I personally use the platform to help me in my job, be that simple administrative tasks to things that are a little more complex. We work with something we call our preferred freelancer program where we vet Freelancers as well as a Client Success Team- which is a bit of a matchmaking service, and I use that team to help me find people to help me in my everyday tasks, and I would encourage others to do the same.
How recruiters can use freelancer.com
Looking back on my pure agency recruiting days, and indeed what I do at freelancer, a lot of it is very administrative, and a lot of that work can be completed on the site. Depending on your roles you’re recruiting for, you can also potentially find people on our site. If you’re a contract recruiter, a lot of that work can be done through the platform. I encourage people to give it a try and see what works.
For big corporate organisations, who have lots of levels bureaucracy and worry about IP and data there is still the potential to use the platform. There are organisations that don’t quite understand that a lot of these tasks can be crowdsourced like NASA is doing, or that they can find people on the platform, and it doesn’t have to be done by staff internally, nor someone in an office.
Using a freelancer type platform to resource projects
Obviously it all really depends on what kind of projects there are and what sorts of things you’re looking for.
We now have over 850 categorised job types on the site. Traditionally our site is anything that can be completed online, and people get very creative with what they do as well. If you have a task or project that needs to be completed by a contingent worker, you don’t have say “ok let me recruit someone, let me put job adverts out to find someone sit in our office and do this for us” you can do this all on our site.
Essentially if you can have something completed offsite and online you can work in various different ways within our marketplace. You can post a project, and people will bid for the job (most projects get their first bid in under 60 seconds). You then choose the right person who has the right background, the right skillset, who is committing themselves at the right price. You’re able to make a decision based on our rating system that works very effectively to see people who you’d have trust in completing this work, and read the reviews of people on the site. There’s also the added security of our milestone payments, where you only pay when a certain amount of work in a certain period of time has been completed.
The benefits of engaging contingent workers through a freelancer model
When you look at how contingent workers have traditionally worked in organisations, as far as coming in, filling timesheets, it is something that is very beneficial to leverage a platform of over 16 million. You’re able to look at people in various different situations all across the globe. There’s vast amount of choice, vast amounts of potential resources, you don’t potentially have the headcount limits or space issues that people might have in their offices as well. You’re able to reuse a lot of the contingent workers.
Communication
Communication with workers is so vital to success, so on the platform you’re able to communicate to them very effectively and clearly. We’ve recently launched a video chat feature as well as our standard chat software that are built in. Everything is tracked. Every single interaction you have with your contingent workers on our platform is tracked, so if there are any disputes that need resolutions it’s very easy for us to do that. Building trust in our users is a massive priority for us.
If you look at the way Uber works in comparison to traditional taxi drivers, I feel safer in an Uber because it’s tracked, my journey is tracked, every interaction with the driver is tracked, that provides me with the safety and security that my journey is go well.
This is a very similar thing to what we have, that we control this as much as possible and I think there’s far more control when you look at people’s work, with the tracking application and the milestone payments, than if you have a contingent worker who may be sitting in the office and it may be quite hard to see what they’re doing, and trusting that they’ll deliver an outcome – whether it be a piece of work, or a large scale IT project. These things are always incredibly hard to manage and I think that you can do it on a platform where you can see people’s reactions and reviews for that person’s work, you can contact the people who have said that, and the fact that you can have a milstone payment system is something that seems to us being dramatically improving the way that contingent workers are able to engage with organisations, and the trust these organisations can have with these workers as well
The skills that are in high demand on the platform
That’s an interesting question we release our fast 50, which are the top skills in the site. If you look at what’s happening in the world now and online my perspective it’s pretty easy to guess what is trending. Mobile is huge, a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs so app development is always very popular as is the standard build me a website. a lot of design work, that is really taking off.
There are millions and millions of interactions on the site daily so it’s interesting to see how these things are changing. We can know where the work is coming from and going to, and we can see it changing according to the economic situation of countries or events.
Future Workforce
On Kevin Wheeler 2020 prediction of a 50% contingent workforce
If you look at what’s happening in the world, it’s much more beneficial to have a strong contingent workforce. If you look at companies that might struggle with a lot of their costs, having a contingent workforce allows them flexibility and ability to get work done.
I feel that we are a product that is really around at the right time and place. We’re an affordable product to use in comparison to the other ways you can get work done.
There’s lots of discussion right now about how to manage Gen Y workers in the right way, and a lot of the average tenures for organisations are dramatically coming down now. People don’t necessarily want to stay in the one workplace, they want to learn from one place and then take that experience somewhere else. They’re starting to work in a more contingent way.
If organisations are able to structure themselves that allows for contingent work, they will reap the benefits.
Freelancing/Contingent working driving self learning
The freelancer way of working makes people learn more. When you’re constantly working on different things, you’re constantly surrounded by different people
Adding to life experience
An interesting fact of working life is if you’re a full time worker, you spend more time with the people you work with than anyone else in your life, and they’ll usually the one group of people you don’t choose to spend your time with. By working with different people all the time i think it can really add to people’s life experiences, and how they feel about what they do. It’s not for everyone, and it’s not for every company, but when it can work it can be brilliant.
Innovation
I love that some of the big corporates are now opening digital innovation labs or their own internal incubators to come up with ideas and promote changes internally in terms of how they could better succeed.
I think people and organisations are looking up and taking notice of change in the way that people work, and the contingent workforce is one of the biggest issues and aspects that will be tackled by organisations.
What the platform is doing to build the future workforce
We want Australia to be one of the most attractive places to work and live, so we put a lot of effort to make sure that our headquarters are here and will always be here. We do a lot with education, we sponsor Universities, our CEO is an acting adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney and we take as many interns as we can because we can see that future workforce and they are able and wanting to explore new ways of working. If you look at how business are established right now, whether they’re small or medium sized- they can bring people in, get work done, release them again and reuse them when needed. It can really help them out. A lot of projects undertaken by larger corporates are already benefiting from this now, but there are further opportunities for them in this space.
You can join Joe at this years #CWF15 in Sydney on 22-23 September. Joe will be delivering a keynote session on how online talent platforms can help you staff critical projects, assist in building your future workforce. To participate, register your ticket for the event here.
ATC Events & Media is the brainchild of co-founders Trevor Vas, Founder & Director of HCMS and Kevin Wheeler, Founder and Director of the Future of Talent Institute. We know what matters to the leaders in this industry and are dedicated to delivering a tangible return on your investment. Our strong industry connection means we have access to leaders who have a close ear to the ground on the major trends set to affect the future work both in Australasia and across the globe.