Freelance Hiring: Pros of Partnering With a Recruitment Agency

Pros of Partnering With Recruiting Firm to Hire Freelancers

• Cost-effective and saves you time
• Less hiring risk due to pre-vetted talent
• They will help you craft a job description
• They will do all the heavy lifting when it comes to sourcing and screening

Considerations For Freelance Hiring

• Start putting a value on your time. And a very high value at that. Once you start applying this logic, it really will tell you a different story of how your time is spent. Consider your priorities and think hard about what your time and money are worth.
• Sourcing and screening candidates is so time-consuming and at the end of the day, unless you’re an HR person, recruiting and staffing is not your core business. It’s a perfect thing to outsource to a business partner that you trust, will understand your business, and really have your back. You’ll receive that extra level of service that wouldn’t otherwise exist when hiring a freelancer.
• It’s a trajectory. Learning how to trust and manage an outsourced relationship starts with tactics and gradually moving up the scale to more strategic work. Get a feel for what skill sets could be valuable through freelance work and start doing some searches. Be as concise as possible and see how other people position themselves for work. 
• It all boils down to the vetting process when determining whether or not to invest in freelance work. Sometimes a freelancer just isn’t the right choice. Depending on the scope of capabilities you are looking for, a small agency may be the better option. 

Additional resources

• ResultsResourcing
• Best Freelance Websites to Find Top Talent
• How to Find a Freelancer That’s Right For Your Business
• The Benefits of Hiring Freelancers

Transcript

Pete Newsome  00:00
You’re listening to The Hire Calling Podcast. Your source for all things hiring, staffing, and recruiting. I’m Pete Newsome. And my guest today is Elizabeth Eiss from Results Resourcing. Elizabeth, welcome. It’s great to have you today.

Elizabeth Eiss  00:12
Oh, Pete, thank you so much. I’m really glad to be here today.

Pete Newsome  00:16
Well, we’ve had a fun time talking off-camera and off prior to recording. 

Pete Newsome  00:21
So now we just have to keep that going. Now that we’re recording, we had to stop and say, alright, we’re going to miss all the good stuff if we don’t get this going right here when the world.

Pete Newsome  00:29
Yeah, well introduce yourself and your organization because you’re going to do a better job than I can. So why don’t we just start there? So everyone knows, you know, what you and your company are all about?

Elizabeth Eiss  00:42
Okay, great. Well, thank you so much, I really excited to be talking to folks in the staffing world when people were hiring, because I have become a really strong convert to the value of hiring freelancers. 

Elizabeth Eiss  00:57
And I think it’s really a wonderful solution to businesses that are looking to scale, the ability to get flexible freelance talent. And that’s been my focus for the past 10 years. 

Elizabeth Eiss  01:07
I was in the corporate world for a long time and up and joined my first startup 15-20 years ago, and I was hiring a lot of freelancers. 

Elizabeth Eiss  01:16
And I found they just added tremendous value to the businesses that I was consulting with and working with. And so I basically decided to become a staffing platform that focuses on freelancers. 

Elizabeth Eiss  01:30
And I help small and mid-sized businesses, including solopreneurs, hire vetted virtual freelancers that can help them scale and take all the admin stuff off their desk, or the specialization they might need using social media, or CRM, so they can get back to what they do best, and outsource the rest. 

Elizabeth Eiss  01:50
And I should say, I kind of stole that quote from Peter Drucker who said that and I think the 1950s. So he was way ahead of his time, in a way.

Pete Newsome  01:57
But it, you know, rings very true today, right? 

Pete Newsome  02:00
And we see that and anyone in the staffing world better believe that too, right? 

Pete Newsome  02:06
And I’ve said so many times over the years, there’s, there’s a reason I don’t change the oil in my car, I could. But there’s a reason I don’t do it because someone else is going to do a much better job than I can. 

Pete Newsome  02:16
There’s got to be efficiency and expertise that I just don’t have. So why would you have to outsource? If you want to be efficient? And it just makes sense, right? I mean, that’s, that’s how I think of freelancing, it just makes sense.

Elizabeth Eiss  02:29
Well, you know, it really does. And people think freelancing, or gig workers are this thing. But really, gig work has been around forever. 

Elizabeth Eiss  02:38
I mean, you don’t think about your attorney or your accountant as being a freelancer or a gig worker, but he’s contract work, your contracting work that you need to be done out to an expert, and it’s really no different. 

Elizabeth Eiss  02:51
There’s just a plethora of people who have specializations. Whether it’s virtual assistants, graphic designers, programmers, or whatever it might be, people are finding new ways to deliver value to others. 

Elizabeth Eiss  03:07
And technology has made a huge difference because now there’s this marketplace. Some are formalized, and others are just general marketplaces because we’re on the internet every day. 

Elizabeth Eiss  03:18
And of course, one of the upsides or downsides to COVID, depending on how you look at it, is the fact that people got comfortable with Zoom, just like we’re doing today. 

Elizabeth Eiss  03:26
Right? And, you know, there’s, it’s possible to really build amazing relationships on a virtual basis if you’re open to it.

Pete Newsome  03:33
If you’re open to it, and yeah, it’d be almost crazy not to be right now, because it’s very limiting if you’re not, and that’s something that we see. 

Pete Newsome  03:42
And think about a lot being in staffing with employers, if you’re not open to change, right now, it’s going to be a competitive disadvantage. 

Pete Newsome  03:50
In terms of how you can hire who you can hire retention, you know, all of that is no reason not to be open to change, and those who are, are going to be better as a result. 

Pete Newsome  04:02
So let’s back up a little bit and tell you when we first met and we bonded over freelancing because I’m such a fan of edit. Anyone who spends any time around me talking about staffing knows that I’m gonna bring it up. 

Pete Newsome  04:14
Yeah, I think you said you kind of fell into the role of becoming a power user or a super user at your, at your former employer that is that accurate?

Elizabeth Eiss  04:22
In a way I became. When I was working in my first startups and consulting for these startups. I was hiring freelancers from a lot of the name brand platforms. 

Elizabeth Eiss  04:34
And really, they’re just wonderful repositories of people that have great skills that are looking to get hired by people that need them. 

