Table of Contents

1. Why Rent Talent? 
2. Keys to Finding the Right Talent 
3. The Interviewing and Vetting Process 
4. Hiring and Managing Tech Talent 
5. Bespoke Deals and Agreements 
6. Cost Comparison: FTEs vs. Freelancers 
7. Conquering a Remote World 
8. Checklist: Trends That Are Here to Stay 

____________________________________________________________________________

1. Why Rent Talent?

They used to say “hire slow, fire fast.” 

Then it was “hire fast, fire fast.” 

Mantras like these are born in reaction to the workplace realities of a given time. They reflect our approaches to management, operational strategy, and the job market in general. In a lot of ways, they are a sign of the times.

But workplace norms change faster now than ever, and today, we’re in need of a new mantra – one that reflects a glaring paradigm shift. One that reflects an entirely new work landscape…

Hire slow, rent fast.

That’s right - “renting” talent is the key to making smarter hires. The world’s leading startups, enterprises, and VCs are learning how and why.

Freelancers for Lean Startups and Beyond

The perks of freelancing are widely understood today, but for much of the past decade, smaller organizations were the only ones taking advantage of temporarily renting talent.

With the emergence of new business and development strategies in the early 2000s came new perspectives on work efficiency. Think agile product development and lean startup principles. The tech world in particular began rethinking many of the bureaucratic, outdated systems of the past, causing a shift in the way we viewed operational frameworks.

One method increasingly used by startups to stay “lean” was (and still is) to work with independent contractors to cut overhead costs and increase efficiency. Why pay for a full-time employee when you can outsource one-off projects for a fraction of the cost?

Of course, the renting-freelancers-to-stay-lean paradigm shift is still in effect today. But in the wake of a new decade, a new one is emerging – one that extends far beyond the startup world, to the largest of enterprises: 

Renting freelancers to buy time.

‍

Why rent? It’s simple... 

No matter the job market, quality talent is difficult to find. To land the best in the business takes time, and by cutting corners, you’ll only be cheating yourself. 

The ultimate key to a quality hire is patience. And by renting freelance talent to fill a temporary void, you’re buying time to let the stars align for that perfect-fit long-term candidate, without sacrificing work that needs to get done in the short term.

‍

The Cost of a Bad Hire

To illustrate the weight and importance of the “hire slow, rent fast” concept, let’s look at the most common alternative: settling for a less-than-optimal hire. Lots of research has been done on the immense cost of making a poor hire, both from culture and financial perspectives.

‍

Culture Costs

The crippling effects a bad hire can have on company culture and team morale has been well documented. The chances you find yourself dealing with this situation skyrocket when recruitment efforts are rushed. Companies often hyperfocus on hard skills when feeling pressured to make a hire. The leading question becomes, “Can this candidate get the job done?”

In order to find that perfect fit, a much more holistic hiring process is needed. The more appropriate question: “Can this candidate get the job done AND do they fit in with our company culture, plans, mission, and values?” 

Until this question can be answered with a resounding “YES,” no hires should be made. In the interim, if it’s imperative that work gets done that would fall under the responsibility of the new hire, well… that’s what freelancers are for.

‍

Financial Costs

It can be difficult to calculate, but research suggests the cost of a bad hire can be even more devastating to your pocketbook than to team culture.

When talking about the costs of a bad hire, the ripple effects extend farther than you might realize. As this infographic from Undercover Recruiter explains, your company will feel the financial burn in a handful of ways, from hiring and on-boarding, to compensation, to disruption costs, to employee mistakes, to missed business opportunities and more.

With all of these factors accounted for, Undercover Recruiter estimates that the total cost of a bad hire is north of $800k! And that’s just one bad hire who is making an assumed $62k/year and leaves after 2.5 years. The costs are sure to be much larger for a more senior role.

Now take that cost and consider how massive of a liability poor hires are at large enterprises. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has publicly stated that bad hires have cost his company more than $100M.

Facing Realities and Trends

The reality is that it takes a while to find the perfect-fit for your job opening, especially in the tech industry.

Today, the typical hiring process takes longer than ever before. In LinkedIn’s 2017 Global Recruiting Trends Report, only 30% of companies reported time-to-hire windows shorter than 30 days. Almost 20% of survey participants reported time-to-hire windows of 3-4 months – a whole quarter!

These numbers reflect hiring windows for a wide scope of employees, ranging from entry level positions to higher-level management roles. When it comes to top tech talent, the window is sure to be even larger, again considering the supply-demand imbalance.

It’s not just your company. It’s not just your recruiting efforts. Hiring takes time, and we have little reason to believe this trend will reverse any time soon.

