Should You Hire A Freelancer?.

​Let’s face it; thanks to the wonderful life of the internet, a large proportion of work can be done at home and so, the option of ‘going freelance’ is more common than ever for Marketing, Media and Digital sectors.

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Did you know that between 2001 & 2017 the number of freelancers increased by over 1 million?

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If you’re a business looking for some temporary extra help, hiring freelancers could be the answer to your prayers. We’ve explored a few of the advantages and disadvantages below so you can decide what’s best…

Expertise

Your Marketing team is great at what they do, but it’s difficult being good at everything. A freelancer usually has a specific talent or experience in their field. They have so much confidence in themselves, they look for their own work.Not only are they good at what they do, they’ll be experienced in dealing with briefs in all shapes and sizes for all sorts of business’, and therefore, they’ll need less support to get the job done.

Cost

Maybe one of the first and most obvious advantage is the cost. You’ll be saving a lot not having to enrol someone who will be in and out once they’ve smashed your latest project. Paying for the work that they complete means you’ve based the charges on a level of effort and output rather than a salary.

Quality

Taking you up on a job and supporting your big idea means a lot to a freelancer. It could very well mean choosing to work for you rather than your competitor. But even more so, they’ve chosen to work with you to pay their bills.

Now, while I’m sure we all try our hardest and best to produce high quality of work 110% of the time, there’s no one that will value their own work like a freelancer. They have a sort of ‘portfolio mindset’ where everything they do will be an asset to there expertise, so they’ll want to do their best for you and for themselves.

Availability

Just like every business has their low periods, they also have very busy periods. These are the times where everyone is most stressed and there a hundred different tasks going on at the same time. You probably don’t have the bandwidth to focus on something more.

By hiring a freelancer, you’ll get that extra pair of safe hands without taking a team member off another project. You’ll also be able to give them a brief and watch them ‘hot the ground running’- no need to give them induction training or all the faff that comes with it.

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To make this a fair judgement, we’ll also address some things to consider and to be mindful of.

Deadlines

Yes, they’ll value your project, but will it have their full attention? Freelancer often take on more than one piece of work at the same time. They might not be able to afford not to. Unfortunately, this may mean less of a focus on the task/s you set them. This has the potential of the domino effect – missed deadlines or poor-quality work. – make sure you ask how many other things they’re working on.

Security

Temporary workforce can need access to many files and data from your business in order to carry out the project. There’s always a bit of a risk here that freelancers could take or share exclusive data or information. This is quite a high risk but now you’re aware, there are steps you can put in place i.e. password changes to avoid this.

Less control

While freelancers are usually able and knowledgeable enough to not need as much support, there might be times you wish they were in the office with you. Perhaps it would make life a little easier. They may go off on a tangent or mis-read the brief but until they send it to you for review, you wouldn’t be able to input what you would change.

Limits

Having this limited control can make it even more difficult to keep to a contract. A freelancer will always have their own terms. When you’re working with permanent staff, you might be able to bend the rules a little. – Here I mean, take longer than expected to give feedback, decide to focus on other projects over this one, or even completely change the brief.

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However, with a freelancer, you’re often limited to how many edits you can ask them to make. Time is money at the end of the day.