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What to Look for When Hiring an Independent Contractor

  • What to Look for When Hiring an Independent Contractor-

    Responsiveness

    Contractors may be offsite and not regularly seen by your team, so they need to be prompt in responding to all kinds of queries. They need to tell you and your team, often, what's getting done and how things are moving forward. Start gauging responsiveness and availability from the very first interaction you have with a contractor. If their replies and responses aren't coming fast enough for you in the hiring process, that's not going to get better once you enter into a working relationship.

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What to Look for When Hiring an Independent Contractor

  • 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
  • What to Look for When Hiring an Independent Contractor-2

    Responsiveness

    Contractors may be offsite and not regularly seen by your team, so they need to be prompt in responding to all kinds of queries. They need to tell you and your team, often, what's getting done and how things are moving forward. Start gauging responsiveness and availability from the very first interaction you have with a contractor. If their replies and responses aren't coming fast enough for you in the hiring process, that's not going to get better once you enter into a working relationship.

Do a quick tour of any HR or recruiting website, and you'll see at least one mention of the "gig economy." Recent research shows a growing number of Americans – almost a third – consider themselves independent contractors or freelancers. And the vast majority of those workers became free agents by choice, not because of economic conditions or layoffs.

What this means for employers is that a growing body of experience and skills is available on a contract basis from these workers. That's a huge boon for employers, but it's not without some pitfalls.

Hiring an independent contractor could be the perfect solution to your hiring woes, but you need to be just as diligent in screening these types of hires as you are traditional employees. In this slideshow, eaHELP's President Tricia Sciortino has identified the top five things to look for when hiring independent contractors.