No one can do everything by themselves. And just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean that you should, or that you’re the best candidate for the job.
In order to scale up and grow your business, it’s important to know how to best utilize the strengths of others.
By hiring freelance consultants, you can take advantage of a rich array of affordable resources that will position you to let your business flourish.
More people than ever are turning to work as a freelancer, which means that more talent than ever before is available for hire as consultants. And they are available to help with a wide range of services.
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular consultants for businesses to hire!
Ways Consultants Can Help Your Business Grow
- Design
- Writing
- Video
- Content Strategy
- Marketing Consultant
- Social Media Management
- SEO
- Websites
- App development
This list is endless. If there is something that your business needs done, then chances are there’s a way for you to outsource it.
Of course, it is a calculation for you to decide what is best accomplished in-house and what you’d rather hire a consultant for. But once you’ve decided that resources are better spent hiring the consultant, here’s the best way to go about it.
How to Hire a Consultant for Your Business
Check out the best tips on how to hire someone and outsource the work!
Where to Look
Look to Who You Know
It’s likely you’ll already know someone who can handle the job, and if they’re unable to take on the project, perhaps they know someone else who can.
LinkedIn is an ideal forum to have these discussions.
Make Use of Remote Work Websites
Sites such as Upwork, Visually, Fiverr, and Guru.com allow you to find exceptional talent from all over the world.
And while you will not be able to work with them on-site or in person, you can develop personal relationships with them over time.
Use an Agency
It may make the most sense for more expensive and specialized consultants to invest in using an agency to find the right fit.
Define the Job
An important step in finding the right person is defining the job. When you hire a consultant, while you are hiring someone to complete work for you, they also will be taking ownership of the project.
It is important to be able to clearly communicate what you need and expect from the project.
This means framing all the project’s boundaries, from the expected timeline to the quantity of expected work.
If you’re having a writer create blog posts for you, how many do you expect, of what length, and on what schedule? Do you expect the blogger to create social media posts or source images? Will post topics be assigned, or is generating ideas the writer’s job?
All of the expectations must be clearly laid out.
For certain kinds of consulting work, such as social media or a website, it’s important to define how much follow-up work you expect.
Is the social media person just responsible for posts, or also for fielding questions and concerns that come in through social media? In that instance, if it becomes a day-to-day project, then you have to determine whether it is a job for an employee or a consultant.
Define the Relationship
It’s important to choose the right person for the job, and that means choosing someone you can work well with and who will understand and respect the expectations you have.
Having an interview with a prospective consultant is a good way to help find the right person. But once you have found that person, an important step is creating a contract.
This is the place to finalize all of the details and expectations of the job, payment, as well as the rights of both parties.
If you have found your contractor through a site, there may be an automatic contract used that is part of the terms of use.
Manage the Project
Unfortunately, outsourcing to a consultant doesn’t entirely free you from the project.
It’s important to take the time to manage it and make sure it is going according to what you expect.
When dealing with those working remotely, it’s not always as easy to manage a project as on-site. This is why communication is key.
A good freelancer may not turn in perfect work the first time, but they will respond to your criticism and work to meet your standards.
Make Sure You Are Achieving Results
In hiring a consultant, you are aiming to help your business grow. With that in mind, set specific goals for what you want to accomplish in hiring a freelancer.
What areas of growth do you expect to see?
At least once a year, revisit the work that your freelancer has done and evaluate what areas of growth you have seen.
Hiring a consultant is a powerful way to help you grow your business in the coming year. By following these steps to carefully hire someone, define the project, manage the work and evaluate the results, you’ll be taking the right steps to flourish while meeting whatever challenges 2022 holds.
If you want to outsource your content production, Rock Content can help you! Schedule a talk to one of our experts, and see how our solutions will leverage your Content Marketing strategy!
