When you are running a business, there will be times when you need to hire a few extra hands to complete a project. However, hiring employees permanently might not be possible since you may not have any long-term projects to support paying their salaries. This is where the importance of short-term contract workers comes into the picture. They allow you to bump up your employee count when required, and to scale down when the business is going through a rough patch. But make sure to keep the following four things in mind when hiring such contract workers.
Do Background Check
An important aspect of hiring employees is to check their background. And with a contract worker, this becomes even more important. Ideally, you must check for their criminal records, credit records, presence in governmental watch lists, address verifications, drug tests, and so on. However, if you are planning to hire a large number of contract workers, then doing a background check on each one of them can not only be a time-consuming process but can also prove to be very expensive. As such, the best way to move forward is to hire professional background verification companies like ClearStar to do the job. Since they have a long history of checking the details of a large number of contract workers, they will be able to complete the background check in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Training
You also take into account the training that will need to be provided to the worker. Some projects may require a few days of training so as to do it efficiently. As such, workers must be flexible enough to absorb the new knowledge and do their assigned jobs accordingly. If any potential worker seems slow in adapting to new information and working processes, then it is better to avoid them.
Time Management
If you are hiring contract workers who will work freelance, then you should also check their time management skills. Ensure that they are punctual enough that they will stick with the deadlines that you set. Unfortunately, there is no way to know about their time management skills prior to hiring them. But once you do hire them, and you see that they are mostly late when meeting deadlines in the initial few tasks that you assign them, you may be better off avoiding them. In fact, you can also put a clause in the contract that allows you to fire them in case they are not strict in meeting the deadlines.
References
Always ask references from potential contract workers. Never hire a worker who does not provide you with references who can verify that they are good at the work they do. However, have an open mind about workers who are applying for their first job. Since they obviously won’t have any references, be open enough to hire them based on their talents alone.
And as long as you do keep the above suggestions in mind when hiring new contract workers, you won’t face much trouble in finding top-notch workers.