7 Tips For Onboarding Freelancers: A Guide For Agencies And Marketing Teams

Hiring freelancers is a great way to flexibly staff projects up and down depending on client needs and expertise requirements. Unlike with full-time roles, which might have salary or location constraints, you can hire the best freelancers from anywhere in the world to work on a project – meaning you get the best talent without all the admin hurdles.

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Working with freelancers sounds like smooth sailing, and it can be. But before kicking off a project, it’s important to acquaint your freelancers with your company, the team and the deliverables needed. We’ve seen it a million times: The ultimate success of most projects hinges on great onboarding. That means that, even before project kickoff, freelancers on your team should be clear on expectations, their roles and any creative workflow processes. After all, freelancers are only as good as the information they receive, and their success is key to the overall success of the project.

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With all that in mind, we’ve put together seven tips that you can use to get your freelance projects off on the right foot.

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1. Make sure it’s a match before making a hire.

• No one likes having to do extra work, but a short test helps you understand a freelancer’s skill set and helps him or her understand the types of projects and outputs your team expects. From a quick multiple-choice quiz to a review of previous portfolio work, the information you ask for doesn’t have to take hours; it just needs to demonstrate the freelancer’s core competencies and provide insight into the types of work your team is looking for.

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2. Establish hiring protocols before you start the conversation.

• First impressions matter a lot, and so does the follow-up. If you’re scrambling to keep track of who you’ve spoken with, what questions you’ve asked, and whether you’ve sent a follow-up email or set up a second interview, chances are the freelancers you’re talking to can feel the turbulence behind the scenes, too. Create a hiring matrix to clarify what skills and background you are looking for. As you chat with candidates, you can easily fill out the matrix and even keep track of questions you’ve asked so you can keep things consistent among different candidates. Write initial call, follow-up call, and rejection templates so you can copy and paste them to all candidates you speak with, too.  It will save you time and streamline outreach and appointment management!

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3. Get all the paperwork in order.

• Before and during the hiring process, there are NDAs, MSAs, contracts, scopes of work, and other legal documents that need filling out and signing. Create a list of all the documents you need to send, and note when you’ll have to send them. For example, you may want to send an NDA prior to a second or third interview, when you’re likely to have to discuss the project in a bit more detail. Having a list makes it a breeze to send the documents as you progress through the hiring process – and you can use a tool like DocuSign or PandaDoc to digitally sign legally binding contracts. Easy peasy!

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4. Set the stage on administrative details.

• Everyone likes to know when they’ll get paid. But it’s equally important to provide other details, such as time-tracking expectations, communication guidelines (Are you a Slack company? Email? Good ol’ fashioned calls?), management/reporting line and team introductions. The admin side probably isn’t as onerous as it would be for a full-time hire, but preparing a few documents that explain how and when a freelancer gets paid, how they communicate with the team and who to go to for questions helps everyone sing from the same hymn sheet.
  5. Get clear on ownership and deliverables.

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5. Get clear on ownership and deliverables.

• Just like any other team member, to be set up for success, a freelancer needs to understand what it is they are doing and have all the right resources at hand to do it with. Will the freelancer have to run meetings with the client? Create a deck? Provide feedback to team members? Create designs? Once you’ve clarified expectations, scope and who owns what, hand over useful background details such as brand guidelines, style guides, previous work and templates so that you have consistency of work product, as well as clarity of responsibility

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6. Stay on the same page with creative workflow management.

• Keeping up to date on progress and deadlines is incredibly important for team collaboration, regardless of whether there are freelancers on board or not. But when someone is a freelancer, and therefore not always 100% familiar with the way you work, it’s even more important that there’s clarity on where to go to report progress, review work, and provide and receive creative feedback. Creative collaboration platforms like Streamwork allow you to build clear workflows and give secure levels of access based on roles. Talk about perfect for freelancer collaboration!

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7. Ready to offboard? Final impressions matter!

• Closing out a project well isn’t just something you have to do with clients. Making sure that your freelancer gets paid, gets feedback and is left with a good impression of your company can make or break your ability to get good talent through the door again. The freelancing world can be pretty small, so it’s best to keep great talent raving about their experiences with your company so they’ll be on board for next time and even refer you to other great freelancers they know. Make sure to give your freelancer a testimonial on LinkedIn or elsewhere;  your insights really do help them get more clients and grow their own business.

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Good luck with your next freelance find! With the above tips, we know you’ll start on the right foot and likely have a great relationship with your freelance talent, thanks to a well-structured client onboarding process.