Tag Archives: talent

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260% Hiring Increase Propels Freelancers Beyond Flavor of the Month

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Mellow, a global contract and payment services platform whose customers are Freelancers, consulting companies and independent contractors, revealed in Their latest report a startling 260% increase in overseas hiring of Freelance workers by U.S. businesses from 2022 to 2024. The report indicates that the projects were also outside of the U.S. and that skill sets in highest demand included engineers, technical writers, analysts and website developers. The organizations for whom the Freelancers worked were Mellow contractor-of-record clients, based in the for U.S. and with 50-200 employees, categorized as Small and Midsize Enterprises (SME). The Freelancers hired were based in regions with emerging economies, primarily Central Asia, the Middle East/North Africa and Eastern Europe.

Mellow researchers interpret the big picture of their findings as confirming the centrality of Freelance workers as essential participants in a global trend that demands flexible work models and as a standard that will ultimately benefit U.S. based Freelancers. Rather than replacing U.S. workers, Mellow investigators see the predominance of flexible work models as creating new opportunities for both businesses and individuals in the U.S. Mellow emphasizes that the Freelancing surge is not about offshoring, but rather about decentralizing work and enabling businesses to be more agile, competitive and profitable.

Freelancers are a core business strategy

The advantages inherent in flexible, ad hoc, project-specific work arrangements were already apparent to both Freelance workers and the organizations that hire them, and the practice was already well established and growing in acceptance and popularity when the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to reconsider their work models and shift their employees into Work From Home mode. The pivot spotlighted the value of both remote work and the availability of a talented and reliable Freelance workforce. Organization leaders now widely recognize the logic of employing temporary talent for specific projects and this acceptance has brought revisions to their strategies for talent acquisition and workforce management. Freelancers are no longer regarded as just a short-term fix, but instead as a strategic advantage that delivers tangible benefits in today’s layoff-prone environment.

Talent management within an organization is no longer considered primarily an HR strategy and is now recognized as a core business strategy that owners, entrepreneurs and executives must recognize. The data makes it clear that organizations are welcoming Freelance talent and the shift isn’t just about cost savings; it’s also about responding to the need to be agile in a hyper-competitive marketplace that includes the realities of a periodically unpredictable labor market.

Market research company Grand View Partners estimates that global Freelance marketplaces such as Mellow, Fiverr, Guru and Upwork will have a 17.7% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for the period 2025 to 2030, according to their recently published Market Analysis Report that examined the market size, share and trends of Freelance platforms. Industries setting the pace and providing a template that other companies can follow include Edtech, out front with an average hiring rate of 108 Freelancers and advertising companies, with an average Freelance hire of 34 contractors.

U.S. Freelancers thrived during difficult years

The years 2022-2024 were challenging for many American workers, executives and business owners. Numerous lay-offs, persistent inflation and widespread hiring freezes came on the heels of the coronavirus shutdown. “Quiet quitting,” the great resignation and persistent demands to return to the office—a condition that many employees find unnecessary, if not unacceptable—dominated the echoverse.

The unrest motivated many companies to adopt a flexible approach to getting the work done and increasingly, company leaders acknowledged that Freelance professionals are uniquely qualified to provide the skills their organizations needed. The inclination to hire Freelance workers also aligns with agile business strategy that likewise requires a flexible, capable and cost-effective workforce that drives innovation, growth and profitability.

 In a January 2023 survey of 1,000 U.S. business leaders of companies with more than 50 employees, Resume Builder showed that 40% of those companies hired Freelance workers to replace laid-off employees and 53% convinced some of their full-time employees to accept Freelance positions, in order to remain employed.

Return-to-office and lay-offs poised to increase Freelance opportunities

Lay-offs have been announced by Hewlett Packard, Grubhub, Meta and Chevron; meanwhile, RTO mandates have been repeatedly announced, most notably by J.P. Morgan, along with Amazon, Dell and Starbucks, all of whom are cracking the whip and herding the last of their WFH employees back into the office. As unpleasant as all that sounds (at least to me), Freelancers are positioned to obtain clients and potentially generous billable hours that result from lay-offs and RTO mandates that are ignored. One door closes and another door opens.

Data from Upwork, the Freelance marketplace used by both Freelance workers and the companies that hire them, shows that Freelance labor is 30-60% less costly than W2 employee labor; the latter entails costs such as payroll taxes, social security payments and vacation and sick time, while the former option enables company leaders to pivot into a flexible workforce arrangement rather than lay-off W2 employees (and perhaps face media scrutiny). Furthermore, Resume Builder data also shows the rise of a strategy called “quiet hiring,” that is demonstrated by the 37% of companies that had recent lay-offs and hired Freelancers to replace laid-off workers.

