Looking for a new hire?
No matter whether you hire freelancers, full-time employees, or use some kind of different model—this is for you.
The traditional way to hire someone is to write a job listing. Put it on your company’s site. Post it on LinkedIn. If you’re in tech, you might post on Wellfound or a similar website.
If you’re hiring a freelancer, you might also post on Reddit and UpWork. If you really want to get creative, you might post the job in role or industry-specific communities and job boards.
This works, sometimes. But there is a problem with the ‘post-and-wait’ approach…
Why you shouldn’t always look for freelancers on job boards?
The most talented people are rarely looking for jobs (especially not on job boards).
“This is obvious,” you may say. “It’s why recruiters exist.”
And while that is true, most people view recruiting—headhunting, poaching, whatever—as something you do when you’re making a seriously big-time hire.
Very few do it for every single person they hire. But we think you should try.
How do you find talented people for your marketing agency?
Two effective ideas:
- Find the LinkedIn pages of relevant companies you think have a high quality bar. Look for people that work for those companies in the role you’re hiring for.
- If you are hiring for a role that lends itself to externally-facing work (a developer, designer, or writer), scour places where these people share their work publicly. Substack is an example, if you are hiring writers—and find work you admire.
What’s next?
Once you’ve found people, contact them.
[email protected] usually works magic, but people with publicly-facing work will also frequently have an email listed somewhere.
Best of luck!
