What to Look for When Hiring a Freelance Recruiter for Your Company

Today, freelancing and remote work are gaining popularity across all industries, both for organizations searching for specific talent and for professionals wanting to work with greater flexibility and looking for a broader range of potential clients.

“Businesses really find a lot of value in flexible talent in a variety of situations,” said Upwork’s Chief Economist Adam Ozimek in one of his recent interviews with Forbes.

“This pandemic is one of those situations. Companies are having to pivot very quickly and to quickly adapt to remote work and having to change their businesses in a variety of ways. Some of them are trying more flexible talent and finding it works, especially in circumstances where you need to move quickly and grow and scale dynamically,” Ozimek continues.

However, each remote worker does things differently, so how do you know you’re hiring the right freelance recruiters for your business? To help you identify what exactly to look for when hiring a freelance recruiter, we’ve compiled a list of crucial considerations in this piece, so make sure you keep reading.

1. Core Competencies and Skills

The first attribute you want to consider in a potential candidate when hiring them as a freelance recruiter for your company is their core skills and competencies.

One recent research study by SEEK revealed that, on average, transferable skills should have an importance rate weighing 63% and formal qualifications, 37%. Of those involved in the hiring process, two in five (41%) have hired someone because they demonstrated more passion for the role than actual skills.

That same article highlights the core skills employers should be looking for in a potential candidate. These include:

• Organizational skills such as time management or research skills
• Communication skills such as listening and writing
• Interpersonal skills such as empathy and flexibility
• Analytical skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving

“The best measure of success is to look for demonstrated skills working in diverse cultures, someone’s ability to work autonomously and as a team member, individuals who can demonstrate problem-solving and difficult conversations, as well as being a good listener,” says Jeromine Alpe, Founder, HR Director, and CEO of Bureau Consulting Group.

Alpe further explains how there are subtle clues to judge whether the freelance candidate you’re eyeing possesses these attributes.

“Someone who arrives on time and is well prepared for the interview demonstrates attention to detail and a genuine interest in the role,” she says. “Someone who is inquisitive will listen and ask relevant questions.”

Due to all these reasons, you must pay close attention to the core competencies and skills of the candidate you want to hire as a freelance recruiter for your company.

2. Work Schedule

The next vital attribute to look for in a potential freelance recruiter is if they can work to a schedule that fits the specific requirements (and deadlines) of your business. If your potential candidate isn’t meeting this requirement, no matter how impressive their existing knowledge or skills are, it won’t make any sense.

However, this doesn’t mean that you should try to confine your freelancer to fixed hours. If that is the case, you’d be better off with a full-time recruiter.

The only thing that matters is that you are confident about what you can expect from your freelance recruiter in terms of variables. This is an essential prerequisite since recruitment is an ongoing process, not a one-time task.

Some crucial questions the answers to which you should know beforehand to be able to discern if a particular candidate will make for a good freelance employee or not include:

• Does your freelance recruiter have other commitments, whether personal or work?
• How much time do you require of them, and how much time are they willing to set aside for you on a daily or weekly basis?
• How flexible are they, or what level of flexibility can the job tolerate?

While most recruiters prefer to work at their own pace, looking for this particular attribute will help them give you set hours if you need them to work alongside you or another member of your team.

3. Communication Style

As a forward-thinking business owner, you need to realize that the recruiter you hire will be your future team’s first touchpoint for your company.

Your recruiter will be the first opportunity for you to make a good impression before clients, theirs will be the first hand that a potential employee shakes, and they’ll be the first ambassador of your employer brand in the job market.

Because of all this, your freelance recruiter’s ability to communicate well can be the difference between establishing a new relationship or losing sought-after talent in your industry.

With that in mind, here are a few tips based on our recent research into how the best recruiters communicate:

• Personalized text messaging is increasingly becoming a popular mode of communication that the most successful HR leaders leverage.
• Social media is another key differentiating factor that separates fast-growth and slow-growth recruiters. Try to figure out if your potential recruiter is well-versed with using social recruiting channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Apart from the communication channels mentioned above, the speed at which a recruiter follows up with potential candidates also plays a crucial role in determining how quickly they can fill open positions at your company, that too with high potential or impact hires.

In essence, every freelancer is different, and so are the things they bring to the table.

Try to be patient with your search and decide which individual qualities are precisely going to work best for your business model.

When you conduct interviews with that sort of clarity in mind, you’ll find the right freelance recruiter within no time.

To know more about what you can do to augment your hiring workflows, contact us at Recruiter.com.

We’ve got an extensive network of freelance and full-time recruiters spread across the US who will be happy to help you with the smallest queries and guide you step-by-step to build a result-oriented and employee-centric workplace in the long run.

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