QUESTION: I just started the process of getting a freelancer to help with the activities that are time consuming, but do not really generate revenue for me. I hired three freelancers and gave them a project to find contact information for me, and one of them proved to be really good. What are duties do you generally have your freelancers do that would free up more of my time? – Jeff
ANSWER: Great, great question. I always tell my clients, if you are in the $200,000 to $400,000 range as a biller or you want to be, your time is worth anywhere between $200 and $400 an hour billable. Meaning if you divided all the fees, $300,000 or $400,000 a year, by the amount of time you worked.
The biggest mistake many recruiters make is they think they are saving money by doing it themselves. Or they are convinced that they are the only one who really understands the profiles they are looking for on LinkedIn. I agree that you understand them better than somebody who is not yet trained. However, once you develop a researcher or sourcer, you liberate that time almost forever, and then you can even expand it.
One of the things you can do if this works out really, really well and you start out taking on more searches, and your freelancer that is working out really well but does not have enough time, you can pay him or her to train another freelancer that is almost as good. Just pay them a little bit extra.
Another way, not necessarily with a freelancer that is going to research, but a freelancer that is a good administrative person that you can hire to update your database. In my office we had a full time administrator who would update our database with all of the data sheets we completed. One or two things happens in most recruiting firms today the database never gets updated. The data either stays on paper and then it gets lost, or the recruiters update it themselves.
My advice would be to find a freelance administrator, because this can be done virtually. Simply scan your data sheets and send the PDF file for them to update the database. Now, you might not want them to put every note that you made. Use a highlighter to indicate the things you want. Whatever the system is that you create, once you train and develop them to put certain things in, then you can have them update and code your database.
If you have part of your database that has not been touched in two years, but you know eventually you might get a search there. You can just have a freelancer go through and call to see if they are still there, maybe even give them one-on-one training on recruiting to find out if they can get a resume, nothing too in depth. That way when you get a new search in that other area, it is going to be a clean database that potentially has updated contact information.
Those are just a handful of ways and ideas you can leverage yourself. Thanks for the question.
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