Your Company’s 10-Step Checklist for Freelancer Onboarding

The ability to hire personnel who work and live anywhere is a huge benefit to your business. This will allow you to hire the best person for the job, regardless of their physical location.

Having a quick checklist to run through as you begin onboarding freelancers will help make sure you have all your bases covered, so your freelancer can get to work sooner.

Contact Details

Collect all necessary contact information from the freelancer upfront so there’s an open line of communication. This includes preferred work email, phone number, certifications, availability, and any additional information you may need before getting started.

Contract

Perhaps the most important, get a contract in place of the work you will expect the freelancer to perform. Make sure this clearly states the work to be done, timelines, proposed payment for the work and the length of contract.

Rates

Decide which type of payment (hourly, project-based or a fixed fee) is best for the specific project you’re hiring for. This may very from job to job or freelancer to freelancer.

How To Pay

This could be a bank transfer, PayPal, credit card, or any easy-to-use payment method that both you and the freelancer can later agree upon. The best part about using Freework [https://freework.com/]to manage your freelance workers is the invoice tool with built-in payment, making it easy to do everything in one place.

Availability

This goes for both you and the freelancer. Figure out how much time you’ll need the freelancer for and see if that works within their availability. Decide how long they’ll work for your company and how often. For example, you may agree that content writers need to provide one article per week to stay active on your freelancer list.

Request Portfolio/example work

After you have all the answers from your end with the contract, rates and payment method, reach out to the freelancer for samples of their work. Having a portfolio, or related, to look at will help give you a better idea of the work quality you can expect to receive, before agreeing to have them do the work.

Onsite vs remote

Will the job you’re hiring for benefit from having the freelancer in your office at any point? You’ll want to figure this out beforehand, as it could make a difference on who you hire based on their location.

Briefing

Set aside time to have a conversation on expectations. Laying out everything you need for the job and any special requirements now will save you a lot of time later if you have to further explain the details of what you were looking for. If the work to be done is clear, this means the freelancer can get you the finished product sooner.

Communication

How do you expect to communicate with the freelancer and how often? Do you prefer to have weekly check-ins over the phone? Would you prefer to have daily progress email updates? Would the freelancer joining one of your team’s Slack channels be helpful? Deciding upfront how you want the communication to flow will make it easier for both you and the freelancer to work together.

Tools to work together

Invite freelancers to join your preferred project management software(s) to provide an easy way to view the workflow. Within Freework [https://freework.com/], you can utilize the live reporting function which allows you both to view completed tasks, hours worked and money earned. This is a helpful tool to view how well utilized your freelance workers are within your business as you begin to hire more.