Approximately 81 percent of the 30 million small business owners in the United States are solopreneurs with zero paid employees. At the same time, small businesses say finding qualified workers is the number one business challenge.
The solution for those wanting to expand operations in 2020, however, is the ability to tap into the country’s 57 million freelancers. Understanding how to build a talent strategy that leverages freelance resources is crucial to scalability.
The key, says Founder and CEO of the talent curation platform ResultsResourcing Elizabeth Eiss, lies in building a talent strategy that includes a focused talent curation process.
Curate Purposely
A focused talent curation process begins with building job descriptions that explicitly state the results the business owner needs and the specific skills required. This ensures the best match between the freelancer’s expertise and the business owner’s expectations.
Once a clear job description exists, applicants can be considered based on their abilities to complete the tasks and execute necessary job functions.
Unfortunately, most business owners don’t have the time (and in some cases the expertise) to provide a thorough level of examination of each candidate, which is why most freelance job platforms are overwhelming to small business CEO’s trying to find talent.
“Most entrepreneurs don’t have corporate backgrounds in HR, hiring, or recruiting,” said Eiss. “So most small business owners really don’t understand how to define the skills they need to produce the results they want. Or, what it takes to source or price quality freelance candidates. For instance, we at ResultsResourcing know there are 15 questions that business owners should answer to hire the right freelancer to help them. Questions like: ‘If you had to name the job, what would you call it?’, ‘Are you a Mac user or a PC user?’, and ‘Do you prefer a self-starter or more of an order taker?’”
“It might sound basic and obvious, but those things are really important to finding the right talent,” Eiss explained. “That’s why our simple, 10-minute client survey is intended to answer those small but crucial questions that the majority of small business owners don’t know to ask. Our system uses those answers to create an instant online job description that our human recruiters review to make sure nothing was missed.”
“Peter Drucker once said: ‘Do what you do best and outsource the rest.’ At ResultsResourcing, we strongly believe that. So we take care of the talent curation process – which is what we do best – and we let our clients focus on whatever it is that they do best.”
Get Results
“In any industry, adding freelance talent brings skill, experience, insight, and new perspectives that can help a small business maximize talent and deliver better results,” said Eiss. “At ResultsResourcing, we help match quality freelancers to our clients in a way that lets them add that value immediately and cost-effectively. And we guarantee those results.”
Why the guarantee?
“As a business owner myself, I’m all about results, and I believe our clients want that, too. When our clients follow our talent curation process, we guarantee we’ll match them with freelance talent who’ll help them achieve the results they need,” explained Eiss. “The right talent is essential to our clients’ purpose and growth – and that’s what we deliver.”
“At ResultsResourcing, our purpose is to empower purpose. That’s our mission: to empower the 30 million small businesses in the U.S. to be bigger and bolder. Unlike other platforms that are project-based, we seek a long-term relationship with our small and mid-size business owners. We want to help our clients succeed by leveraging freelance talent effectively, because at the end of the day our purpose – like any other well-matched contractor – is really to do just that.”
