Many places face IT worker shortages, which means the contractor market is often the only place they can go. Fortunately, there are contractors for virtually any role. With that in mind, below is some essential advice when it comes to choosing and hiring IT contractors for your specific needs.
Know Where to Look
With so many alternatives available, where to find IT contractors can seem like a daunting task. After you've figured out your job description and the ideal candidate for the position, you need to make sure you're looking in the correct places. Places like Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, and Craigslist are often the first stop, and while each site has advantages and disadvantages, there are other resources out there such as Onsiter that specialize in IT contractors. The previously mentioned sites are far more general and it is more difficult to know who and what you are getting when you look for people using these mediums.
Start By Defining the Job
Before you engage an IT contractor, make sure you know what kind of job that individual will be doing. Is he or she a stand-alone employee in charge of building and maintaining your entire network or someone with specialized cybersecurity skills that will be added to an extant IT team within your organization.
Regardless of the position you wish to fill, you should spend time learning about and defining all aspects of the job, including who will be in charge of the contractor and who they will report to; the KPIs that will be used to evaluate their performance and make future compensation and hiring decisions and what kind of training can you provide them if it is required. Additional training is often one of the most overlooked aspects of hiring IT contractors and one which can present significant time delays if not properly ironed out from the beginning.
Know Your Ideal Candidate
Understanding the position is a good start, but you also need to figure out who the perfect contractor is. Consider the qualities and experience required to carry out the job description. Is a college diploma required for your candidate? Is it necessary for that individual to be proficient in a certain programming language or to have some other minimum qualifications?
After you've narrowed down your ideal candidate, consider other variables such as their ability to operate on the same schedule as the rest of your team. Many eligible freelancers may reside outside of the United States, which means they may be in a time zone that is quite different from yours.
Conclusion
Finding the right contractor is a matter of knowing what you’re looking for and where to look. You need to have a clear idea of the role you expect the contractor to fill, the skills required to perform the role’s duties, and where such people might be located. If you can define all that, you can make good use of contract IT labour every time.