TLDR: Hire Slow, Rent Fast

So making a bad hire is terribly costly, quality hiring takes time, and you need help immediately. Fortunately, through the advent of freelancing, this increasingly common predicament doesn’t have to be so painful.

Freelancers can be found quickly, require minimal overhead cost, and ultimately give you the necessary time needed to find the right full time person for the job. 

Welcome to the era of hire slow, rent fast.

2. Keys to Finding the Right Talent

Finding the right talent always starts with YOU, the employing party. It should come as little surprise that if you don’t know what you need, you won’t know what constitutes the right talent.

To that end, it starts with your role requirements. 

Role requirements are so important because as the hiring party, you only have a handful of tools at your disposal to narrow down your search. You must take advantage of every chance possible to filter out the noise and lock in on the right person.

Your candidate search (freelancer OR full-timer) is stuck at ground zero until your requirements are actually written out and communicated clearly. Without them, you have no starting point. 

‍

Role / Project Requirements 101

Perhaps the most effective element in finding the right candidate is clearly describing what success looks like in your job requirements. This does a number of things.

First, it creates that ever-so-important alignment between the two engaging parties. This is what the hiring party expects as a result of the candidate’s help. If the candidate believes he or she can deliver, then little is left to question once the relationship begins. Everyone will understand the intended end goals and expectations.

And second, defining success introduces a key element of accountability. Is the candidate putting in the necessary work to achieve the agreed upon definitions of success? Are they taking the right steps towards those goals? Questions like these are more easily answered when success is well defined.

‍

Where to Find Talent

Once your job requirements are written, where should you post them? Depending on the role and budget, there are a number of places you can take your search.

Job board sites tend to get the job done for lower-level, lower-paying roles. On these platforms, you search for the right fit, either by asking candidates to check out your posting, or by letting them come to you.

On the other end of the spectrum, high-end recruiters exist to match companies directly with pre-vetted and higher quality candidates. In this case, they take your job requirements and find the best match. This higher level type of service typically works better for more senior roles and higher-paying in which there is less tolerance for “bad” or “wrong” candidates.

3. The Interviewing and Vetting Process

This can be a robust topic – and since so much has been written on the technical questions to ask in an interview, or the best ways to conduct a reference call, we won’t go too detailed here.

Rather, we are best equipped to speak on what works for us which includes a close examination of technical skills, communication abilities, and social aptitude.

Selectivity and Patience

Through fielding hundreds of applications for tech talent, we’ve learned the harsh truth is the lion’s share of applications must be turned away. Selectivity is what can set apart a group of great interviewees versus a group that may be, quite honestly, a complete waste of time.

Selectivity requires patience, and that’s where so many companies break. This ties right back to the “hire slow, rent fast” mantra. If and when you’re hiring for an important decision, rarely does it make sense to rush to make an offer – better to trust the process and embrace the fact that sometimes it takes a while.

Vetting, Interviewing, and Matching

What does the search actually look like? Well, it depends on your process.

Companies that use a high-level matching service of course don’t need to worry about these steps because they are handled for you. To this end, the only real work for you is to provide the service with detailed role requirements (see Engagement Requirements 101 above in Section 3).

For those conducting their own searches, the same logic applies. The only way to properly vet and interview a candidate is to gain a deep understanding of the overlap between what they provide and what you need.

10x-level talent checks the box on all 3 of our matrix criteria: technical skills, communication abilities, and social aptitude. We’ve determined those to be the best predictors of success.

Of course, the more criteria covered, the better. But clearly defining your engagement requirements will give you clarity on who and what will get the job done. If it’s a low-touch, highly technical gig, technical skills are probably more important than social aptitude, for example.

4. Hiring and Managing Tech Talent

There are dozens of HR best practices for hiring and managing great tech talent. Here’s our shortlist of suggestions:

1. Communication: Define means of communication at the onset and be clear in what/when/how you want to receive updates.
2. Single Point of Contact: If a candidate has three people whom he or she needs to make happy and they have different goals and priorities, there is no way the candidate can succeed.
3. Evaluation: Regular review and course correction, especially at the beginning. Are they trending in the right direction towards your definition of success?
4. Treat Contractors Like Contractors: What contractors lose in W2 benefits they typically make up in exercising freedoms enjoyed by 1099 contractors. Understand and respect those freedoms.
5. Be Selective with Meetings: Once your talent is self sufficient and achieving 10x-level output, don’t bog them down with unnecessary meetings.

And now, our ultimate tip. More important than all else…

TRUST!

Hire talent that you believe you’ll be able to trust. And as a manager, continually check in on that instinct. Do you trust your team? Your employees? Your contractors?

Managing the best talent in the world means trusting them to do the job at peak performance. This is especially important for distributed teams. How has Github built a billion dollar business with a 100% remote staff? A handful of reasons. One we know for sure is that managers trust their teams to perform – with limited oversight.

