How to Manage Online Freelancers

Technology has no doubt revolutionized the way we do business. For one, it has given rise to a new class of workers — the online freelancer. As virtual workspaces continue to emerge, it’s no wonder that freelancers are becoming increasingly prevalent. The cost of hiring one is lower than building your workforce organically. This is just one crucial reason why startups are focusing more on hiring freelancers for their operations.

However, like any other crucial business decision, hiring freelancers has its own caveats. Aside from the fact that it’s difficult to vouch for a person’s skills, you also need to set up an efficient system for managing your virtual workforce.

Geographical factors aside, you can still push your business towards greater productivity by using tried and tested methods for managing your freelancers. Let’s get to the best ones.

Prepare your hiring criteria

If you’re planning a virtual startup and building an initial corps of freelancing professionals, it’s important that you have a good idea of the skills and expertise you need to get things started. It can be difficult since you don’t have an HR staff (which you also need to set up!) to put the right things in place.

On the other hand, it’s fairly easy to find somebody who can help push your business forward when you have a clear view of the goals you want to accomplish. Think about the product or service you’re selling. What should define it from the rest of the competition? One thing’s for sure, by focusing more on your offers, you can have a clearer idea of the skills and experience you need from your freelancers to realize your overall business goals.

Use the right platforms

Before, freelancers would offer their services up front. That being said, they had to spend time marketing themselves to potential clients. With the rise of platforms such as UpWork and Fiverr, freelancers are provided with effective means to seek out lucrative projects that are in line with their expertise.

For this very reason, you should be able to use these same platforms to look for the right talents. You only need to be specific with the description of the project as well as the hiring criteria. As a good rule of thumb, you may as well eschew academics and, instead, focus more on the experience an applicant has.

Set up the right communications and payments portals

Once you have on-boarded a freelancer to your business, it’s only a matter of building the needed communications platforms and systems. Startups typically use software such as Google Hangouts and Skype to talk directly to their freelance staff. Productivity apps such as MeisterTask and Trello are also used to keep track of the work progress. When it comes to accounting activities and handling international payments, platforms such as PayPal can help.

At any rate, you may eventually find it more preferable to develop your own productivity apps so that your freelancers can work in line with your startup’s standards. Sure enough, having your own platforms will prove to be cheaper and make your startup more efficient.