Numerous companies worldwide are seeking the best working force that can transform their businesses in countless amazing ways. The fact is that freelancing has been on the rise, more than ever. Younger generations, or better said working people, don’t want to attend their regular 9 to 5 jobs anymore and are switching to freelancing, with the purpose to make a career from their hobbies and talents.
Yet, this is not only beneficial for freelance individuals, but also for businesses all around the globe, especially online ones. Hiring a freelancer that can live anywhere on this planet opens a completely new opportunity to get work done by various professionals you wouldn’t be able to find in your local city or even country.
We have made a list that will clearly tell you all the pros and cons of hiring a freelancer. Be sure that you consider this before starting a hiring process:
Pros of hiring a freelancer
- Freelancers usually cost less than hiring a regular full-time worker for a certain position or a project. There’s no doubt that freelancers are most of the time much cheaper than regular workers you would hire for your company or business. And no, we are not talking about salaries only, but also about the fact that the freelancer takes care of everything else on their own. There’s no need to spend extra money on health insurance, for example, as well as on desk space and other company perks.
- Besides the lower price, there are also fewer financial risks. The point is that you hire and pay a freelance worker once you have tasks for them. Therefore, they won’t be your regular costs every month. Once you have a certain project to be completed, you find a freelancer or contact the one you have hired before. There’s no need to pay an entire salary on a monthly basis because almost all freelancing contracts are either hourly or project-to-project based. Freelancers can work from home, they have their own gear which you shouldn’t worry about, and companies don’t need to pay them for traveling to work, and food. Literally, you just pay for what is done – a project or a task and that’s it.
- Hiring freelancers is really easier than ever. We can thank that to different freelancing platforms that will make the entire hiring process much shorter and easier. Just imagine how much time would you spend trying to find suitable professionals for your business in real time. Let’s say that you are searching for an expert developer. What do you do? You create a job offer and post it to different freelancing platforms, like UpWork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com, for example. Once you’ve done that the freelancers will apply for that job position by themselves. You’ll be able to quickly see their entire portfolio and choose a suitable candidate for an open job position. Besides that, you can also invite freelancers to apply for your open job position, which definitely higher the chances that you’ll find a very professional remote worker you like. You can also choose freelancers according to their experience, usually starting from beginner, going through intermediate levels, and finally expert experience and knowledge.
- Flexibility to upsize or downsize the team at any needed moment. We have already explained above that you don’t need to hire a freelancer for a full-time position. You can actually have many freelancers in your team, which will work when needed. This means that you can, from now on, upsize or downsize the team at any needed moment. This is especially important when your workflow changes.
- Quality of workers, especially developers. It’s good to know that freelancers, especially freelance developers, are considered to be experts in their fields. Just imagine how huge their competition is – the entire world is a competitor, isn’t it? Purpose to succeed in that crowded freelancing market, freelancers and remote workers need to learn something new all the time. We have already explained the importance of constant learning for freelancers.
Okay, now that we have named the top 5 reasons why you should think about hiring a freelancer for your company or a business, let’s take a look at the main cons of this idea:
Cons of hiring a freelancer
- Problem with supervision. Once you create a contract and the job is done, you’ll have to pay for the needed service. Yet, how can you know if the freelancer has truly spent those 15 billed hours working hard, or if they have completed your assignment in an hour, and then spent the rest of the working time doing something else? Maybe this is not a con of hiring a freelancer – you should actually think this way. If you are successful with the job done, why worry about how much time the freelancer has actually spent on some project? Okay, you may say that it is not fine to bill 15 hours if someone has worked a few hours on that task. If this bothers you, maybe it’s best to set a fixed-price project and not worry about how much time the freelancer has spent on it.
- Unpredictable quality of work. We have already said that freelancers have too many competitors, which means that they truly need to work hard to stand out from the crowd. Yes, that makes an expert in many online fields, but what happens when you hire a freelancer and don’t get the quality of work you expected? This usually happens with freelancers who have just started working on freelancing platforms and who maybe don’t have a portfolio to show, or cannot prove their skills and knowledge. The best advice would be to create a test project before hiring a freelancer, but keep in mind that the test task should also be a paid one. It doesn’t have to be anything long, yet freelancing platforms don’t allow working for free.
- Training a freelancer may be challenging. It’s true that training a freelancer can be challenging. It’s not the same as with a full-time employee. They aren’t around all the time and it happens that a remote worker can miss some important details for your business.
- Lower investment. Let’s say that the freelancer will probably have lower investments in your company. Why? Because they probably know that they have met you now, and are working with you on certain projects, but don’t have proof that they will work for your company for a long period of time. This means that you can expect lower investments in the company as well. Yet, this doesn’t need to be the rule. Every freelancer, and also every company and business, is different. It’s up to you to find a proper candidate and to set your own rules and expectations together.
Conclusion
Overall, we believe that hiring a freelancer for your company truly has more pros than cons. Of course, that depends on the freelancer you hire, but when you take a look at our list, it’s easy to realize that freelancers cost you less, don’t bring new financial risks to the company, can bring you the talent you would dream about before, and make your team’s size flexible whenever needed.