Elizabeth Eiss  04:43
The problem with the big platforms is they’re all doing it yourself. And it is a if you’re not great at writing a job description. Do you know what you asked for? is maybe not what you need. 

Pete Newsome  04:56
Wait a minute. Are you saying the job descriptions. Hold on. Are you saying job descriptions aren’t enough? accurate representation of the job because I didn’t.

Elizabeth Eiss  05:05
Well, not everybody’s equally gifted in writing them as you are. 

Pete Newsome  05:08
I’m sure you know, but we do know you need to carry 50 pounds right? We do know if anyone has seen a job description know that that’s part of the requirements sorry. 

Pete Newsome  05:17
But it’s a, it’s something that I always laugh at because job descriptions are notoriously awful they just are how they’re written and approved by someone who either wrote it a long time ago or doesn’t even fully understand the job. So, so I fully agree, but keep going. Sorry to interrupt. 

Elizabeth Eiss  05:34
Yeah well, no, no, it’s totally true. 

Elizabeth Eiss  05:36
And there’s an there’s frankly, an art, to writing them in a way that’s going to communicate clearly, and have the people that are best qualified and most motivated to deliver value to you to propose. 

Elizabeth Eiss  05:48
And so, you know, I really think that job descriptions aren’t so much of a defensive tool as an offensive tool. How do you get the message out of what you’re looking to deliver to the market and how someone could contribute to that? 

Elizabeth Eiss  06:01
So they’re motivated to join your team? 

Elizabeth Eiss  06:04
You know, freelancers, are not necessarily in between jobs, they’re professional freelancers. Today, many freelancers are small business owners, yes. 

Elizabeth Eiss  06:14
And they’re not looking to be an employee, they want to run their own business, be their own boss, and do the work they love. 

Elizabeth Eiss  06:20
And if it matches your job description, the value you need from them. 

Elizabeth Eiss  06:25
And it’s, then it’s perfect that many, many relationships between hirers and freelancers go on for years, they’re just not full-time, they’re just zeroing in on the work that needs to be done. 

Elizabeth Eiss  06:38
And so you know, to me, it’s, it’s a lot of work using those platforms starting with the job descriptions. 

Elizabeth Eiss  06:44
But then, once you put some keywords into these platforms, you might be matched with 5,000 profiles, right, who has the time or the where with all to look at that? 

Elizabeth Eiss  06:56
And there are always filters, which reduce the number of profiles, but it’s still labor intensive. And going back to what we said a moment ago about doing what you do best and outsourcing the rest. 

Elizabeth Eiss  07:08
Unless you’re in the staffing business, that’s not what you do best. 

Elizabeth Eiss  07:11
So it’s not a great use of a business owner’s time to do that work. 

Elizabeth Eiss  07:15
So to make a long story short, that prompted me to build results resourcing, which is a technology staffing platform focused on the business owner that wants to hire great freelancers but doesn’t want to do it themselves. 

Elizabeth Eiss  07:30
So we’re a staffing agency with a staffing platform, uniquely focused on finding vetting, interviewing, and curating freelancers to make great matches for small and mid-sized businesses.

Pete Newsome  07:42
I think the market has become so big, and I’ll let you I’ve seen 60 million freelancers in the US and 70 million what’s the stat that you’ve seen recently on that?

Elizabeth Eiss  07:55
Well, it really depends on your source. I heard LinkedIn talk about some 900 million users. But because we are LinkedIn recruiters, because that’s one of our main sources of finding freelancers. 

Elizabeth Eiss  08:09
There are innumerable people that list open to contract work Sure, behind the scenes. 

Elizabeth Eiss  08:15
And so what we really see are people that have moved professionally to become small business owners and fruit freelance full-time as contract workers. But we also see tons of people that have side hustles. 

Elizabeth Eiss  08:29
Right now, they may never fully migrate to being full-time, freelancers, maybe it’s a passion project, but they’re great at something. 

Elizabeth Eiss  08:36
But a lot of people are starting businesses on the side with the desire to move from being an employee to being a business owner. And this is particularly true of younger workers. So I want to ask you younger workers start businesses and college.

Pete Newsome  08:50
I want to get you to define the difference because the gig job versus freelance gets used interchangeably. And I tend to think of them as different paths, right? 

Pete Newsome  09:03
Or even though it is it is all under the freelance umbrella. But you mentioned that there are people who do this as their career choice and stay there as independent freelancers. 

Pete Newsome  09:19
But that’s different than someone who has a side gig in my mind. Right? It is almost, you know, different types of jobs, kind of right? 

Pete Newsome  09:29
But then you see a blend there to where there are so many people who drive Uber, for example, on the side, but then there’s a very large group of people, I don’t know what the numbers are, who have who now do that as their full-time job. 

Pete Newsome  09:41
So I think of it differently, but it all kinds of kind of gets blended together now to how do you separate that or do you separate?

Elizabeth Eiss  09:49
You know, I actually don’t separate it anymore, because I don’t know where to draw the line. 

Elizabeth Eiss  09:54
But what I do is when we’re working with clients who want to hire Have we gotten clear on what their likely need is going to be? How much dedication? How many hours? 

Elizabeth Eiss  10:08
Just what is the difficulty of the work that they might have? Because some freelance work is quite complicated, project management or whatever it might be. 

Elizabeth Eiss  10:17
And so to me, it’s more a matter of what time are they going to dedicate to a client, and how many other clients they have because someone might have a side hustle. 

Elizabeth Eiss  10:26
But if they have a full-time job, they don’t have the capacity to be responsive or give a lot of hours to one or more clients. And so to me, it’s more, it’s more about the volume and complexity of the work and the need to be responsive. 

Elizabeth Eiss  10:43
That is a driver to me and people that have become professional in there, their individual business owners now, you know, they’re building frankly, they’re hiring freelancers, they’re building systems and processes to run a business, right, just like anybody else. 

Elizabeth Eiss  11:00
And so, to me, it’s that kind of continuum. And it’s when, when people are really focusing on that contract work is their primary driver of income or fulfillment, and they’re dedicated more and more hours. 

Elizabeth Eiss  11:14
So that can be responsive to the company that hires them,

Pete Newsome  11:18
and even freelancers, hiring freelancers, right, I mean, I consider my SEO consultant of both in many ways a partner in the business a year she’s certainly a freelancer, but she has others who work for them to do other tasks. 

