How to Determine If You Should Hire for Your Client
Before you begin recruiting for a client, there’s a critical question to ask yourself:
Are they a good fit?
It’s easy to let the excitement of landing a new client — or being asked to take on a new task — overshadow some very telling clues that it’s just not the right time.
The reason I feel so strongly about writing about this is I’ve encountered this myself. Back in 2019, when I was still pretty new to recruiting, I had a challenging client.
From day one, she was difficult to work with, but I didn’t listen to the warning signs going off in my head. I wanted it to work.
But she continued to be controlling throughout the process, not to mention just generally unpleasant.
Finally, after a few weeks of being micromanaged to a degree I had never experienced before, I just knew I couldn’t recruit for her.
If I didn’t enjoy working with her, I certainly couldn’t recommend any freelancer work with her either.
So I cut ties and returned her money. Because my personal integrity was worth more than any amount of money I would earn from that relationship.
Before you agree to help a client with the hiring process, here are a few things to think about... so you can hopefully avoid an experience like mine.
Signs Your Client is a Good Fit For Recruiting
Just because your client has asked you to recruit for them does not mean they are the right fit for you. And it’s better to figure that out before you get started, then midway through the process.
Consider the following questions as you make your decision. I recommend you go into this with an open mind and let your answers guide you to the best decision for you and your client.
1. You have worked together for at least 3 to 6 months.
If you have worked together for a minimum of three to six months, you have begun to establish a bit of rapport. And hopefully, you’ve had the opportunity to work out a few kinks together — and build trust — through the process of handling a mistake or responding to feedback.
This time is also valuable to help you understand your client better, as well... their strengths, weaknesses, preferences. This will help you to successfully craft an effective job posting and take the lead on hiring a new freelancer into the fold.
If your client has brought you on recently, one important thing to note is that they might not be ready to add another new team member. Even if they think they are.
If your onboarding and first few months have revealed that the business is disorganized or dysfunctional in any way, just think about what adding another team member into the mix could do.
It might just add more chaos.
If you need more than three to six months to work together to decide if the client is a good fit, by all means, take the time you need.
There are no shortcuts to building trust.
2. Your client has an empowering leadership and management style.
If your client has an empowering leadership and management style and has demonstrated comfort in letting go of control, this is a positive sign.
Leaders who are highly controlling have a hard time trusting their team members. And if they can’t let go of micromanaging and question everything, it won’t matter how experienced or high-performing the freelancer is. It probably won’t work out.
On the other hand, empowering leaders rely on their team members’ experience and expertise, express their appreciation, and ask for input — then actually listen to it. They offer encouragement and support and show they value the skills that others bring to the table.
See the difference? Some questions you can ask yourself to help you move along in your decision include:
Have you mostly had a positive experience with them?
Is your client generally calm?
Does your client value you and your expertise?
Is your client receptive to feedback?
Does your client communicate proactively?
Is your client responsive to your questions?
Does your client trust you?
Is there mutual respect between you and your client?
If there are other attributes that are important to you, by all means, add those questions to this list.
Saying no to any of these questions isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. No one is perfect. The idea is to evaluate if you’re a good fit for your client.
If you can answer yes to most of these questions, you can likely be successful in recruiting a freelancer for your client.
3. You would recommend working with your client.
This third question is probably the most important. Would you recommend others to work with your client?
You might feel inclined to answer, of course, as more of a reflex than anything else. Thinking, well, I’m working for them, why wouldn’t I recommend them?
But I encourage you to reflect on this question honestly and objectively. One way I’ve found helpful is to write a testimonial about working with your client.
What would you say? Here are a few questions to help you get started.
How would you describe your client?
Which adjectives would you use to describe your client? Friendly, kind, optimistic? Disorganized, unreliable, unpredictable?
Jot down the first words that come to mind, then notice how many words would be considered positive and how many have negative connotations.
Don’t be alarmed if your client has some negative attributes. We all have them. The importance is the balance between positives and negatives. Is it right for you?
My personal ratio is three positives for every one negative. But yours may be different.
How does this client compare to other clients you have or have had?
Think about other clients you’ve had in the past... and how your client compares to them. To help you organize your thoughts, it may be helpful to start with a list of qualities that are important to you... like communication, reliability, organization, responsiveness, and honesty.
Then rate how your client is better than other clients in each category. Next, run through this list again and consider how your client is worse than others.
You’ll know rather quickly how your client stacks up depending on if you see more positives or more negatives.
What do you like about working with your client?
If you’ve been working with your client for a few months now, it’s probably at least partly because you genuinely enjoy working with them.
Take a moment to think about why you enjoy them — and it may very well be for reasons other than what makes them a successful business owner.
Not only will this help make your decision if your client is a good fit for recruiting, but it just may help you identify how to attract more clients like them in the future.
What if Your Client Isn’t a Good Fit?
If you get to the end of writing your client testimonial and realize they aren’t a good fit... now what?
It may not be the result you wanted, but honestly... it can be a gift.
You may decide that you need more time to get to know your client better. And that’s okay. It’s better to be honest with your client about this than to struggle through it.
On the other hand, you may realize that you and your client just aren’t suited to work together.
Especially if you wouldn’t recommend anyone else work with your client. Once you’ve reached that conclusion yourself, it will be extremely difficult to recruit other freelancers — and your feelings may become evident to candidates throughout the process.
Knowing when to walk away from a client isn’t an easy decision, but it’s part of being a freelancer. The sooner you can part ways, the better it will be for both of you. For some advice on knowing when it’s time to let go of your client and how to handle it, you can read about it in my blog post here.
Help Your Clients Build a Better Team
Hopefully, by the conclusion of these exercises, you will find that your client testimonial is generally positive... and that your client is a good fit for recruiting. This is also a sign that other specialized freelancers will have a positive experience, as well.
So, if you’re ready to get started building a dream team for your client — yay for you!
But don’t think you need to figure out how to do it all on your own. I’ve created a brand new program — designed just for people like you so you can gain the expertise you need to confidently recruit for your clients.
The Hiring Fix is a step-by-step program that covers everything you need to know to find and hire the best freelancers for your clients. You’ll find the very same templates, tools, and exercises that I use to recruit for my clients.
Ready to get started? Find out more here.