Regarding RTO mandates, the advantages of Freelance talent are not exclusively limited to remote arrangements. In fact, the in-person Freelance model is a fast-growing segment. Spurred by front-line workforce talent platforms specializing in retail, hospitality and even factory workers, in-person Freelance gig workers are solving significant challenges for industries known to suffer from high rates of employee burnout and churn.

The Freelance future is bright

The demand for Freelance talent is expected to energize the employer side of the equation as evidenced by the predicted 17.7% CAGR within 2025 the SME and large enterprise business categories. The rise of start-up businesses and entrepreneurship in general contributes to the increasing demand for Freelance talent, as detailed in the Upwork Freelance Forward 2023 report, that noted Freelance labor contributed $1.27 trillion to the U.S. economy in annual earnings and also noted that 38% of the U.S. workforce, or 64 million Americans, performed Freelance work as either a primary or occasional source of income.

Start-ups often have limited budgets that constrict their ability to hire full-time employees for every role. Fractional executives, who are Freelancers who serve companies on a C-Suite level, are also taking hold at start-ups and Freelance and fractional workers provide start-ups and SME businesses with an affordable way to access high-quality talent on a short-term or project basis. The scalability of Freelance hiring models makes it easier for entrepreneurs to manage fluctuating or unpredictable workloads while maintaining high-quality standards without exhausting financial or labor resources. The ability to hire specialized Freelancers enables start-ups and other businesses to remain nimble and efficient—agile—which is essential for their growth and survival in highly competitive markets.

The success of Freelancing is perhaps best summed up by data from Mellow which reported that in 2023, the average monthly income of Freelance workers in their report grew by 18% and grew by another 23% in 2024. Mellow’s data also confirmed that the way to earn billable hours is to take on more than one client at a time (but you knew that).

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: ©Epic Records. Singer-songwriter Minnie Riperton (1947-1979) in the cover shot for her gold album Perfect Angel (1974)

Professional Development Leave a comment

The Smart, the Talented and the Lucky

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The fickle randomness of the phenomenon called luck fascinates me.  I wonder why luck seems to so often reward people who don’t seem to deserve its favor and punish those who are good and hardworking people.  Luck is maddeningly capricious.  Who among us has not worked and planned and calculated the possibility for the success of a certain project, only to have it fall through and at another time, be amazed at the success of another project that has been given only casual thought and little effort?

I know quite a few people who’ve been very, very lucky in life.  Some have made the most of their good luck and others have squandered it (but they still do sort of OK, because they are lucky).  I’ve noticed that other than a man with whom I worked for a number of years, who was often very lucky and acknowledged his good fortune, people who are lucky do not believe in luck.  They actually believe that they can make all sorts of wonderful things happen all by their lonesome.  Some tell me that they pray and their chosen Deity answers their prayers.  Some tell me that they visualize what they want to happen and so it is given to them.  Still others claim that they always plan carefully and their plans yield the expected results, nearly always.  Riiiiight!

What my fortunate friends do not realize is that the answer to a prayer can be “No,” that plans can fall apart because they often depend upon certain critical factors falling into place, that is, good luck is an unacknowledged ingredient of the plan; and that one can visualize a future that seems fully attainable, not at all grandiose and yet the process can yield nothing but daydreams and disappointment.

My lucky pals are as clueless as The Fool pictured above, because they can afford to be.  I have seen certain of them (metaphorically) ready to step off a cliff when the ground somehow rises up to meet them so they do not stumble.  In my life, when in a similar circumstance, I’ve been thrilled to see a nice bridge appear to rescue me, only to be horrified when it turns out to have been built by the folks who engineered the amazing bridge at Florida International University.  Sigh.

In a 2017 study conducted at the University of Catania in Sicily (Sicilians absolutely believe in luck and if you are Sicilian or Italian—yes, they are different!— you will know this to be true).  Alessio Biondo, Alessandro Pluchino and Andrea Rapisarda created a computer model of 1000 virtual people.  Some of the virtual subjects were given more intelligence, talent, or money and others less, in an attempt to simulate real life.  During a 40-year “career,” certain virtual subjects received “lucky events,” i.e., opportunities to boost their careers that their intelligence or talent could help them exploit.  But some were made to suffer “unlucky events” that took away some of their career advancement and money.  At the end of the 40-year “career,” the scientists examined the characteristics of the wealthiest virtual people.

