5 Reasons Your Startup Should Hire Freelancers
When it comes to setting up your business, despite what you may initially think, you can never be a jack of all trades. To ensure success in every aspect of your startup, you should delegate to specialists. But knowing exactly how to source the best talent when in the early stages of your business and working on a tight budget can be difficult.
Read on to find out why a freelancer may be the perfect fit for you.
Work with world-leading talent
MBO Partners has forecast that over half of the US’s workforce will choose to work for themselves by 2023. This means that if you’re not considering freelancers, your business is missing out on a huge pool of talent.
Moreover, the decision to hire freelancers widens your options, as you aren’t restricted by location. You no longer need to move to Silicon Valley for your startup to be the hub of tech experts.
Beyond expanding the talent pool, hiring freelancers is an excellent decision due to the excellent skillsets of freelancers themselves. Working for more than one client results in increased, multifaceted experience. Not only does someone coming from the outside offer a fresh outlook on your business work, but a freelancer has likely already overcome similar challenges with other clients.
There is a common myth that freelancers have less experience than full-time employees which arises due to their short projects with many companies. This couldn’t be less true. Among freelancers in Europe, over 50% have a Master’s degree and five or more years of professional experience. Accessing this level of talent in the early stages of your venture will be game-changing for your business’ success.
Prioritize your business’ growth
Hiring freelancers gives you the time and space to work on what is most important: growing your business. Small—but important—jobs, such as writing copy or digital ads, are time-consuming and require specific expertise, which may distract from the founder’s broader role. By delegating these tasks to freelancers, they will be done independently, efficiently, and without the need for your constant supervision.
Brainstorming. Image via Unsplash by Diggity Marketing
Scale more efficiently
When just starting out, the amount of work that needs doing is often irregular; some weeks are super busy and others a waiting game. Hiring full-time employees in this climate are unsustainable for you; regularly paying for someone who you under-utilize is a waste of your money and resources. You don’t want to hire a separate team to manage your employees’ accounts and taxes when the original employees aren’t always needed in the first place. This leads to a vicious, costly cycle that your startup really can’t afford.
Instead, hiring freelancers on a project-by-project basis ensures you are only paying for work when you need it, saving your funds for important periods of growth. This is especially crucial when bootstrapping or in the process of seeking funding.
Better value for money
In the early days of your startup, overhead costs for onboarding, equipment, and benefits, make a big difference to your budget. The Bureau of Labor Statistics have recently found that employee benefits, such as health insurance and sick pay, make up for over 30% of their salaries. With freelancers, these extra costs can be avoided: they already have the skills required for the job, as well as their own office space and laptops, and you only pay them for the work they do.
Tip. Image via Unsplash bySam Dan Truong
Receive work of a better standard, faster
As the success of freelancers is reliant on good feedback, they are incentivized to always produce excellent quality work while meeting deadlines and budgets. You can trust that you will always gain work of the best standard within quick timeframes. As freelancers define their own hours, they are often very flexible and may produce work out of normal working hours for full-time employees, especially when working across different time zones, resulting in faster turnaround.
Finding a freelancer for a specific job is also more efficient than going through the hiring and onboarding process for a full-time employee. Once you’ve received good work from a freelancer, you can establish a relationship with them and use them again in other projects, making the process even more efficient for the future.
Looking to grow your startup? Find out how Floww can help you scale here.
Header image via Pixels from Canva Studio.