Over the last decade, the question of who to hire among individual freelancer and agency has been what most organization must face as new product and project evolves. Nowadays, several freelance platforms offer most organization the ability to tap into talents without restriction to their respective locations.
The question is, how do you find the right freelancer and at what price? Which of the freelancers would be better to do multiple jobs: individual freelancer or agency?
It is known that working with both freelance agencies and individual freelancers has merits and demerits. This article will educate you on the arising issue of who to hire between an agency and a freelancer as it will assess their respective pros and cons.
The first step is to set some important questions as guidelines about the project to be executed.
The question of nature, budget, goals to achieve, and complexity of the project desired should be asked before choosing among the two. The selection will then be based on individual’s needs as the two are exceptionally good and highly reputable in their various activities.
Hiring an Individual Freelancer
Here are the merits and demerits of hiring an individual freelancer.
Pros
On average, hiring individual freelancers is highly cost effective in contrast with the cost of hiring a freelance agency. Individual freelancers set their own reasonable rates based on the type, and length of the project. The rates can either be hourly or fixed.
Most times, individuals venture into freelancing because they are specifically talented at various niches skill-sets. This means they sell the skills they are very much good at. Hiring such professionals will always give you an assurance that your project is in good hands.
Hiring individual freelancers will enable you to have complete control over your projects. Individual freelances are qualified professionals who are flexible enough to build their schemes around your priorities and needs. They work based on the instruction given and not out of their own discretion.
- Allow Participation in the Creative Process
Hiring individual freelancers allow you to participate in the creative process. In as much as you have direct communication with them, you are highly involved in the whole process. This allows the freelancer to ask questions and in the process, future pitfalls as well as unsatisfying result can then be minimized.
- Allow More Freelancers to Be Hired
As the project move on, you may require more professionals to speed up the project. Relying on individual professionals will give you the opportunity to out-source the other part of the project to other freelancers.
Cons
Individual freelancers can work with several clients at a time. Because of many jobs pilling up at their desks, performance, deadline commitment, and professionalism may be affected leading to less satisfying outcomes. Therefore, the quality of the project may be at risk.
- Difficulty with Replacement
One of the pitfalls of hiring individual freelancers in the difficulty incurred in the process of replacing them. This arises when your best hands quit or disappear completely due to reasons best known to them. As such getting them replaced in the middle of the work may prove difficult. This is because the recruit may want to go through the template laid by the previous freelancer and may slow down the process.
Due to time zones, illness and other reasons, individual freelancers may be unavailable when you needed the most. For example, if your time zones are quite different, you may require their services at a point of time which the freelancer is unavailable. In the process your project might be disrupted in one way or the other.
Hiring individual freelancers rather than employees working in-house can be extremely challenging. You may need them to get familiar with your business, market, customers, and confidential information about your company. This can greatly affect the status of your investment as you are about to rely on strangers.
Hiring a Freelance Agency
Here are the merits and demerits of hiring a freelance agency.
Pros
There is no such thing as ‘I’ in team work. This is regarded as the biggest advantage of hiring a freelance agency. It allows client to access full multi-faceted team of professionals that are capable to deliver quality works. Hiring a freelance agency will totally give birth to well-polished products than anticipated when individual freelancers that are not working as a team.
Freelance agencies have several bodies. They monitor the task given to each freelancer under them. The project manager will help to manage, handle, track hours spent on the project, and provide feedback to the client. You do not necessarily need to have direct contact with the freelancers working for you. As a result, clients will have more time for other important business dealings to attend to.
- Long-Term Project Relationship
Hiring a freelance agency with set of specialized skills will give you an assurance of success to take on more projects in the nearest future. Therefore, client will have assurance on long-term project.
- Speed, Pool of Experience and Efficiency
Freelance agencies have well incorporated, invaluable, experienced and efficient team of individuals working together to deliver high-quality projects. Because of this, they make project to be faster to meet your specific need.
Cons
Hiring freelance agencies is generally more expensive than hiring individual freelancers. This is because of multiple services that are simultaneously rendered as the contract is requested as they must pay their respective workers, office spaces and lots more.
Although, you need not to meet them at their physical locations, most of the freelance agencies usually have respective offices which can be in a substantial proximity to clients. One way or the other the project assigned may suffer due to this.
Conclusion:
Both individual freelancers and freelance agencies are worth the stress of DIY. There is no correct answer in between this context. In general, both can perform exceptionally when assigned to do projects in their respective fields.
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