Pete Newsome  11:36
And I think what a cool, what a cool thing because the rules are changing, I guess they have changed, right? Not everyone realizes they’ve changed yet. 

Pete Newsome  11:44
But they have where there’s really, there really are no rules anymore. It’s about doing what makes sense in any specific situation. 

Pete Newsome  11:52
And that, to me, is what’s so exciting about this marketplace, because it is just about doing what makes sense. And that’s often hard to achieve in traditional corporate settings.

Elizabeth Eiss  12:05
It is there are so many structures in place in corporate settings. 

Elizabeth Eiss  12:09
And it’s one of the most fun things of being about being an entrepreneur, I mean, the buck stops here, but at the same time, it’s very creative, and it’s flexible.

Elizabeth Eiss  12:17
And you know, that reminds me of the business evolution that the journey we’ve been on. 

Elizabeth Eiss  12:23
I mean, when we started the platform and the service, we were all about custom talent tools, because I believed that our clients needed to have the best talent for whatever it was they did. 

Elizabeth Eiss  12:34
And that should have choices. And so we would, and we still do curate custom talent pools, we work with the client to describe what they need. And then we go find it proactively go find three candidates. 

Elizabeth Eiss  12:47
And it takes us about three weeks to do it. 

Elizabeth Eiss  12:49
But it’s not because it takes us as long it’s because the best freelancers don’t apply right away, they’re busy, right? 

Elizabeth Eiss  12:55
You know, they’re and they’re going to be picky, they’re going to choose their client, just like, you know, full-time employees are doing these days more and more. 

Elizabeth Eiss  13:02
And so that’s a chunk of our business. But increasingly, I found from people that they actually didn’t want custom, and they didn’t want a choice. 

Elizabeth Eiss  13:12
They wanted somebody that was skillful, reliable, and nice. Those were the three things. 

Elizabeth Eiss  13:19
And so we built a whole other set of programs that we call on-demand jobs, which we have prevented relationships with lead people in different functions like a virtual assistant or executive assistant or bookkeeper or social media, whatever. 

Elizabeth Eiss  13:36
And we basically just pre-assign people, we assign our clients to those people, depending on their needs. 

Elizabeth Eiss  13:42
And those people all have teams. 

Elizabeth Eiss  13:44
So there might be a point person, but most of them have 510 people in their quality control, the main point versus quality control is the single interface with the client, but manages the workload and parcels that out to people behind them, bringing it all back together, you know, on that in that one to one relationship with the client. 

Elizabeth Eiss  14:03
So it’s, it’s really interesting to pay attention to what’s important to people. And we can get those on-demand jobs up and 24 to 40 to 48 hours.

Pete Newsome  14:13
Right away in that scenario, if I need an executive assistant, Do I even have to interview or am I just, you know, basically engaging you to deliver not as much the person but the results that I need, right? 

Pete Newsome  14:30
Because the person not to say the person is insignificant, far from it. 

Pete Newsome  14:33
But if I’m having to get deeply involved with the individual, that’s a different level of effort. 

Pete Newsome  14:38
For me as someone who I know what needs to be done. 

Pete Newsome  14:42
I want the work done I’ll go back to the world change analogy, right? I’m not too worried about who the individual is doing it as much as it is the quality and the service and expertise that’s behind it. 

Pete Newsome  14:54
And I assume if I go to a recognizable brand or one that I’ve used in the past that they’re going to have vetted that person, right? I mean, is that a fair analogy?

Elizabeth Eiss  15:05
Yes, it really is. 

Elizabeth Eiss  15:06
The only distinction I would make is that we’re the matchmaker, and then ultimately, as a platform where the payment processor, and that’s how we get paid, you know, and that’s how we also unify our process and make it efficient. 

Elizabeth Eiss  15:22
So people don’t pay a lot of money for manual recruiting processes. 

Elizabeth Eiss  15:26
We’re very automated, but our processes insert the human or the human counts. 

Elizabeth Eiss  15:31
So the human is interviewing the client to make sure we get the requirements, right, interviewing the freelancers. 

Elizabeth Eiss  15:37
So we’re doing all that vetting behind the scenes. But when we do the match, the client may want to talk to the person ahead of time but may not. 

Elizabeth Eiss  15:45
But ultimately, they’re matched with an independent contractor. No, it does not result resourcing anymore, it’s contractor ABC or D. But we guarantee our matches. 

Elizabeth Eiss  15:57
So at the end of the day, I named the company results resourcing, because just as you mentioned, I want to deliver results. So somebody else does it on a contract basis. 

Elizabeth Eiss  16:06
But it’s very important to me that the freelancers that we match with clients deliver.

Pete Newsome  16:13
Which is ultimately what matters, right? I mean, that’s the only thing, not the only thing, but yeah, maybe it is the only thing that ultimately matters is it or get it completed, as expected was the quality there. 

Pete Newsome  16:26
And I kind of laugh in a way that when the freelancing market has become so big, and some of the platforms have become so big, that there’s this incorrect assumption that if you go to the freelance market, you can cut a staffing company out of the equation, right? 

Pete Newsome  16:42
And you think, Well, I’m gonna save money I’m gonna go directly to the source. Well, as we know,, anyone in staffing knows that the sourcing the vetting, if you will, the, what I call qualifying, that is where we earn our keep, right? 

Pete Newsome  16:56
It is, that’s where the heavy lifting is done. It’s not in the putting in a keyword search, getting a lot of names as a result. And if it were that easy, there would be no staffing companies, right?

Elizabeth Eiss  17:07
 I mean, I totally agree with you. 

Elizabeth Eiss  17:08
I mean, it’s, you really remind me, you know, back to do what you do best and outsource the rest is, you know, staffing and recruiting, you know, is a highly skilled profession, you know, and you know, all of us have access to tools that just regular business people don’t have. 

Elizabeth Eiss  17:27
So our ability to find better candidates and know how to qualify them, you know, just operates at a different level, it’s just not what they do best. 

Elizabeth Eiss  17:37
And one of the first questions that I actually end up talking to clients about when they call to set up a free consult with us, is what should I outsource? 

