How to Find and Hire the Best Freelancers
In case you haven’t heard, we’re experiencing a freelancing boom, and millions of high-performing professionals are leveraging their talents to become their own boss.
Which is awesome news for bloggers and online entrepreneurs like you who plan on growing your team. It means you get to recruit freelancers from the largest pool of talent we’ve ever seen!
But because there are so many freelancers out there, business owners are more concerned than ever about attracting the right ones to their business.
In fact, I’ve noticed this topic has become a common theme during several of the recent podcasts I’ve been on. The question that keeps coming up is:
What do I need to do to be successful in hiring a freelancer?
And my answer might seem really simple, but it all comes down to three things.
1. Identify the Right Role For Your Team
You have to have the right role. You see, if you don’t get the role right, it’s so much harder to hire the right freelancer. For you. For your team. For your business.
For example… If you hire a writer and want that person to set up your blog posts and schedule your social media, those things likely aren’t in their Zone of Genius, which means you aren’t going to get the best.
While anyone can technically do those things, if the writer you hire doesn’t want to do them or isn’t good at them, that’s going to come through.
But when you have the writer aligned with writing inspiring social media posts, valuable newsletters, and helpful blog posts, it’s like magic.
Below are some common freelance roles that bloggers and digital business owners hire.
Virtual Assistant
If you’re hiring a VA because you think it’s a good first position to hire, I’d ask you to think more specifically about what you want that person to do. Then decide if that person is really a VA or one of the positions listed below.
Project Manager
A project manager can manage all the details of the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks and processes within your business. They are typically more experienced -- and more expensive -- than a VA, but you’re receiving a more specialized skill set.
Online Business Manager or Digital Business Manager
An online business manager (OBM) or digital business manager (DBM) helps you run your business at the highest level and will typically know as much as you do about the day-to-day operations in your business. And with the right experience and training like The Hiring Fix, they can help you hire and onboard contractors.
Social Media Manager
If most of the tasks you need done revolve around social media… creating posts, scheduling, responding to comments, etc., you probably need to hire a freelancer to step into the role of social media manager. Or one of these three social media job titles. If you post a job for a VA, you’ll likely attract many candidates who don’t have that specialized skill set.
Be Realistic
And if you're not sure which job title to use based on the responsibilities that you've outlined, you run the risk of asking too many things from one person. Expecting one person to fill the roles of three, four, or five jobs isn’t realistic. Which is why I strongly recommend that you get more specific.
2. Create a Killer Job Posting
The second thing you need to be successful when hiring freelancers is having the right job posting.
You have to nail this because the best freelancers can tell if you know what you're looking for.
They can tell whether you’re clear about what you want someone to do.
And, they can tell if you're expecting one person to do too much.
They can tell because they are attuned to the most common red flags in job postings for freelancers, which include:
Vague job descriptions.
This often looks like a very short job posting… throwing a couple of sentences into a Facebook group and hoping for the best.
You're not going to get the best freelancers to spend their time putting together an application for you. It's just not worth the effort because they can see you're not clear on what you need or who you want to work with.
Instead, show potential candidates that you’re serious by being more specific. If you spend time getting clear on what you need, you’re more likely to set yourself up for success.
Too many responsibilities.
When you create a position that includes the duties from five roles, you’re expecting too much from one person.
Freelancers tend to be more specialized and are drawn to postings that speak to their strengths.
Besides that, it would be next to impossible to find someone who has expertise in being a virtual assistant, project manager, social media manager, writer, AND SEO consultant.
Instead of falling into this trap, start documenting your vision for your team in the next few years and each of the roles you will ideally have.
Overemphasizing yourself.
A job posting that begins with a description of you and your company is usually the result of looking to large corporations like Amazon or The New York Times for best practices.
I get why we do it. We tend to model the big companies that we admire.
But we’re forgetting two things when we do this. First, those companies are usually hiring employees, not freelancers. And second, these companies are so well-known that they are super attractive to potential candidates.
That’s not to say your business isn’t awesome. It’s just unlikely that you’re going to have broad name recognition even if you have a couple hundred thousand Instagram followers.
Instead, focus more on what the freelancer would be doing for you. That’s what potential candidates are going to care about the most. If they have experience in those things and want to do them, they are more likely to apply.
If you’re not sure how to write an attractive job posting that focuses on the freelancer first, get my free job posting template here. I take all the guesswork out of it, so it’s super easy for you!
3. Follow a Solid Hiring Process
The third piece that you need is the right hiring process.
I’m extremely passionate about using an effective process because I made so many mistakes early on in my own business.
In 2016, I posted in a Facebook group that I needed a VA who was sparkly and reliable to write and edit my content.
Here’s the worst part… it worked! But when I tried to do it again, it didn’t work because it wasn’t a solid process.
That’s when I set out to really understand how to find and hire the best freelancers… talented, high-performing, amazing people I would love working with.
I love when a freelancer tells me how wonderful their experience was with my hiring process.
Even if they don’t get the job, they are still so happy they applied because it was such a great experience.
And to me, that is the best compliment.
Learn How to Hire the BEST Freelancer
If you’re ready to start building your team with the best freelancers but aren’t sure where to find them or how to develop an effective hiring process, you are so not alone.
