How to Avoid Hassle When Hiring Freelance Help for Your Business
Guest post by Courtney Rosenfeld
Need help with projects and tasks but not quite ready to hire more employees? Then hiring freelancers could be the perfect solution! Even large corporations are beginning to recognize the advantages of using freelance professionals in their business operations, but these contract workers can benefit small businesses the most. If you want to know how to avoid headaches when using freelance help for your small business, then these tips can definitely help!
Resolve Any Fears About Hiring Remote Freelance Employees
When you are working with freelancers, chances are you will be working with those professionals remotely. That can be a little disconcerting if you have never worked with a remote team before, but following a few best practices can help keep you connected to those freelance and remote staff members. Using project management apps like Trello can help you and your freelancers stay organized when it comes to completing tasks in a timely manner, but communication is the first step in successfully managing remote workers. You need to keep the lines of communication flowing freely between your regular staff members and freelance help, which is why utilizing helpful services, including automated transcription programs, can be so important. With these sort of services, you can quickly have notes transcribed from phone calls and meetings, so that you can send those notes to your remote staff and keep everyone in the loop about essential business projects. Getting in some facetime with your freelance help can ease your concerns as well, so also consider video conferencing services for your business.
Understand How to Find and Evaluate Freelance Professionals
If you have never worked with freelancers before, you will need to spend a little bit of time familiarizing yourself with a few key hiring points and resources. For example, you may need to use different job posting sites to locate freelance talent than you would when recruiting full-time employees. While commonly used recruiting sites like Indeed do provide some access to contract help, dedicated sites such as Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer.com allow you to sort through a much larger pool of freelance talent. As you look through profiles on these sites, you may notice that many freelancers include portfolios of previous work. Knowing how to evaluate freelance portfolios is critical for finding the most experienced and professional workers, so spend some time researching tips and tricks around this process. You can also use test projects or detailed interview questions to narrow your choices down to the best fit for your business needs. Hubspot’s suggested interview questions can be helpful when screening graphic designers, but you can tweak them to help screen other types of freelance jobs, too.
Avoid Potential Legal Issues When Working With Freelancers
In general, the regulations regarding contract workers tend to be far more relaxed than those governing regular and full-time employees. You must provide contract workers with a 1099-MISC to meet IRS requirements, but that’s really the only administrative task you need to worry about when it comes to managing freelance help. Now, keep in mind that the IRS has established strict requirements regarding freelance vs. regular employees, so you need to make sure that your agreements with contractors fall in line with these rules. Failure to do so could result in stiff fines and penalties for your small business, so it’s important to avoid violating IRS rules when looking for help with your startup. Performing background checks is another employment process that can get small businesses into legal trouble, and with more businesses using background checks to screen freelancers, understanding this process can be important. That includes researching both federal and state rules for utilizing these screening tools.
When you need temporary help for your business, you need to consider hiring freelance professionals. In doing so, not only can you save by not paying a regular salary, but you can also reduce the cost and commitment regarding other hiring and employment processes. Just be sure to use the tips above to establish best practices, so you can avoid most of the issues that can arise when working with remote and freelance employees.