Elizabeth Eiss  17:46
And so we have a conversation about what that is because so many times business owners are in the weeds. 

Elizabeth Eiss  17:52
You know, they’re, what’s that phrase, they’re working in the business, not on the business, and not spending as much time on the things that really drive client value. 

Elizabeth Eiss  17:59
So we built this cool little survey tool that takes three minutes to do. 

Elizabeth Eiss  18:03
But it’s kind of like, what’s an hour of your time worth? 

Elizabeth Eiss  18:06
And then what’s the core business value you deliver to clients? And how many hours a week do you spend doing that, and it’s, then you multiply, and you see the investment in your core business that you’re making of your time on a day to day basis. 

Elizabeth Eiss  18:19
And then below that, it’s okay, well, how many hours you do admin, billing, customer service, copywriting, social media, all the stuff that we all know we do. 

Elizabeth Eiss  18:29
It’s not delivering value to the client. And so in essence, is noncore work. It’s a cost to the business, it’s needed to run a business. But if you apply the hours you do that that work with the same hourly rate. I mean, that’s, that’s the opportunity cost there.

Pete Newsome  18:46
Oh, so true. So true. I mean, Pennywise and pound foolish come to mind, right? 

Pete Newsome  18:52
And there’s, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Naval Raava Khan, who is someone that I guess he consider himself a philosopher, he’s a bit of a, you know, someone who is just he founded angels list. 

Pete Newsome  19:07
And, and I’m a big fan of his, I mean, the way he looks at the world. 

Pete Newsome  19:11
And one of the things that I heard him say, quite a few years ago, which I’ve applied is to put a value on your time and put a very high value on your time. 

Pete Newsome  19:21
And it was something that he claims that once he started doing his outlook change and his level of success, it started to really climb and so I’ve started doing that. 

Pete Newsome  19:30
And it’s fascinating to see if you buy something at the store, you know, let’s say for $20 And that’s a number that no one wants to throw out something brand new for $20. 

Pete Newsome  19:42
But if the trip to the store took 30 minutes it was right there and back or there and then you had to come in at the very back, you know, is your hourly rate expenditure of time worth more than $20 in almost every case is going to be yes. Therefore, you shouldn’t go back. 

Pete Newsome  19:57
You shouldn’t return it you should consider just By dropping it off somewhere and giving it away, whatever. But once you start applying that logic, it really does tell a different story of how your time is spent. 

Pete Newsome  20:11
And we know, as we kind of allude to now that you’re sourcing and screening candidates is so time-consuming. 

Pete Newsome  20:22
I mean, if you’re going to do it right, and so that is something that I think people from the outside who, who haven’t recruited don’t really appreciate, you know, that it is all mean, you either get that part right, or you or you suffer the consequences. Finding candidates is relatively easy by comparison.

Elizabeth Eiss  20:40
Yeah, no, it’s very, almost everyone we talked to, it has some sort of a horror story about, you know, using a bad hire, you know, in lessons that they learned. 

Elizabeth Eiss  20:50
And to your point about the hourly rate on the survey that, you know, we just keep collecting data, we don’t use it for marketing purposes, or anything like that we’re just interested in knowing, but no one ever puts $10 an hour down hourly rate no one ever does. 

Elizabeth Eiss  21:07
And we see people because we do track the IP addresses to, you know, just for different, you know, individuals that are doing this, and we see people taking it multiple times at different rates and different allocations of time. 

Elizabeth Eiss  21:21
So you can see the wheels are turning interesting as they start to think about how they use their time differently. 

Elizabeth Eiss  21:28
But, you know, at the end of the day, unless you’re an HR person, recruiting and staffing is not your core business. 

Elizabeth Eiss  21:38
You know, it’s a perfect thing to outsource this to a business partner that you trust, will understand your business, and really have your back, you know, in helping your staff with the right kind of people, whether they’re full-time, you know, or freelance, it’s really the gamut these days.

Pete Newsome  21:53
And have someone to know who you’re working with, right, which you don’t get on, on the on these massive platforms where you’re just kind of on your own right, you’re providing that extra level of service that wouldn’t otherwise exist when hiring a freelancer. And that’s, that’s huge.

Elizabeth Eiss  22:12
Well, a lot of those platforms have those services, but they reserved them for enterprise clients.

Pete Newsome  22:17
Right? Well, so okay, I’ve been a pretty big user of freelancers for the past few years. I didn’t even know that. So if they have them as you said, you have to they’re not readily available.

Elizabeth Eiss  22:28
Perhaps no, the only reason I know is in probably not all platforms have them. But when I was a power user of platforms in the early days, I actually had a subscription. 

Elizabeth Eiss  22:38
Okay, but then I was deemed too small, and they kicked me off the program. Oh, that’s okay. Because it inspired me and said, Oh, well, I think I can build a platform that automates everything but inserts the human. So small, and midsize businesses can get the help they need. 

Elizabeth Eiss  22:56
Absolutely, I love it. That was really and that’s what inspired me to build the platform the way I did.

Pete Newsome  23:02
It’s such a necessary thing. 

Pete Newsome  23:04
And at such a necessary at the right time, because of where this market is heading. 

Pete Newsome  23:09
Now, I shared this with you, when we first met, I’m gonna say it again, maybe put you on the spot a little bit, that because I think of freelancing as taking all of the bad out of the employee-employer relationship, which I think is come to just cloudy, you know.

Pete Newsome  23:32
Make cloudy, the nature of that relationship today, where there are so many more expectations put on both the employee and the employer than just simply performing a service based on having a skill set, placing a value on that skill set, you know, combining that with a business need, or a need for a certain amount of work at a certain level. 

Pete Newsome  23:55
Like that’s the basis for the working relationship. 

Pete Newsome  24:01
But now there’s so much more to it that, you know, I do record a lot with an HR consultant who actually works for me and my staffing business. 

Pete Newsome  24:12
And I laugh and make fun of him all the time and say, That’s why HR departments are so big is because of all the extra stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with the work that needs to be done and the person needs to do the work. 

Pete Newsome  24:24
Now, do you think that is a fair assessment, that freelancing is just a healthier way to work?

Elizabeth Eiss  24:31
Well, I’m biased, but yes, I do. 

