Building a Team of Freelancers into Your Dream Workforce

It takes time to build a team.

It’s even more difficult when that team is assembled from a diverse group of workers in the gig economy. Can you ensure each member is looking out for the best of the group? Is it even possible to achieve teamwork among contract workers?

The answer is a resounding yes.

The right approach is no longer to assume the best talent wants to work 9-to-5 in the office anymore. The future of business is in telecommuting, contingent labor, and and in efficiently assembling online work forces. By one study estimate, freelancers made over $1 trillion dollars in business earnings in 2015.

That same work study calculated that by the year 2020, over 40% of the American workforce will be telecommuting, independent contractors, temporary workers or freelancers. That percentage assessment concerning future freelancers is forecasted to trend upwards for the foreseeable future.

If you need to assemble a quality and efficient freelance workforce, you need to know how to identify, assess, interview, and build your online team. You need to take a few specific steps to ensure your team is working at its best.

Assess Where You Need Help

Freelancing is big business. As stated in a freelance-related study, most businesses and companies currently use freelancers about 38% of the time.

In the year 2020, that percentage is estimated to rise up to 80%.

Narrow Down Expertise Requirements

Before you can build your dream workforce of online freelancers, you need to know in what areas you need help with in your business. Over 26% of freelancers work in development while over 15% work in design. Over 12% of freelancers are writers.

It helps to know this so that you know the size of the available pool of freelancers in your pertinent industry.

Millennials Are the Freelancers of The Future

Most of your freelance workforce may be of any age. However, chances are that some of your freelancers will be Millennials. They are the demographic of people aged approx 18 to 34 and they represent the growing demographic of freelancers.

According to a study concerning the ages of current independent workers, over a third of Millennials currently working already work as freelancers. As vouched by that same study, over 21% of Millennials who have graduated stated they already decided to work as freelancers.

Also, over 32% of Millennials have already chosen to follow work lives that allow them to work, “flexible hours” as freelancers. Be aware that your dream workforce will likely include fresh faced Millennials who think differently about work but have the skills you need to get the job done.

Assess Skills

When you are building a team of freelancers to act as a workforce to accomplish assignments for you, you need to know what you are getting. If you are reading resumes and C.V.s, make sure that you are looking for and assessing whether the potential freelancer has the skills that you require.

Identify what skills you need for your freelancer workforce. Then identify potential freelancers with those skills. Separate those potential freelancers from the rest. Don’t be afraid to ask them about their skills or if they possess certifications or training that would be useful for the job.

This is your workforce, so you must know what their responsibilities will be and what skills are necessary. If you don’t take the time to assess what skills you need in your workforce, then you run the serious risk of hiring the wrong freelancers.

Personality Test

You will no doubt be exchanging emails with your potential freelancer workforce applicants.  Although it is an overlooked trait, it is vitally important to consider the personality traits of a freelancer, especially since you are assembling your dream workforce.

When you work in an office setting, it is easy to determine rather quickly whether someone has the maturity or personality requirements to be responsible, finish work on time, be a team player, and to work to the best of their ability.

Potential personality problems can be hard to assess via online telecommuting relationships. Exchange some emails during the online interview process. Schedule a Skype interview. Talk about hypothetical work assignments and how they would handle them. People can’t hide their personalities for long.

You don’t have to be a trained psychologist. However, you can get a slight sense of your team’s work sensibility before they start work, and before they show their true ‘work’ personalities.

Work Samples

According to the specifics of the job and business goals of the your dream workforce, you should custom design payable work sample assignments for each potential freelancer. You will get a sense of the quality of their work by doing this.

Moreover, you will learn how they work, what online and computer systems they use to work and how quickly they work. Just make sure that any work samples you assign are pertinent to the job and give them sufficient time to finish any such assignment

This is a great way to find out what you are getting and if your freelancer applicants have the potential to be a part of your dream workforce.

Use the Right Platforms

You most probably assemble your dream workforce, hand out assignments and parcel out payments via interfacing through a virtual workplace platform. Such platforms are designed to act as digital workspaces.

Digital workspaces are an essential way to efficiently, productively, and in an accountable manner, get work done online. There are many free and affordable online workspace platforms. Since your dream workforce will not assemble in the real world, they will assemble here as if it was a real office space.

There are several online work platforms that you can use to assemble your dream workforce. Upwork is a popular site that was created by the merger of previous work platform sites Odesk and Elance. Fiverr is a work hiring platform site that starts all jobs at $5, hence the name.

There are many platforms that you can utilize. Check them all out and decide which one works for you. After all, whatever platform you choose will become the online meeting space for your dream workforce. How you manage your dream workforce will be up to you.

Conclusion

There are no doubts about it, in assembling your dream workforce, you will have some work to do. You will have to oversee, guide, and manage an online team to do the work that you need done. We live in an age where it is possible, but remember these guidelines to make your dream workforce productive and efficient.

Assess what areas you need help with. Narrow down and focus on the exact areas of expertise that you require in your freelancers. Remember that Millennials are a huge, growing demographic of future freelance workforces.

Make sure to assess exact skills and certifications that your freelancers may possess. Get a sense of personality as you interview. Hand out custom designed and payable work samples to get an idea of who you may be hiring.

Finally, find the right online work platform that works for you as you assemble your dream workforce.