The results showed that while intelligence, talent and wealth play a role in the achievement of success, those who rose to the top were almost always the recipients of “lucky events.” Lead researcher Alessandro Pluchino wrote, ” It is evident that the most successful individuals are also the luckiest ones and the less successful individuals are also the unluckiest ones.” The study also reinforced the validity of the Pareto Principle, known as the 80/20 Rule, meaning that 80% of the wealth in the virtual society wound up in the hands of 20% of the population, as it does in real-world societies.

That 80/20 distribution does not correspond with the distribution of intelligence and talent. “The maximum success never coincides with the maximum talent and vice versa,” noted the researchers. “Our simulation clearly shows that such a factor is just pure luck.”  Pluchino and his team showed this by ranking the virtual subjects by the number of lucky and unlucky events each experienced in their simulated careers.  The most successful individuals had the most good luck and the least successful had the most bad luck.

So now what? Do those who are short-changed by good luck just roll with the punches? I mean, these findings, although most likely accurate, run counter to the American can-do, Horatio Alger spirit.  One must take charge of life and never knuckle under to unfortunate events or unsavory people.

I suggest that the best way to bring good luck, or at least minimize bad luck, is to introduce Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese system, into your home and office.  Eight years ago, I wrote about exploring Feng Shui.  You can play catch-up here.

In short, start by cleaning and organizing your home and office.  De-clutter and organize because qi, good energy, likes order.  Give yourself a harmonious environment and you are almost guaranteed to feel more relaxed, less frazzled and more confident.  Because you will become more calm and centered, you’ll function more effectively in your professional and personal lives.  I think it could be successfully argued that you’ll be positioned to more easily recognize both potentially good and bad events along your path.  You can then gravitate to the former and avoid, or at least mitigate, the latter.

Feng Shui will probably not replace an overabundance of bad luck with good fortune, but you’ll most likely be able to grab whatever good luck crumbs come your way and that’ll be about as good as it’s going to get.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: The Fool, from the ancient tarot card deck. In a tarot card reading, The Fool represents one’s potential and abilities and also new beginnings.  He is young, lucky, light-hearted and blissfully unaware of potential limitations and danger.

Marketing , , , , Leave a comment

Freelancers: Agile Talent For Your Organization

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While cruising through the Harvard Business Review online http://hbr.org, I happened upon an article that told of a most interesting book that has good information for Freelance consultants and those who hire us.  Agile Talent was written by two experts in the talent development, leadership and strategic HR fields,  Jon Younger and Norm Smallwood and published just last month.

The book was written as a guide for the growing number of organizations that rely on professionals like us to come through in the clutch and get the job done,  on time and within budget.  Getting the most out of a team comprised of internal and external talent is the book’s theme.  I read an excerpt and confirmed that within,  the book contains as well a few pearls of wisdom for you and me,  primarily providing us with a new and improved way to package and promote our services to potential clients.

As Smallwood and Younger point out, so many organizations–for-profit and not-for-profit, late-stage and start-up, large and small–continue to rely on Freelance consultants to augment their lean workforces when insufficient expertise (or time) exists in-house.  Salaries are a large fixed expense on Income Statements and organizations for 30 years have been loathe to hire a worker unless the skill set is frequently needed to keep the business operating.  The authors provide useful recommendations to those who hire,  collaborate with or manage the external talent,  so that good outcomes for all parties can result.

Agile Talent Freelancers allow organizations to access the services needed only for the scope aand length of time that the organization requires.  We bring great insight, heightened productivity and relevant experience to countless organizations.  Yet organization decision-makers and those with whom we collaborate are sometimes unsure of what to expect from the arrangement with the agile talent,  or how to successfully onboard and work with us.

In order to maintain or expand our billable hours,  it is imperative that we are able to anticipate how the relationship might go off the rails and come to an unfortunate parting of the ways.  Before encountering a prospective client,  we must communicate our benefits  to them.  Packaging and promotion are essential when selling an intangible service.  Intangibles are the most difficult sale and in the knowledge economy,  these specialties represent a large percentage of B2B sales dollars.

So how can we exert some measure of influence and get ourselves paid?  It is aalways necessary for us to sell our expertise,  trustworthiness and usefulness.  When organizations are faced with a….

  • Project
  • Challenge
  • Opportunity

….the agile (or external) talent tag line gives us another way to communicate our benefits to decision-makers.  Incorporating the resonant buzz words makes us look smart and capable and makes hiring managers and project sponsors feel that they’ll look smart to superiors and subordinates when they bring us on.  Inertia,  that is,  tabling a decision indefinitely because leaders lack the confidence to move forward except in the most obvious emergencies,  is the  Freelance consultants most formidable competitor.  Anything that we can do or say to persuade prospects to become clients is a win-win.

Thanks for reading,

Kim