Elizabeth Eiss  24:34
But I also have to say that it’s not for everybody. I mean, people that are successful, frankly, business owners, you know, are motivated by some passion and they have some organizational ability. They have something unique to offer to the market. 

Elizabeth Eiss  24:49
And I think successful freelancers are similar, but it’s just something different. It could be as you know, an administrative assistant, you know, seems Like a generalist, but it’s a high-level skill set from accurate data entry to understanding how to set up CRM systems, there’s really quite a bit to it. 

Elizabeth Eiss  25:08
And, I think that people who are successful freelancers have figured out how to run a business. And they know that they’re they, they need to really satisfy their clients, in some of that time satisfying clients is helping that client get organized. 

Elizabeth Eiss  25:25
And so they need to provide structure, you know, to the relationship. 

Elizabeth Eiss  25:29
So I, I think that one of the problems in corporate America having spent decades in it is, you know, there’s so much structure and procedure and protocol that people get dependent on that. 

Elizabeth Eiss  25:40
And sometimes the practical needs of the moment, get shunted aside because the process wasn’t followed, or it’s there’s an exception, or it might not be deemed fair, or there’s just a lot of complexity when you’re talking about big corporations with lots of staff and perceived equity issues and things like that. 

Elizabeth Eiss  26:01
So I think that freelancing certainly has the ability to cut through all that, for the business owner that you know, it is organized and willing to hire a freelancer in for the freelancer to step up and provide not only that specialization value but also the organizational value.

Pete Newsome  26:21
Well, it’s almost a necessary trait for the individual to have today, now that so much of the workforce is virtual, and I’ve noticed that I agree with you 100%, that not everyone is naturally inclined to show that kind of discipline. 

Pete Newsome  26:37
And it’s hard. I mean, you know, and we’ve all known people throughout our lives that we think you need structure, right? As we say, this is someone who requires structure, it’s a nice way of saying they’re a disorganized mess, perhaps right. 

Pete Newsome  26:52
But, but but but it’s not uncommon either. 

Pete Newsome  26:55
I think a lot of people are struggling right now, this is a little off-topic, of course, but with being virtual, and this is a common topic for anyone and in our space, where, what’s happening right now with employers? 

Pete Newsome  27:09
Are they making employees come back to the office? Who is it pros and cons, all of that. 

Pete Newsome  27:15
And I ultimately think it’s more about the individual than it is about the work function, where there are some people and hopefully they can recognize this in themselves, who just wouldn’t be who aren’t as good if they’re not in that structured environment. 

Pete Newsome  27:29
And I think those are the same people who wouldn’t probably really be inclined or, or thrive in a freelance mark because that’s even more exacerbated. 

Pete Newsome  27:38
Right? If you quite literally don’t have anyone setting your schedule or anyone to be accountable to. I mean, that’s, I don’t know what the statistics are, or why most businesses fail. 

Pete Newsome  27:49
But I think as a business owner, first of all, you better have that right, you better have that discipline and an ability to not just goof off when you should be working. 

Pete Newsome  28:01
But freelancers, the same thing? I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of there’s a lot. There’s a lot of crossovers there right now between just working remotely and being freelance.

Elizabeth Eiss  28:11
Yeah, no, no, absolutely. And I think about people that are kind of navigating remote work successfully. It’s like they’re  just figuring out how to make things happen, even when they’re remote. 

Elizabeth Eiss  28:27
And, you know, not that I’m the example of this. But, you know, one point early in my career was long before we had the internet and web conferencing, nothing like that. 

Elizabeth Eiss  28:38
I had a territory with three offices. 

Elizabeth Eiss  28:41
And I didn’t think twice that that was a problem. It was like, Okay, there are phones, I get in a car. It’s just okay, how am I going to build bonds with the people in the other offices, I just made it happen, right? It wasn’t some huge problem. 

Elizabeth Eiss  28:57
It was just alright, how do I handle this? And you know, even my lead developer with my results, resourcing platform, we’ve been physically together in the past eight years, maybe 20 days, he lives in Europe. 

Elizabeth Eiss  29:12
You know, we built the entire platform, you know, apart from the Atlantic Ocean between us. 

Elizabeth Eiss  29:18
And you know, so it’s just it’s to me, it’s a mindset, you know, and I think that people get comfortable, whether they’re leaders in business managers, or they’re the employers and the doers in the business, you know, you can kind of rest on the process, or you can just figure out how to find ways to get things to get results done. 

Elizabeth Eiss  29:38
And I think unfortunately, and I think it’s going to take some time to sort that out but people that take initiative have more options now. 

Pete Newsome  29:48
But haven’t they always, I mean, really, you know, the, if you’re motivated to achieve if you’re motivated to reach the finish line and whatever it is you’re doing. 

Pete Newsome  29:57
I’ve noticed that as a kid every salesperson who’s it struggled at times to train other salespeople. 

Pete Newsome  30:05
I think there are certain things I like I can’t tell you why I was successful in sales, I just have stubbornness. Intuition, at times creativity, every situation calls for something a little bit different. 

Pete Newsome  30:18
But what was always ever present was that I had to reach the goal, right, I had to achieve the same goal. So how I got there was less important. And I think of that often now that we’re remote. 

Pete Newsome  30:32
If you’re inclined to be successful, if you’re inclined to get the job done, whatever the job is, you know, we have plenty of tools. Right? 

Pete Newsome  30:40
So now you don’t walk down the hall to talk to someone you know, you ping them on Slack, and you send them a text message. I think it’s inherently more efficient. 

Pete Newsome  30:51
But I also acknowledge that it’s, very different, very different. I mean, I like the differences personally. But I also acknowledge that not everyone will. 

Pete Newsome  31:02
And that’s where I think what you’re doing is only going to become more popular. Because it’s the right option. 

Pete Newsome  31:12
As we talked about earlier at the right time, where, maybe 10 years ago, the market wasn’t as inclined I can tell you, we weren’t as inclined to it let everyone work remotely. 

Pete Newsome  31:22
It just seemed foreign to us. We were giving it as a reward for our younger professionals, the more you’ve achieved certain milestones, you earn remote days now everyone’s remote. And I still say Not everyone’s in caught. Yeah. Not everyone is suited to be remote.

