Most organizations have strategies and systems in place to support traditional talent sourcing, finding, vetting and onboarding new employees. However, when thinking about freelance talent sourcing, there are more considerations in place.
If you’re looking for a complete solution for freelance talent, consider a Freelancer Management Solution like Fiverr Enterprise, which handles everything from sourcing and onboarding to management and payments.
If you want to learn more about talent sourcing, you’re in the right place!
This is part of a series of articles about Staff Augmentation.
What Is Talent Sourcing for Freelance Talent
Talent sourcing involves actively looking for potential freelancers who may be a good fit for your company culture and context. Your business may not even have a specific need in place when they begin the sourcing process. Instead, by building a talent pool of available and suitable freelance talent, they can shorten the time to hire when work is needed.
Talent Sourcing vs. Recruitment
Recruitment happens slightly further in the process, after talent sourcing is complete. With a ready pool of talent, recruitment processes involve the more practical stages of interviewing, vetting and onboarding freelancers for a specific role. While sourcing creates a talent pipeline, recruiters put this talent in place – matching available supply with demand.
A strong freelance management solution will take both of these tasks off your hands, finding the right skilled freelancers, vetting them thoroughly, and getting them compliantly onboarded to work with your organization.
The Talent Sourcing Process
Every business will have its own talent sourcing process, but these five stages are pretty common:
- Plan: What freelancers, and how many, will you need, from video editors and writers, to developers, designers, or technical experts?
- Source: How will you find freelancers? Examples include through freelance marketplaces, word of mouth, or social media networks.
- Assess: At this stage, you’ll think about whether freelancers are a good fit in skills and culture, as well as if they can compliantly work for your business.
- Hire: You’ve found the right freelancers! This is where recruitment elements begin, getting all the documentation you need and contracts signed.
- Onboarding: Freelancers may need systems access, as well as integration into existing teams, projects, or payroll processes.
Strategies and Best Practices for Sourcing Talent
There are a number of best practices that can help when you’re building a freelancer talent sourcing strategy. The first tip we can give you is to make sure you define clear job requirements. Posting a job listing for a web designer is too vague. Think about your industry and your brand, and narrow it down by looking for a Healthcare web designer with a background in writing for industries with tight regulation.
Don’t stick to one sourcing channel, utilize multiple different networks, whether it’s freelance marketplaces, professional networks, social media, or word of mouth.
We always recommend you personalize outreach, and speak with freelancers individually before you add them to your go-to list of talent. Jumping on a Zoom call, or sending a personalized message can go a long way in nurturing these relationships and making sure you’re a good fit.
Nurturing a talent pool means bringing together disparate sources of information, whether that’s leads from within a Freelancer Management Solution, or ex-employees, freelancers you’ve worked with in the past, or someone from a professional network. It can make a lot of sense to implement a strong employee referral program, where employees can be rewarded for suggesting freelancers that they already know and have worked with, and who are likely to be a good cultural fit.
Don’t forget to check in on the freelancers in your talent pool over time, and make sure their situation hasn’t changed. In some cases you’ll find they may have taken an in-house job elsewhere, or they’ve broadened their skill set and you can add other expertise to their listing.
Data is always your friend! Make sure you have a way to track talent and analyze metrics for sourcing such as how much you’re spending on sourcing talent, and the return on that investment.
Leveraging Technology like Fiverr Enterprise for Talent Sourcing
Technology can be a great help here. Fiverr Enterprise is a SaaS solution that gives you full visibility and control over your entire freelance workforce by allowing you to source, hire, onboard, manage and pay, all while ensuring compliance, so your teams can work faster and maximize business growth.
At Fiverr Enterprise, we take the stress of sourcing and hiring freelancers off your plate by searching multiple networks and marketplaces and providing you with pre-vetted, business-ready freelancers that suit your exact needs. All you need to do is create your job listing, and in just 48 hours, you’ll have 2-6 viable candidates that you can take to the next stage, or add to your talent pool.
If you need to move faster, you can access a pre-selected list of talents from various, high-demand industries and fields – instantly available for your specific business needs.
Fiverr Enterprise also includes an in-built private talent pool, so that you can see your entire freelance workforce in one, customized place, giving teams the autonomy to hire, collaborate and deliver, faster. At any point, you can add your own freelancers, or hire new ones through the sourcing service.
Looking for something specific? Filter your talent pool by skills, language, location, colleague reviews and rates, and save precious time by rehiring freelancers your business has already worked with and who are already fully compliant.
Want to see how it works for yourself? Schedule 30-minutes with one of our workforce experts, and we’ll walk you through how the sourcing service and talent pool works, as part of our robust Freelancer Management Solution.
Related content: Read our guide to outsourcing employees
Related content: Read our guide to in house vs outsourcing