Freelance search: How to properly define your needs?

Before using freelancers, it is necessary to define your needs by determining, for example, the objectives, expectations and expected results. This will allow you to guide the future freelancer who will join your team and possibly guide the recruiters assigned to find the right profile. But it often happens that a need is not sufficiently defined for various reasons: lack of time, perspective or knowledge about the expected elements. What are the criteria to be taken into account and detailed? How to make your needs as realistic as possible to make sure you find the profile you are looking for? Based on our support to numerous companies, we have identified a 5-step method to define their needs.

Summary

1. Specify your problem

2. Framing the scope of the mission

3. Anticipate logistics

4. Identifying the ideal profile

5. Define your expectations for future collaboration

1. Specify your problem

To begin your reflection, you will need to define all the challenges of your business. What is your main problem? Certainly, you lack expertise in your team. But still?

Here are a few questions to go even further:

• What is the origin of this need? What are your role and limits in responding to them?
• Do you need reinforcement within your team or specialized expertise that is not available internally?
• What are the expected results following the intervention of external talent?
• In what aspect will this external resource be able to support you: financial, logistical, human, international, etc.?

Once you have defined all the ins and outs of your problem, your need will become clearer. This overview can already allow you to start a brief, a kind of compass designed to guide the search for profiles. This document can also provide insight for those who will be directly responsible for carrying out the search, namely internal HR departments and sometimes even recruitment experts that you could contact.

2. Framing the scope of the mission

This step is essential to define your needs since it allows you to list all the criteria for the success of this future mission. In other words, you have reached the stage that allows you to move from a problematized need to a concrete mission. So focus on defining its terms to delineate their perimeter.

You will need to set the following parameters:

• the objectives and challenges of the mission, which will frame the scope of action of the freelancer and allow him to have an overview, both on your problem and on the context of your company
• the nature of the expertise expected, that is to say if your need requires rather operational or strategic skills (is it an operational or a consultant that you need?)
• the directory of technical skills, otherwise called hard skills (e.g. software implementation, data analysis, team management...) and sometimes some soft skills, useful when it comes to a mission involving, for example, organizational or relational aspects
• success markers and expected results, who will concretize the answer to your problem
• the deliverables, that materialize the results of the intervention
• The deadlines, which frame the implementation of the mission and indicate the progress of the mission

With all of these elements, you will provide concrete elements that are clear enough to organize your action plan.

3. Anticipate logistics

Now that you have defined the scope of action, how are you going to implement the intervention of this external talent? You will necessarily need to deal with all logistical issues. First of all, from a realistic point of view, are you currently in a position to act as a referent and facilitate the integration of this external profile into your team?

In general, it will be necessary to put in place a set of internal resources to promote the success of the mission. For example:

• What do you plan to integrate a freelancer into your teams? Is there a specifically dedicated onboarding program? If not, what practices do you plan to put in place to ensure the proper integration of talent?
• What equipment is required to carry out the mission? Do you need to invest or self-employed talent should already have their own tools (e.g. workspace, drive, software...)?
• Where is the mission carried out? Is it necessary to stay on site or is remote working possible?
• Have you already signed contracts with external service providers or other freelancers before? Are you able to understand the particularities of legal statuses?
  

4. Identifying the ideal profile

A freelancer does not have the same expectations and approaches as an employee. So let's recall the basics of looking for a freelance profile: skills (technical, transversal, sectoral, linguistic and human know-how), expected techniques, mastery of the required software, working methods (agile, scrum etc.).

Let's take an example: a company faces a particularly unstable environment following a merger. You are looking for a consultant who will work on this project, for example, this person should have good stress management skills. While it is not necessary to indicate this climate of tension in the offer, this information will direct searches to profiles comfortable with this type of environment and recruiters will be able to rely on the brief to refine their selection.

If you have difficulty specifying your needs, you can definitely use companies that are used to this type of connection. They will have ideas to guide you, based on market practices and the customers they have supported on similar issues.

5. Define your expectations for future collaboration

This last step is perhaps one of the most important but, nevertheless, one of the most often overlooked. What do you expect from your future collaboration?

For your collaboration with a freelancer to work, you need to define what you expect from the freelancer. When professional collaboration does not work, it may precisely be due to a lack of precision as to the initial expectations of the profile. What do we mean by that? It's pretty simple: if you had to imagine a typical day with this person, what would it be like? Do you expect this person to be completely autonomous in their field of expertise? Do you expect this person to be particularly proactive, even if it means questioning some of the methods put in place? Should she share the values of performance and excellence, otherwise it will be difficult for her to integrate into your team?

These are only examples, but asking these questions makes it possible to identify all the points that will guarantee the success of this future collaboration. It will then be easier for you to estimate which of the candidates in front of you could really meet your expectations.

Of course, defining your needs could take you more time to think than expected. But if you devote the necessary time to it, you will also gain valuable time in your research. By excluding candidates who do not correspond to the various criteria mentioned above, you will more easily recognize the rare pearl. But if you prefer to delegate this task to experts or to receive support in order to deepen your needs, refer to networking companies such as Beager for example.