Elizabeth Eiss  31:39
Yeah, no, that is really true. 

Elizabeth Eiss  31:42
You know, when fairly recent things that we’ve introduced to our on-demand programs, it’s really made a difference is I think people are worried about hiring freelancers when they’re not sure exactly of the work that needs to be done, or how much time it’s supposed to take. 

Elizabeth Eiss  31:58
And, so we’ve structured these new programs, really, with no minimum time commitments, and hire a VA firm, you know, for extra hours a month, but you’re making a capital commitment in off sometimes the hours don’t roll over if you don’t use them. 

Elizabeth Eiss  32:13
So I think also, the secret is finding flexible ways to help business owners that maybe they don’t know how to get get started, and it’s intimidating, or they’re not sure how many hours. 

Elizabeth Eiss  32:24
So the minimum level that you can require to get them to take that first step is I find really beneficial because it’s it, people get the hang of it quickly.

Elizabeth Eiss  32:37
Once they start, they dip their toe in the water, of working with a freelancer, and then all of a sudden, it’s like, I only want to commit to two hours a week, and then all of a sudden, it’s 10 hours is there, you get the suddenly they get in the habit of Oh, like if you can do this, maybe you could do that. 

Elizabeth Eiss  32:52
And then it’s a conversation with someone that you’re building trust with, and you get confident in that person, and then that Freelancer is committed more and more committed to you. 

Elizabeth Eiss  33:01
It’s just a really nice, but virtual virtuous circle, or in my case, virtual circle as well. You know, to see people growing together to deliver value to a business.

Pete Newsome  33:13
It’s funny that you would say this just last night, I had a conversation with someone I’m considering hiring who has branding expertise. 

Pete Newsome  33:22
And it’s something that we’re considering getting some outside help with. And he said, just you can hire me for an hour a week. And it says sounds like nothing right? 

Pete Newsome  33:32
But there’s a lot of value that can be packed into that. And he said, Look, you know, I asked for a certain amount of time to commit to starting, but it’s only an hour a week. 

Pete Newsome  33:42
And at the point you decide you don’t need me anymore, then you don’t need me. I kind of laughed when he said it.

Pete Newsome  33:48
Because that’s effectively how my relationship began with my SEO consultant. And she said, Hey, I’m here until you don’t need me anymore. 

Pete Newsome  33:56
Well, that was a couple of years ago. Now I’m constantly asking for more time. And so your point is, is very well taken and timely for me because I know how those relationships can grow. 

Pete Newsome  34:07
But it also makes sense to know at times to start off slowly, right? Because you don’t know if you’re going to jive with everyone. You don’t know if it’s going to be a great just natural comfortable fit. 

Pete Newsome  34:17
And, but I agree with you 100% there to that. Yeah, once you start you realize how effective and beneficial it can be. It just grows from there.

Elizabeth Eiss  34:27
Well, it’s funny, but isn’t that true of almost every human relationship? 

Elizabeth Eiss  34:31
Yes. Whether you join a new unit or a new company, or whatever it might be or you’re a new leader. I mean, there’s just a certain amount of time it just takes to kind of get familiar and get to know one another. 

Elizabeth Eiss  34:43
And I also kind of feel that employers have this bright long line like oh, if I hire a freelancer, then it has to be zero to 60 the very first day without really thinking about the fact that it takes a lot of little time to gel. 

Elizabeth Eiss  35:01
And I think some of that is because they’re afraid of spending hours, money on hours, they’re not getting some value of value from so I think that you’re trying to provide like, like, your people are just an hour work until an hour week till you don’t need me anymore. 

Elizabeth Eiss  35:18
It helps people go, okay, no one’s gonna take advantage of me. You know, let’s just trust this relationship, see how it’s gonna go,  and kind of let it happen.

Pete Newsome  35:28
Well, I’m sure there are lots of memes that I know, there are lots of memes about this and funny kinds of jokes that could send around. 

Pete Newsome  35:34
But I, I’m sure there are studies to that show, you know, for any, you know, the average corporate job, how much time is spent doing the actual work versus doing corporate off stuff, right, going to company meetings and town halls, and, ah, sorry, for HR. 

Pete Newsome  35:54
I always end up doing this unintentionally, but things that just are necessary and required either because the government says it’s required or some corporate person somewhere along the way decided that it was necessary, that has nothing to do with the actual job. 

Pete Newsome  36:13
And there’s a balance, I think, when it comes to job satisfaction, people who want the community and the culture that comes from being part of an organization, but many people don’t, right, many people want to just come in, check in check out. 

Pete Newsome  36:29
And you don’t really have that option in a corporate setting, right? 

Pete Newsome  36:32
If anything, it may damage your ability to thrive, or how your reputation would be in that organization. But, you know, freelance to me, is all about efficiency. 

Pete Newsome  36:43
So yes, there may be of course, there’s gonna some warmup time, there’s gonna be some training time that comes in and anything new. But after that, it’s all gasp, no brakes, which I think is because I just love it. 

Pete Newsome  36:56
I mean, I just think it’s such a great way to work in almost every case.

Elizabeth Eiss  37:01
No, I think so. 

Elizabeth Eiss  37:02
And since most freelancers are virtual, you know,, it adds to the pressure to deliver because the visibility is going to be in what you deliver.

Elizabeth Eiss  37:12
They’re not just walking around, you’re not going to, you’re not going to see somebody walking around to kind of give them mental credit for being here. 

Elizabeth Eiss  37:21
I mean, it’s like, at the end of the day, you want people to reach out through slack or whatever tools there are, but not to waste anybody’s time, but just to move the ball forward. 

Elizabeth Eiss  37:31
At the end of the day, you know, you want to put points on the board. And that’s, that’s really what freelancers are good at.

Pete Newsome  37:37
And put points where it counts, right? I mean, when I think of my first corporate job where I was in, you know, cube, cube farm, and the staff would level folks would pop up like groundhogs and see if their manager was there. 

Pete Newsome  37:53
And once the manager Yeah, then the managers, once I became a manager, you’d pop up to see if your director was there, they the VP was there, I just go along. 

