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When, Why and How You Need to Hire a Freelance Project Manager

Written by: Daryl James

Article Overview: Most successful outsourcing buyers post their first freelance project to fill a specific skill need or budget gap on a particular project, finding a skilled worker or two and seeing the project completed successfully. Then, as success breeds success, their needs continue to expand and more freelance professionals are eventually hired. Suddenly, these outsourcing buyers find themselves managing a growing remote workteam, which is usually more demanding than anticipated and ultimately a resource stress. If you are feeling overwhelmed by the requirements of keeping your remote workteam in motion on an outsourcing project, perhaps you need to consider hiring a freelance project manager.

When, Why and How You Need to Hire a Freelance Project Manager

Most successful outsourcing buyers post their first freelance project to fill a specific skill need or budget gap on a particular project, finding a skilled worker or two and seeing the project completed successfully. Then, as success breeds success, their needs continue to expand and more freelance professionals are eventually hired. Suddenly, these outsourcing buyers find themselves managing a growing remote workteam, which is usually more demanding than anticipated and ultimately a resource stress.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the requirements of keeping your remote workteam in motion on an outsourcing project, perhaps you need to consider hiring a freelance project manager. A good freelance project manager minimizes the direct management required on the outsourcing manager's part, allowing them to leverage their time and expertise more wisely.

As an outsourcing buyer, you have two options when hiring a freelance project manager, searching through entirely new freelance candidates, or promoting a promising freelance professional from within your existing workteam. Either way, you need to be looking for exceptional communication skills, business savvy, leadership experience, and technical expertise.

If you decide to hire a freelance project manager from a pool of new outsourcing candidates, you will also need to determine whether this pool will include candidates from provider companies within the outsourcing network, or from the entire network itself.

If you do hire your project manager from an internal provider company, you need to be aware that they will tend to hire from within their own provider network. The downside of hiring from within one's own provider company is that there may be better-qualified freelance professionals for the specific task elsewhere on the wider backbone of the outsourcing network. The upside of hiring from within one's own provider company is that, while you are remote, your project manager could be on location with his workteam members, allowing for closer and more effective management. Another upside of provider company selection is the manner in which a provider company can quickly move the right freelance professionals into and out of your workteam as the project requires.

Once you've selected your freelance project manager, take the time to provide them with in-depth training on your outsourcing projects. Give your new freelance project manager “hiring manager” or “recruiter” privileges and ask her to build your workteam. Pay attention to whom they interview and hire and why, being sure to discuss how they handle initial outsourcing recruiting decisions, and offering guidance as needed. Set clear goals, deadlines, and metrics for outsourcing success, staying in close communication, never hesitating to reward top-quality freelance results.

While the entire process of hiring a freelance project manager and entrusting them with a greater role and responsibility in your company's success can sometimes feel overwhelming, it's really a good problem to have, as it indicates a very successful start to outsourcing that is sure to continue the trend.

Related Articles
  Top 5 Qualities in an Outsourcing Company
  Integrating Your Virtual Freelance Staff with Your In-House Team
  Why Freelance is a Term Every Business Owner Should Know
  How to Make Better Outsourcing Decisions
  How to Conduct Effective Outsourcing Interviews

Article Tags: backbone, budget gap, communication skills, downside, entire network, freelance professionals, freelance project, gap, leadership experience, outsourcing buyers, outsourcing project, pool, provider companies, provider company, provider network, skilled worker, stress, success breeds success, technical expertise, workteam



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