Outsourced employees can save your company more time than you think.
Hiring employees can be one of the most time-consuming tasks you will have to face as a small business owner. Between posting ads on job boards and interviewing potential candidates, choosing an employee to work for your company can be exhausting for you and your HR team.
Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives available to hiring an employee. The technology era that we live in has surprised us with many advancements and has also brought remote workers. Remote workers are experts who work from home to assist companies worldwide, saving you part of your budget and freeing up some valuable time for you and your teams.
In this article, you will learn a few platforms and options where you can find outsourced employees willing to work from the get-go. Most of these professionals do not require any equipment, and some of them are considered experts in their fields. Keep reading to find out more.
Hiring Outsourced Employees
With a quick web search, you can find many different workers from around the world that can help you fulfill specific tasks within your company. But where exactly do these workers come from, and what are their credentials? Depending on the link that you click, you may get some of the following results:
Employment Agencies
Temp Agencies
Freelancers
Virtual Agencies
Most of these options involve contacting an intermediary, like employment agencies, but freelancing eliminates the mediator completely, making the service lower its costs. Depending on your company's needs, you may choose the latter to save some money, but it is easier to match you with the right employee by going through any of the agencies.
Employment Agencies
According to Investopedia, Employment agencies are organizations that do the legwork for employers. They post positions, find and match employers with temporary and contract employees. These agencies may earn fees from any employer, whether public organizations or private companies.
This definition also includes the availability of these types of agencies. They can work either for a company, like a recruiting department, or for regular people, like a job board. Their skills and knowledge of several companies allow them to "perfectly" match a candidate with the right company.
Employment agencies are best used when you have already tried to find a candidate for yourself or want to save some time and a little money in the recruiting process.
The recruiting process is lengthy and may consume a lot of your budget. You are destining your employees' time to find the right match for your company, but that may mean that other areas of their work may suffer a little bit. Let an employment agency work for you so your employees focus on what matters.
Unfortunately, employment agencies tend to be the last resort. Their scanning and recruitment abilities are not as good as other types of agencies, and they will match the candidate with the most affinity, not the best candidate.
Temp Agencies
We will first dive into the actual definition of a temp agency. Also known as a temporary employment agency, a temp agency connects businesses and workers who need a job for a short period of time. Many enterprises use these firms to fill their ranks as their duties are more project-based. Examples of these companies include catering agencies, contractors, graphic design, and printing.
While businesses contact temp agencies to get employees for a limited time, they also save on equipment or benefits they provide. On the other hand, employees may contact temp agencies to work between regular jobs or make a little money on the side. Freelancers and traveling workers are also known to reach these types of firms.
Virtual Agencies
Virtual assistants are experts in their fields that can help your business with any task your regular employees or yourself don't have the time to do. In contrast to temp agency employees, VAs are trained in several areas like marketing, sales, customer service, graphic design, and much more. Depending on your company's needs, you can find several VAs willing to do those tasks for almost half the price.
In addition, you can hire a virtual assistant for an indefinite time. Some VAs have a project-based schedule and will only work for you for the project's amount of time. In comparison, other VAs can work on your core tasks indefinitely. The more time your company hires a VA, the more you will save in the long run versus hiring a new employee or a temp agency. You can also interview your potential virtual assistant before they start working with you.
Freelancers
Last but not least on this list are freelancers. Freelancers are remote workers who prefer to manage everything on their own, making them one of the most reliable workers in the market. The only downside to freelancers is their vast availability. Websites like Fiverr or Upwork can help you find hundreds of freelancers with just the click of a button, which is great, but finding the right employee is challenging.
With hundreds of options, different prices, and dozens of portfolios, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information you will have to revise before choosing a freelancer. This variety of alternatives may become the same process as hiring an employee. Sure, they work only by project, their cost is lower than a regular employee, and they will professionally complete the task you need, but you will first need to scour websites in order to find the right one for your company.
Even recommended freelancers may be different from what your company needs. One last tip about freelancers is that if you find one that is a great worker and does the things that you like and need, you should try to work a deal with them.
The Alternative to Hiring Employees
There are quite a few alternatives when it comes to hiring an employee. The fact is that you can even learn to do the needed tasks yourself, but that is time you are not going to get back. Small businesses run on two essential factors, time and money. If you can spare part of the first one to learn a new skill, that is great, but as a business owner, you know sometimes that is not possible.
On the other hand, you can spend a little of your monthly budget to hire an outsourced employee. These professionals can help you complete vital admin tasks to help your company grow while you spend time doing what you do best, running a business.
Contact us if you want to know more about New Age Cubicle and our amazing virtual assistants! We are eager to get in touch with you and find a solution to all your admin problems, regardless if they are related to marketing, sales, medical billing, or bookkeeping. We are here to help.