Pete Newsome  38:01
And so once the VP left, the directors could leave. And then the managers and nobody was working at that point, right? Everyone was watching the clock waiting to go home. 

Pete Newsome  38:09
And so those sort of just wasted things really get taken off the table on both sides. 

Pete Newsome  38:15
I mean, that’s the thing that I always go back to what I think of freelancers, that it’s a, it’s a win on both sides, right, that whoever’s paying for the skill that needs to be delivered, isn’t really wasting any money, and then the person doesn’t have to waste their time, unless they want to, right. 

Pete Newsome  38:33
And again, if you want to be part of a big, kind of kumbaya culture every day, that’s rather than be independent and on your own. Okay, that’s, that’s fine. 

Pete Newsome  38:43
Yeah, but I don’t think most people do. I think most people would rather be anywhere in the world. They wanted to be where they could work. 

Pete Newsome  38:50
And that’s another I think, incredibly cool aspect of what freelancing has offered. Is that you like you said, your developer can be in Europe. Okay. Cool. Like, you know, who cares? Yeah. I love it.


Elizabeth Eiss  39:08
We’ll go see him once a year.

Pete Newsome  39:10
Yeah. Good excuse, right? Well, tell you this. So what could you kind of name just some of the most popular roles you think of if someone is new to freelancing? 

Pete Newsome  39:20
What would be the sort of the easy on-ramp SEO that you would recommend for someone to consider starting with just common and popular roles?

Elizabeth Eiss  39:29
Um, you know, that’s a hard question. 

Elizabeth Eiss  39:33
And there are studies that are published regularly on the most popular jobs and I would probably actually encourage people to, search, because it depends on whether you’re delivering a business skill or a creative skill, or a technical development skill. 

Elizabeth Eiss  39:50
You know, it’s just keeping with the technical technology, the software analogy. 

Elizabeth Eiss  39:57
There are so many new technology G languages and or apps or whatever it is coming out that I think I would do a disservice to say it’s one particular thing. 

Elizabeth Eiss  40:09
So I would encourage people to do some searches, you know, for free, you know, what are most popular jobs and the big platforms all post that kind of research statistics, what’s being asked for most, then, in fact, I think that’s also a good thing to do is to go to the big platforms and type your preferred skill in as concisely as possible.

Elizabeth Eiss  40:32
And see what shows up, you’ll see all the other people that are supposedly similarly skilled in how they’re basically positioning themselves for work. 

Elizabeth Eiss  40:43
And so you know, that that, to me is the best way to kind of get a feel for what of your skill set could be valuable, sure, is freelance work. 

Elizabeth Eiss  40:54
But I would say that as a general rule, what I see clients coming for is more is kind of like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if you will, and I what I see least solopreneurs and smaller businesses coming first, for very tactical things, they needed an admin, they need bookkeeper, they need, you know, it’s really the the nuts and bolts of making the business run that they need help with. 

Elizabeth Eiss  41:24
And, of course, not, if you’re a brick and mortar, not everything can be outsourced to a virtual worker, you know, you gonna have to, you know, sort that out. 

Elizabeth Eiss  41:32
But once they get that done, the next thing they come to is what I would call social media, in marketing kind of roles. They got the tactics down now, it’s like, how do I spread the message to get more business then? 

Elizabeth Eiss  41:44
And then only after that, do I really see clients looking for more strategic roles, or certain business consultants, who would almost be the next level, you know, we’re fractional, CFO, CFO type roles. 

Elizabeth Eiss  42:00
So it’s, you know, I think of it just kind of the mature I think of it as kind of a projection of maturity, people dip their toe in was technical things they can measure was bookkeeping done, right? 

Elizabeth Eiss  42:14
When you get to social media and marketing, there’s a bit of a black box a leap of faith, you know, I don’t, I don’t really understand all these algorithms and how they work if somebody really.

Elizabeth Eiss  42:24
And it takes time, you know, minimum six months investment to get some of the stuff done, to really work, you know, your website, not be may not be set up for SEO properly, you know, there’s just so much to it. 

Elizabeth Eiss  42:35
So you really have to trust that social media marketing kind of person at the next level. 

Elizabeth Eiss  42:40
So I really see it kind of as a trajectory, learning how to outsource learning how to trust and manage an outsourced relationship, but it’s starting with tactics and gradually moving up the scale to more strategic

Pete Newsome  42:52
work. Alright, so I’m going to have to get your opinion on our 4 Corner Resources website, we have somewhere around 500 job descriptions, and on each job description, we have different ways to hire Of course, we often recommend using us. 

Pete Newsome  43:08
But we also say if you want to hire directly should do this. But based on the position, we’ve recommended freelancing as an option. 

Pete Newsome  43:15
And so we think we’ve picked the ones the jobs that we think we could and it’s interesting going through that thought process because I was then on those decisions of saying, is this a job we think would be good for Freelancer yes or no? And then why? 

Pete Newsome  43:29
And most jobs have that potential. 

Pete Newsome  43:32
And it’s Yeah, yeah, the other thing that I was just thinking of while you’re talking as, as I’ve developed more knowledge of in marketing over the years.

Pete Newsome  43:42
And my peers and friends and staffing have come to me for insight on their, websites and their success or lack thereof with search engine optimization, and I have all the tools I can to analyze their sites, I’ve realized how many are paying for marketing agencies because they think that’s the safe option, right? 

Pete Newsome  44:02
Hiring an agency versus a freelancer where they’re, they’re not getting a bet. 

Pete Newsome  44:10
The Freelancer is almost more motivated to earn their keep. Right, but the agency I found the agencies do a worse job of delivering results. I’ll just say that. 

Pete Newsome  44:20
And that’s been interesting I hadn’t thought of that until you I was just listening to you talk and thinking of my experiences where I’ve looked at probably 10 different websites of friends and business associates over the last few months. 

Pete Newsome  44:34
And there’s a lot of big dollars go into agencies because there’s an assumption and incorrect one that the agencies were doing right by them and they weren’t so I don’t

Elizabeth Eiss  44:45
know I think that’s a really interesting observation. 

Elizabeth Eiss  44:49
You know, I think that up to a certain level, you can get a lot of skill concentrated in an individual freelance professional in social media and marketing at some point Need your companies start to need specialization, but not 100% of the time, maybe they have some video editing or some, you know, unique thing that that an agency can provide. 

