You Hired a Freelancer… Now What?
Have you struggled with actually outsourcing once you have the person to outsource to?
I understand.
I had a friend come to me recently and say:
“There have been times when I’ve had a hard time assigning tasks and giving hard deadlines. I find myself asking a team member, ‘Would you want to work on this?’ and ‘Would this timeframe be okay?’”
And, it makes sense. It can be hard to confidently hand off work without asking for permission! Especially when you’ve been managing the work on your own for such a long time.
It almost feels like you’re bothering someone else to do it when you’ve been the one taking care of it all along before you hired them.
Let me first say that this is a completely normal feeling. It’s not a comfortable transition to go from managing it all to handing off pieces of your business to someone else.
It requires trust, confidence in their capabilities and letting go of control. It also just takes time to get used to relying on someone else for support.
But if you find yourself stuck—not really sure what to assign them or how to communicate the delegation—keep reading. This article will show you how to assign those first tasks, how to frame “boring” tasks, what to do about deadlines and more.
What should I assign to my freelancer first?
Really set them up for success by instilling confidence and slowly handing off things you need help with.
In other words, start with one or two projects, the ones you know you need help with first, and train them well on them.
If you fire-hose them with 27 things in their first week or even month that you don’t have the bandwidth to handle, you will likely overwhelm them and stress them out.
No matter how talented they are, this actually sets them up to mess up or even get fed up and walk away.
Start small and build every few weeks, adding one or two new projects in as their time allows and once they prove they’ve gotten the hang of your other tasks.
What if the work is boring?
If you’re worried that your new team member might not like the work you’ve hired them to do, I want to remind you that this is normal.
Keep in mind that you’ve chosen that role and those responsibilities because you don’t like the work or aren’t good at those things.
The best part about outsourcing is that when you find people where the work you need done is in their Zone of Genius, you get to do more of the work that you love.
And that’s exactly what it means to have a high-performing team. Each member spends most of their time in their individual Zone of Genius and they are more effective and more productive because of it.
How do I set realistic deadlines?
First, check with your freelancer on their preferences. They may have boundaries or policies that they expect their clients to abide by.
If they don’t, it’s best to give freelancers at least two to three business days to turn around fairly simple assignments and a week for larger ones, such as creating a month’s worth of social media images or writing a blog post.
If you need something with a tight turnaround (less than 24 hours), be sure to reach out and confirm that the freelancer you work with is available.
The more you can plan ahead and schedule tasks inside a project management tool like Asana or Trello, you’ll be setting your team up for success. They’ll know when the work is coming and when you expect it to be completed, and can work it into their own schedules at their leisure.
How much training do I need to provide my freelancer?
The good news is that if you’ve hired a specialized freelancer with at least some experience, you shouldn’t have to provide too much training.
But there are times when you need to show a freelancer how to do something specific to your business… like format a blog post on your website or initiate a workflow in your email marketing platform.
You can easily show them what you want by recording your computer screen and talking them through the process you use. There are some great screen recording tools out there to do this.
Personally, I love to use Loom. It’s a Chrome plug-in that records your computer screen and your voice as you talk about a process in your business. And it’s web-based, which means you can just send a link to the video; you don’t have to upload it anywhere.
You can also give them written, step-by-step instructions that they can return to and reference, and Google drive is a great place to house these documents.
Or you can send audio voice notes depending on your needs and their learning style.
It really all depends on your preferences and what works best for you and your new team member. Ask them how they prefer to learn and then go from there.
Managing a team requires communication and trust.
It may not be totally natural at first, but delegating to your team is the whole reason you hired them! By trusting their skills and working with their schedules and learning needs, you’ll be set up for success from the jump.
Have more questions about delegating? Leave them in a comment and I’ll get back to you (or maybe even address it in a future blog post)!