This new wave of management is still rippling through various industries. The bottom line: The management style of decades prior is no longer a winning formula. “I want this back on my desk by 3pm today” is out. The power has shifted, and as the world’s most innovative companies have figured out, effective management requires much more give-and-take.

5. Bespoke Deals and Agreements

At this point, the data is concrete on employees’ growing desire to reap work benefits that weren’t even in play until the turn of the century. According to Harvard Business Review, for example, a typical worker would take an 8 percent pay cut to be able to work remotely. 

This exact tradeoff has started to play a bigger role in more and more negotiations over the last few years; remote work and flexible hours are consistently among the top items on employees’ and contractors’ wish lists.

To land the best of the best, companies and hiring managers should personalize job offers to fit the individual needs of candidates. Cookie-cutter job offers no longer get the job done, especially for top talent. Even in the toughest of job markets, they’re in high enough demand to negotiate remote and flexible work benefits in ways that were not as feasible in decades past. 

And remember – if your company is unwilling to make a bespoke offer to a great candidate, there are hundreds of other places that will. As top-tier candidates are learning, there’s no need to waste time negotiating with a company that hasn’t yet embraced this paradigm shift.

Embracing Flexibility

The notion that flexible employment agreements are only better for the contractor or employee is an outdated school of thought. Research on remote work and flex time have actually linked these perks to increased employee productivity and happiness.

Not to mention… Does the job really have to be done between the hours of 9am and 5pm? As most companies realize as they make the shift to remote, often the answer is a resounding no. 

With a mixture of great contractors, employees, and good management, the work is going to get done, no matter where or when. 

And to segue into our next section, note that a change in approach to job offer negotiations can actually be financially beneficial on the employer side. Take the pay cut-in-exchange-for remote work example mentioned above. Companies can save money by making concessions. Not to mention, they attract a much stronger pool of talent if they express a willingness to work with candidates in a bespoke fashion. 

As a closing thought here – both sides of the negotiation table should strive to inject empathy into employment agreements. Both sides have something to gain by embracing the shift to more personalized job offers.

6. Cost Comparison: FTEs vs. Freelancers

Hiring managers are sometimes surprised to learn the cost dynamics involved in hiring freelancers. All factors considered, contractors in the highest talent-class can be picked up for the same price as full time employees (FTEs) that may not have as much experience or ability.

Here’s a quick look at the numbers, comparing a freelancer who earns $150/hour and a full-time employee earning $135,000 per year.

Let’s make the assumptions that you are hiring both right now and that the freelancer and the full-time employee “work” the same amount of time over one year: 49 weeks per year (subtracted for vacation) x 40 hours per week = 1,960 hours per year Here’s how they stack up:

The simple comparison of $150 per hour for the freelancer vs. $135,000 per year for the full-time employee becomes cloudy. The extra costs associated with the full-time employee mean that in the first year, your full-time employee could actually cost more than your freelancer. How’s that for an aha moment!

7. Conquering a Remote World

Business leaders are waking up to the inevitable: remote work will define the next generation of 1099s and W2s. Companies that require employees to be in the office 24/7 will become the Blockbusters to a new wave of more innovative Netflixs.

‍

Remote Engineering Management

While shifting to remote work means big changes for many, how does it influence industries that were already used to this reality? For some, working offsite means only nuanced changes. We’re talking about the programmers and engineers of the world who have already been working remotely for years

This is a rich topic and one that can be written about at length. But here are a few pro tips recently gathered from remote engineering leaders from 10x Management.

‍

1. Assign story points with extra transparency and alignment

Typically in SCRUM, team members typically assign story points to work that moves from the backlog to their to-do list. Points are relatively arbitrary, but they allow stories and epics to be compared relative to one another in terms of difficulty and commitment.

A pro tip for engineering leaders using sprint planning: as the leader, assign your own story points before assigning work. Your understanding of your difficulty estimates (and your team’s ability) is of paramount importance – especially if it’s a new team, or a newly remote team. This “calibration period” allows teams and leaders to compare notes at the end of the sprint. 

‍

2. If a meeting doesn’t have an agenda, make it optional

How do remote teams meet and stay connected in a way that avoids disruption of the flow state? 10x engineering leaders tend to adopt a bespoke approach: If a meeting doesn’t have an agenda, attendance is optional.

The reason for this rule is twofold. First, it mitigates wasted time. Nobody wants their team to hop into a Zoom meeting with little structure and relevance to various participants. And second, just as importantly, everyone on the team is different and should be managed in a bespoke fashion. If you want or need casual check-ins unrelated to work, that’s totally understandable. If you’d rather keep your head down and continue working, that’s fair too.

