Hiring a Contractor: A Step-by-Step Guide

Interested in hiring a contractor or freelancer but unsure where to begin? Our Senior Contract Recruitment Consultant Ceri Whitney has compiled a comprehensive step-by-step guide on what to expect throughout the process.

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1. Identify the support you need

It’s never been more popular for clients to use contractors or freelancers across Marketing, Digital, Creative and Tech. The most common reasons client’s approach us for contract or freelance support is for:

Short-term support for peak business periods or projects as you may not want to add to your permanent headcount
Long-term support such as maternity, paternity, paternal leave, sick cover and holiday
To drive costs down and keep ROI more manageable
The hiring of a permanent member of staff is too long and you need support now

2. Get in touch

But what to do next? - Get in touch, of course!

Here at The Candidate we offer extensive knowledge and guidance to help you through every step of the way. After conducting our own independent research we found that the main barriers a client faces when coming to hire a contractor/freelancer are: unsure where to even start, IR35 regulations, costs and time to embed.

Our team of expert contract recruitment consultants are on hand to help you with all these points.

3. IR35

IR35 status i.e whether it is Inside IR35 or Outside IR35 - we can provide you with the information on how to conduct this report as this is extremely beneficial when sourcing contractors/freelancers.

There are exemptions for small businesses - if you satisfy two or more of the following requirements:

It has an annual turnover not exceeding £10.2m
It has a balance sheet total not more than £5.1m
It had an average of no more than 50 employees for the company’s financial year

For more information, visit our IR35 online resource page.

4. Agreeing Rates/Budgets

There are two ways in which you can take a contractor on, either a Fixed-Term Contract or on a Day Rate so be mindful when planning your budgets:

Fixed-Term Contract

Usually a minimum of three months
The contractor would come under your payroll and would be entitled to annual leave and company benefits after your relevant probationary period
The fee would be calculated on the annual starting salary which would be pro rata for anything less than 12 months

Day Rate

The contractor/freelancer would be classed as either: a Limited Company, Sole Trader or operating under a Umbrella Company
We invoice you for the hours/days worked and then pay the individual
We ensure that all business insurances are already in place before they are due to start
Candidates operate with a day or hourly rate which we then add our agreed margin on top of to cover the daily management of the contractors and payroll administration
Candidates aren’t entitled to employee benefits such as sick pay, holiday pay, pension etc.

5. Sourcing Contractors/Freelancers

We have access to a huge pool of talent across the whole of the UK by utilising various resources such as: our company website, Social Media and LinkedIn, job boards, and word of mouth.

Candidates who look for contract/freelance work all have different availability so knowing how quickly you are wanting someone to start is key (it goes without saying, the more notice we have the better… but we are accustomed to those “I needed them yesterday” types of bookings!).

6. CV’s/Portfolios and Interviews

Like any position we recruit for, we will also run through the candidate details and send over their CV; but be mindful that a contractor/freelancer’s CV may not follow what is considered to be the ‘normal’ layout or have the same in depth content due to candidates having worked on several projects previously or even having multiple clients at any one time.

The market moves extremely quickly and candidates can be available one minute and gone the next, so we also encourage clients to act fast before you miss out. Think about how you would like to conduct your interviews and how quickly you can be available for these to take place.

7. Contractor/Freelancer starts their role

As I said, our team of Contract Recruitment Consultants will be there every step of the way and even after the candidate has started we will continue to check in on their progress. You may also find that due to the amazing work they are doing you want to extend them, pre-book them for a future project or even take them on permanently.

For more questions and information, please don’t hesitate to contact us!