How & Why Can Hong Kong Freelance Designers Become a Startup Success?

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If you have a start-up, you might have struggled with recruiting talents for your business. As most of the startups are bootstrapping with limited cash flow, hiring the right people at a low cost becomes a top priority. While hiring full-time staff is necessary, it is not always cost-effective and can incur substantial costs if they are not the right people for your business. Hiring freelancers, on the contrary, can help you reach out to the right talents fast and scale up your business in the most cost-effective way.

The notion that freelance workers are unreliable and can only help with short-term, low-value projects is outdated, as more companies are using freelancers for strategic, high-impact projects. They are getting ubiquitous across sectors too, for example, freelance designers, writers, translators and legal experts; just to name a few. Here are the reasons why you should start your hunt for freelancers now and how you can find the best freelance workers in Hong Kong to help you grow your business.

FEWER COSTS

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For startups, one of the main challenges is maintaining financial stability. Of all the expenses, startup recruitment for talents can easily drain up financial resources given the costs of recruitment and benefits as well as training. Over time, a high level of fixed costs can potentially break your business. Freelancers can be an affordable alternative, helping you not only to save the costs from searching and hiring full-time employees but also avoid unnecessary costs as they are flexible and only require payment per task, so you can better optimize your business resources during peak and off-peak seasons.

While freelance workers can help you save costs, you will also need something to convince the top talents to come. If you are on a lean budget and might not be able to offer competitive rates to entice the bright minds, you will then need to work hard on the intangibles to excite them. Money is still important for freelancers, but they will also be more than willing to work for companies with a meaningful vision that inspires them, clients and projects that expand their capabilities, and a good culture that respects and values employees. To increase visibility, you should start building your company as a brand and into a thought leader, for example, through a dedicated content and social media strategy across channels and for your company’s website.

TOP TALENTS AT A CLICK

Thanks to the internet, freelance workers are not bounded by geography and can be easily reached out to online. Most importantly, they have specialized expertise across areas, and in general, possess a diverse set of skills as they are working on different projects for businesses at the same time. Sometimes, there are projects that are outside the scope of your business, or related to potential new deals in areas that you are still exploring; you have no plans of hiring a full-time staff dedicated to those particular units, but also don’t want to miss out on valuable opportunities. In such cases, freelancers come in useful, especially when you are on tight deadlines and in need of a fresh perspective – which could be a huge boon to certain industries, particularly the fields of graphic designing where a freelance designer with diverse experience in different projects can sometimes bring the best work.

If you are searching for a freelance designer or a strategist with creative expertise, FreeHunter can help you find the freelancer of your dreams. FreeHunter is a social network dedicated to creative professionals from different industries in Hong Kong, including graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, etc.. With more than 2,000 creative professionals registered, businesses who want fast and quality creative work can source the right talents for their projects in a quick and direct way. To make sure you can attract the right talent, remember to research on what fair compensation for your contract jobs is so that you don’t undershoot the compensation to attract only underqualified and inexperienced applicants or post rates that are too high, ending up with candidates who are only after a big payday.

HIGH-QUALITY WORK ON TIME

Freelancers rely heavily on clients’ feedback to get more contracts and tasks done, so they would want to be reliable and give their best efforts to deliver high-quality work on time. Sometimes even when you have found the right talents, you might not necessarily get results that meet your expectations. Expectation misalignment is very often caused by ambiguities in deliverables and a lack of communication. To avoid frustration and misinterpretations, and enhance results, you should set out clear guidelines and expectations. If there are any specific requirements for the project, you have to explicitly lay these out so that the freelancers are well aware. You can also ask them for weekly or daily reports on what they have done so as to keep track of the deliverables. Do make sure to sign a digital contract and Non-Disclosure Agreement with freelancers, although some freelancing platforms already provide such services in their package.

Ultimately, if you want to fully leverage on the benefits of using freelancers for your business, you will need to thoroughly screen your candidates instead of solely relying on the feedback which might derail you at times with one-sided stories. You can always ask for previous examples of their work and request they provide references. A paid test project can also help you make sure they have the level of expertise for your project. As entrepreneurs scale their businesses, freelance workers can offer additional support when needed, without the financial risk of a larger full-time staff while able to deliver the right expertise to your projects in a fast and responsive manner.

Garage Society is a co-working office that houses entrepreneurs, business owners, freelancers, and professionals across sectors. Please feel free to contact us at any time to learn more or to arrange a tour at any of our coworking locations across Asia.

REFERENCE:

https://freehunter.hk/about-freehunter/ 

https://www.business2community.com/startups/right-freelancers-can-make-startup-successful-02024736

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/307408

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/287574