How Your Small Business Can Hire Top-Tier Freelance Talent

If you’re not already hiring freelance and contingent talent, you probably will be soon.

The use of contract, freelance, and otherwise flexible labor — as opposed to full-time employees — has been on the rise for years. Partly, it’s a matter of agility: Business moves fast these days, and working with contingent talent allows an employer to scale up or down as needed at a moment’s notice. Cost savings are another key factor: Contingent workers don’t command salaries and benefits.

The pandemic has further accelerated the trend toward more and more contingent labor in the workforce, with organizations across industries and of all sizes planning to hire more contractors and freelancers in the coming months. It’s a smart response to the current economic climate: Employers need to start ramping their workforces back up, but the scars of forced shutdowns linger. The company coffers aren’t as fat as they used to be, and — as we’ve all learned — you never know when another COVID surge might be lurking around the corner. Utilizing freelancers can help a company get back up to speed without the risk — or the intensive effort — of hiring new full-time employees.

Thanks to the low risk and low cost, freelance talent is especially attractive to small businesses, which can often struggle to afford top-tier talent under the best of circumstances, much less in the wake of a devastating year like 2020. But with organizations of all sizes battling for contingent talent in the post-COVID era, how can small businesses compete?

A new infographic from small business lenders Headway Capital takes up that exact question. Check it out below: