There are lots of benefits this digital age has provided for mankind and one of them is the ability to hire someone to execute and complete a project without keeping him as an employee or worrying about the monthly salary you are going to pay him.
Adopting freelancing in any area of business is growing rapidly as lots of brands and businesses are seeing the need of using freelancers.
Take, for instance, if you want to build a website for your company, there is no need of employing a web designer who will only have to finish the work within a few days and then be coming to sit around in the office doing nothing all day, and when the month ends he receives a salary.
Instead, you can hire a freelance web designer who will execute and deliver the project within a few days.
In this article, therefore, I am going to show you how to hire a freelancer who will help you to execute and deliver a project or tasks in any field you require.
But before we do so, let me show you the benefits of hiring a freelancer.
The benefits of hiring a freelancer.
There are varieties of benefits that hiring a freelancer will provide for you or your company and they are:
- Less-expensive: Hiring a freelancer is less expensive because you are only going to pay him for the project at hand and once the project is completed and the full payment made, there are no additional fees you will have to pay again. As I explained above, if you need a website for your company, you will have to hire a freelance web designer and pay him to deliver the project instead of employing and paying him every month.
- Opportunity to explore: Hiring a freelancer will give you the opportunity to work with different experts in a particular field. Whereas if it were an office employment, you will not find any need to employ more than one person in a particular field. But with freelancing, you can choose to hire more than one expert to work on a project and see who is going to deliver the best service, or you can always choose to move from one freelancer to another whenever the need for a particular project arises.
- Ease of access: Hiring a freelancer is very easy because you can get to check their portfolio online to ascertain if they are capable of delivering a project to your expectation. But with an office employee, you will have to check and confirm their certificates and CVVs as well as conduct interviews to ensure they are going to be able to deliver as expected.
How to hire a freelancer.
You can hire a freelancer by following the following steps:
- Evaluate your project.
- Determine the cost.
- Write your job description.
- Prepare your agreement.
- Source for freelancers.
- Select your freelancer.
- Give the necessary support while the project is ongoing.
- Maintain the relationship after the project’s completion.
1. Evaluate your project.
Before you begin looking for a freelancer who will work on your project, ensure you are able to evaluate the project to know the scope of work the freelancer is expected to undertake.
You need to have a list that contains the project’s requirements as well as your proposed expectations for the project’s completion.
For example, if you want to work on a marketing video for your product or service, you need to evaluate the shots that will be required for the video outlining the ones that will be shot originally as well as the ones that can be downloaded from premium platforms like CanvaPro.
2. Determine the cost.
Before the freelancer even communicates his pricing of the project to you, you must be able to determine beforehand how much will be required for the project to see the light of day.
As a matter of fact, while determining your project cost consider the times and season because the cost of living is gradually increasing as the day goes by. And also be mindful of the fact that there are expert freelancers who are going to charge higher than what you expected because they are the ones bearing the cost of their business marketing and taxation.
To this end, you must also consider conducting research to discover what other companies are paying for the particular project.
3. Write your job description.
Understanding the scope of work needed for your project as well as the pricing must help you to write your job description which must include your project’s requirements and your expectations.
Your job description must also include the qualifications you need from the freelancer, your payment terms as well as the duration of the project’s completion.
4. Prepare your agreement.
It is very important for you and your freelancer to know and agree on what is expected from the project, how long the project will take to be completed, and how the payment will be made.
Other things that will be included in the agreements are;
- Name of the contractor and freelancer.
- Contact information.
- Duration of the project.
- Payment amount and method.
Ensure you and your freelancer carefully signs the agreement before the commencement of the project.
5. Source for freelancers.
It is very erroneous to blindly pick one freelancer for a project even after accessing and ascertaining his work experience. My best advice on looking for a freelancer is to source for freelancers and after conducting the necessary research you will be able to pick the best one for the job.
To however source for freelancers you have to know where to source for freelancers as well as evaluate potential freelancers when you finally find them.
Now let’s begin with where to source for freelancers:
Where to source freelancers.
You can source for freelancers in the following ways:
- Online freelance job boards: There are online freelancing boards like freelancers.com, fiverr.com, upwork.com, etc, where freelancers have an account where they advertise as well s showcase their job capabilities. To therefore source for freelancers, you can visit these online freelance job boards and select the freelancers you will conduct a test on to make your selection.
- Business listing sites: You can also find freelancers in business directories or listing sites, and if you are located in Nigeria you can use businesslisting.ng.
- Job listing platforms: To also source for freelancers, you can post your job on job listing platforms where interested freelancers will apply directly for you to test them and make your selection. You can post your job here on Taculia 9ja to source for a freelancer.
- Post your job on social media: You can also post your job in social media groups and forums where you expect specific freelancers to be a part.
How to evaluate potential freelancers.
Below are the steps you need to follow to evaluate potential freelancers for your project:
- Review their portfolio: Every freelancer must have a portfolio where they showcase the works or projects they have successfully completed. To ascertain if the project truly belongs to them you must be able to see their trademark or watermark on a part of the project. For example, every website I build for my clients will have my web design agency link (taculiadesigns.com.ng) on the footer section. My video projects have my videography agency’s watermark (taculiaentertainment.com) initials on display.
- Ask questions: To also evaluate your freelancers, you must select vital questions you are going g to ask them. An example could be what really motivates them to work from home as a freelancer.
- Give a trial work: Another way of evaluating freelancers is giving a trial work, but it depends on whether there will be expenses involved and also if the freelancer will willingly agree to take on the task.
6. Select your freelancer.
After successfully evaluating your freelancers, you must be able to select the best of them all. But before you do so, make sure the freelancer you select has agreed to all your terms and conditions and has successfully signed and sealed the agreement on board.
7. Give the necessary support while the project is ongoing.
Simply because the freelancer is a professional in the chosen field, and has signed the agreement to deliver the job as expected does not mean you should leave him to himself while the project is ongoing.
Checking up and keeping constant communication is very essential at this stage because it is going to give the freelancer the motivation that is needed for the job’s execution and completion.
Personally, I make the mistake of forgetting to deliver some projects in time because the client did not reach out to me again after paying for the job to be done.
And I realize that when am working for a client who is constantly keeping in touch, I will be able to deliver that projject even before I know it.
8. Maintain the relationship after the project’s completion.
Any freelancer who is able to deliver a project to your expectation is a great treasure, and knowing the need of such project may arise in the future you must maintain the relationship with him.
The best way to maintain that relationship is to connect him to other jobs from your close associates or acquaintances because if you are able to do this you will realize that he will even be giving you discounts when it comes to your own projects.
Conclusion.
Finding freelancers to work on your current projects will help you to have ease in finding freelancers to hire for future work.
In the end, this will help you to reduce the cost of hiring new freelancers because you will even be having discounts coming from the freelancers who have already worked for you before.
