In yesterday’s Advisor, we took a look at some of the benefits to hiring independent contractors—as well as some of the potential pitfalls. If you’re sold on hiring independent contractors, read on for some tips on how to recruit them.
How to Recruit Independent Contractors
There are several ways an organization can go about finding independent contractors. Here are some examples:
- Utilize an agency that specializes in placing temporary, independent workers. In this scenario, the individual is often an employee of the temp agency, and that agency bears the associated costs and only charges you a set fee. The advantage to this method is that the agency does the work of vetting the individual and determining his or her skill set. The disadvantage is that there is typically an agency fee (on top of the contractor’s wage) that must be paid.
- Utilize online job boards that specialize in bringing employers and independent contractors together. On some of these job boards, the employer places a post describing their business needs, and then multiple independent contractors place bids (along with descriptions of how they would perform the job and evidence of their qualifications). This allows you to personally select the contractor from the bids/proposals received and to vet their qualifications.
- Utilize your existing professional network to find contractors. This might mean asking others in your network who they’ve used in the past. Or it might mean using your social media network to source someone. It could also mean asking your team of managers and even employees for recommendations on someone to hire—they may very well already have someone in mind who is available for contract work.
- Post your job directly. This method can be a little less straightforward than it sounds, but only because you probably won’t be using the same job boards you would for hiring a regular employee. Contractors realize that most jobs on the regular job boards are not what they’re looking for—thus, you may not have many takers when posting there. Instead, focus on posting in places that cater to all types of jobseekers, such as university career centers or more generic online classified sites.
- Notwithstanding the last point, you could opt to post on traditional job boards as well. While many independent contractors avoid traditional job boards simply because they have to wade through a lot of work they’re not interested in, that doesn’t mean that this method is completely off limits. Just be honest about the offerings up front, and you may find that some traditional jobseekers are willing to take the plunge and become an independent contractor. Or you may find one of the contractors who also scours traditional job listings.
Bear in mind that the method you choose for finding the temporary worker will impact your legal rights and responsibilities. For example, temp workers from an agency may have some legal protections that completely independent contractors do not have. Be sure to do research to determine which method makes the most sense for your organization.