‍

3. Productively manage Zoom and Slack

Thousands of teams are using Zoom and Slack right now, but there are ways to optimize the usefulness of these tools.

First, Zoom. Sometimes the simplest advice is the best: take notes during your Zoom calls! With live communication, always seek to document the subsequent action items that were discussed. Otherwise your Zoom calls will just slow down progress.

And now, in a similar vein of organization... Slack. The instant communication tool is great for getting productive conversations going. But once an important message scrolls off the screen and a few days pass, it can be near impossible to track it down. 

Some expert engineering leaders use a tool (i.e. Buku) to mark important messages in Slack. As the team leader, this is a crucial tool for keeping track of important work, ideas, tickets, and/or messages.

‍

4. Treat security seriously

Business leaders in all industries should take security seriously as we embrace the shift to remote work. We’ve written about some standard security measures to consider during this time, and our client added to our list.

Expert tip: Disable any SMS-based 2-factor authentication. Cybercriminals use a dangerous technique called SIM hijacking, in which they can take over your phone to access sensitive information. If any of your team's apps use SMS-based 2FA, they could be at risk of exposing sensitive company information. Better to disable it whenever possible and make sure it doesn’t happen.

‍

The Bigger Picture with Distributed Engineering Teams

Engineering teams around the globe were built for a remote world. To this extent, they are among the best equipped to handle the sweeping paradigm shift to remote work. Of course, as new tools, security threats, and best practices emerge, even the best equipped must refine their skills. Staying on top of the latest trends is part of being a great engineering leader.

‍

Remote Security Management

To piggyback on pro tip #4 in the above section, let’s dive deeper into the importance of security for remote teams.

The overarching theme here is that enacting a remote work policy is not always as simple as it sounds. By rapidly changing operations, companies expose themselves to data breaches, inefficient workflows, poorly integrated product stacks, and more. Nipping these risks in the bud early on is critical for success in this shifting work landscape.

Here are some top-priority security recommendations from a cybersecurity and remote systems expert via 10x Management. Some overlap with others, so landing on a solution ultimately comes down to your own company and situation:

1. Audit networks for remote access security
2. Implement non-SMS-based 2 authentication (2FA)
3. Set up Virtual Private Networks (VPN)
4. Implement secure remote employee access to corporate applications
5. Run your corporate desktop apps in the cloud
6. Integrate internal systems securely with remote systems
7. Run an analysis of the best tech to adopt

As with all things security, it’s a matter of proactivity, as opposed to reactivity. The sooner one or (or a few) of these systems are in place for your remote teams, the better and safer off you’ll be.

8. Checklist of Trends That Are Here to Stay

To close out, let’s briefly recap some of the most trends that were touched on throughout this hiring / talent management guide. Consider how these trends and best practices will continue to shape the future of work, and what that means for your company. Will you adapt or let the moment pass you by?

• Today, the average hiring process takes longer than ever. To fill the void while you search for the perfect candidate, consider “renting” talent.
• The cultural AND financial costs of a bad hire can be detrimental. Waiting for the right person is worth it, even if it takes a long time.
• The better your understanding and communication of what you need in a new hire, the better chances you’ll find a great match quickly.
• Managing the best talent in the world requires a strong trust instinct, especially as the business world goes remote.
• Cookie-cutter job offers aren’t enough and the power balance is shifting. Top tier talent is in high enough demand to find employers that will listen to bespoke requests.
• Your cost comparison between FTEs and contractors should go deeper than just rate vs. salary. For companies hiring freelancers, savings may add up substantially (depending on the situation and work at hand, of course).
• Remote management is a new beast for many, but the tricks of the trade can be learned. For starters, make sure a secure infrastructure is in place for your company to function at full capacity from anywhere in the world.

Some Final Thoughts on The Future of Work

For decades we’ve been speculating what the future of work will look like. In the past couple of years, that foggy vision has rapidly become clearer, as we hope this guide makes clear. We’ll leave you with one final concept, of which you may already be familiar…

The Adjacent Possible

The “adjacent possible” was coined by American author, Steven Johnson in a famous 2010 article published by the Wall Street Journal. He describes it as the following:

“The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.”

Business leaders, managers, and innovators should always keep the adjacent possible in mind. Strategizing around this concept leads us to better understand what it will mean to be competitive tomorrow, in 6 months, in 2 years, in 5 years... so on and so forth.

The diffusion of innovations over the past handful of years has completely changed the game. Tech, tools, best practices, workplace norms, talent demand, and more have not only shaped our lives… they’ve shaped today’s adjacent possible, too.

So here’s the question to be answering...

What will you do to leverage the resources and practices of today to be a step ahead of the game tomorrow?