are time consuming and costly and nine times out of ten lead to fairly fruitless results.
In my personal experience, I look for work on sites where other freelancers have found work.
It seems to have taken a pandemic for many businesses to realise that they have been drastically limiting the amount of talent available to them by only hiring individuals who live within commuting distance of their offices, for full time roles.
There’s a big talent pool of highly skilled freelancers out there beyond the confines of your town, city and country. Make sure you create a strong job description to ensure that you attract the best.
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