Elizabeth Eiss  45:13
But to me, the big thing to think about is, whatever you’re paying that agency, you’re paying for the overhead of that agency organization. 

Elizabeth Eiss  45:23
And if they’re, you know, in any kind of thing, you know, you should be looking for, show me the results you’ve produced for other people. 

Elizabeth Eiss  45:31
Yes, you know, but if, you know, if you if they pass that just, you know, you have to factor in the fact that they’ve got a team of 15 people, even if they’re remote, there’s some management, there’s some overhead, you know, for being that agency, versus a freelancer, that might be a single person with a heck of a lot of overhead. 

Elizabeth Eiss  45:50
And it’s a balancing act that, you know, it all is going to depend on the circumstances. And there are some fabulous agencies out there. 

Elizabeth Eiss  45:56
And, you know, there are some not-so-great freelancers out there too. 

Elizabeth Eiss  45:59
But it kind of boils down, to that vetting process. And in fact, you know, we really circling back to the very beginning about contractors that might be your attorney firm, or the CPA, we ended up vetting agencies to, okay, sometimes a freelancer just isn’t the right choice. 

Elizabeth Eiss  46:20
They don’t have the scope of capabilities that the client might need. So you know, to me, it’s a salt contract, whether it’s an individual or a small agency.

Pete Newsome  46:30
Sure. And as I said, the best way to do it is to look at their past performance or work to see what they’ve done. In the past. I just have been surprised, I guess, by what certain companies and agencies are willing to sell and put their name on when there’s been complete void of results, right? 

Pete Newsome  46:54
But I think generally speaking, there’s an assumption that you place upon having, an incorrect one like, again, as an established organization to think it’s safer, and I don’t think it is at all.

Pete Newsome  47:07
In fact, I could argue, and I have that an individual who’s willing to put themselves out there and only eat what they kill, so to speak. You know, that’s a motivated individual who has to perform. 

Pete Newsome  47:20
So again, I think there’s a lot of benefit to choosing a freelancer first over a big organization.

Elizabeth Eiss  47:32
Yeah, no, I think there’s some truth to that. And, and I think that I’ve seen it more with creative agencies, but sometimes you have to think about how did that agency come together? 

Elizabeth Eiss  47:43
And sometimes it’s a group of people that simply like to work together, right? Not necessarily, that they’re, that they’re all equally top-line skilled. But they enjoy working together. 

Elizabeth Eiss  47:54
And, you know, so there’s pros and cons there, too, you might have a group that you get along with, but they’re not equally talented. And, you know, so I think it is, you have to be a little tougher, you know, in your evaluation of the capacity of an agency to deliver.

Pete Newsome  48:11
And you know, you don’t know who you’re working with to I mean, this is a little bit off. 

Pete Newsome  48:17
But I years ago, as I was really becoming enamored with digital marketing, and learning about it, there was someone who was very prevalent on YouTube and on social media, and I would listen to this person’s advice and ended up hiring their firm. 

Pete Newsome  48:35
And needless to say, I was not working with the person in the videos. 

Pete Newsome  48:39
And it was an awful experience. I mean, it was a very quick end to this relationship, because it was almost like the public success forced them to grow, probably too fast. 

Pete Newsome  48:52
And so like, it was almost like they out-kick their coverage, so to speak, use a sports analogy, and it was a shockingly bad experience. 

Pete Newsome  49:01
And so, again, with the freelancer, I’m working with the, I’m working with the leader of the team, because that is, right, and so I know who I’m getting. 

Pete Newsome  49:10
And so I don’t I’ve never really thought about it until this particular moment, but there’s a lot of benefit and value to that to where you don’t want someone to pass off pass a buck. 

Pete Newsome  49:21
You know, you want the best person you can find for the job, but whatever that job is.

Elizabeth Eiss  49:26
So true. And it’s partly why we set up our on-demand programs the way we did, where you get you get a person that is responsible to you and for the results. 

Elizabeth Eiss  49:36
So even if they might hand off something to a spreadsheet specialist or something like that, that’s coming back through that person that’s accountable to the client. 

Elizabeth Eiss  49:46
You know, there’s any one person who only has so many hours in the day. 

Elizabeth Eiss  49:49
So how do you expand the capacity of someone that’s gifted in client relationships and getting things done and organized?

Elizabeth Eiss  49:56
And having a team is valuable but at the end of the day the buck stops. With the person that’s working with the client.

Pete Newsome  50:02
You have to have someone to hold accountable. And this makes so much sense. Well, well, Elizabeth, this has been a great promise I wouldn’t keep you all day. How can everyone get a hold? Yeah.

Elizabeth Eiss  50:13
It’s been awesome. It’s been very fun. 

Pete Newsome  50:14
Well, you so much for your time. We’ll put this in the show notes too. But how can someone get a hold to reach out to your site, and give us a URL for it, so they know where to find you?

Elizabeth Eiss  50:24
Okay, it’s Resultsresourcing.net. And that’s it, just think about we resource results. So that, you know, that’s, what the company is called because that’s what we’re all about. 

Elizabeth Eiss  50:36
And you can find me on LinkedIn, Elizabeth Eiss. And you know that that would just it’d be great to hear from anybody that wants to chat. And we do start our roles, and all of our engagements with a free job consult. 

Elizabeth Eiss  50:52
And so we’re not about selling I’m about making sure we’re a fit for you, and you’re fit for us. And so I ended up having a number of conversations with people just about what’s going on in their world. 

Elizabeth Eiss  51:03
And just like today, you know, where does freelance How does a freelancer fit into your organization?

Elizabeth Eiss  51:09
And if what we do and the freelance options were for you great. If not, then you’re walking away with more knowledge about how to operate in a very dynamic talent world. 

Elizabeth Eiss  51:20
So we’d love to chat with people that are curious to learn more. 

Pete Newsome  51:25
Perfect well thank you again so much. And if you have any questions for me, of course, we always appreciate it if you will review and, and rate us highly, of course, but you have reached out anytime at Hirecalling@4cornerresources.com.

Pete Newsome  51:38
And thank you for listening and look forward to being back on the air again soon.