Avoiding a Nightmare Freelancer

I talk often about nightmare freelancing clients. Sadly, there are a lot of them. However, as the job market worsens, more people are turning to gigging out of necessity and some of them have no clue what they are doing. They're happy to take your money and ghost you, which is something you don't need. How can we avoid this?

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Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com and now here's your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. I'm going to try to keep it short and sweet today. I'm still in the writing process, and in some respects, that's like the birthing process. You're you're growing something, you're trying to make an original contribution to knowledge and some days, anyhow, in today's episode, I really want to talk about how to avoid a nightmare freelancer. I've talked numerous times, and have an entire hall of villains about nightmare freelancing clients, people like Mike the micromanager, Ned the needy, Teddy, the tailgate negotiator and so on. As I've predicted before, numerous times on the air, when the job market goes in the dumper, and it is in the dumper, I do not care what these hot air hopium and Bs nonsense statistics are telling us, the job market is in the twilight. It is a very, very tough time. And I've also said before, it's tougher for me in 2024 than it was in 2020 this has not been a pleasant year, and I assume that part of the papering over and the covering up and the hoo ha is because we're in an election year, so it's tough. And whenever the job market is like this, you have people turning to freelancing gigs not because they want to, but because they feel like they have to. They perceive it as a place to go for, quote, easy money, even though it's not, and they're continuing to look for full time permanent employment while they're gigging. And there's not anything wrong with that, to be emphatically clear, I think it's a matter of ensuring that your clientele is aware that you may not be as available as someone who is really, truly a full time freelancer. And then also, if you were to land a full time permanent job and you were in the middle of gigging, what would happen to those clients that you were gigging for? How much attention is really going to be paid to their project if you need to start another job quickly? I have some questions around all of that, as a business owner, with inflation being the way that it is, and then as a freelancer myself, where it feels like you have to work twice as hard to get half as much, and then the half as much that you do get doesn't go half as far as it should. Sort of like what Kennedy said about the farmer having to pay the freight both ways. It's tough. It really is. So I'm considering it like this. Every dollar I spend, I'm really thinking of it as being five. So if something's $20 I think of it as 100 if it's 100 I think of it as 500 and I take it very seriously, because you have to. But probably Everyone that owns a small business, or everyone that's a solopreneur with business expenses is nodding their head right now, you can't afford to be frivolous, and you can't afford to make foolish financial decisions in a market like this. You'll get wiped out. You just simply won't make it. And part of that involves when you need to hire good help, or you need to outsource a project to a freelancer. How do you navigate around people that don't care? They're lying about their credentials, etc? I myself do not believe in unpaid testing. I think that's dirty pool. There was an article that I talked about, I think, over on the job market journal, I could be wrong. So much writing, so many venues, and then the book, my brain is just a little bit like a melted ice cream sundae at the moment, but in one of the places where I write, I talked about this article where some CEO or CMO or whatever the hell, basically telling these Gen Z kids work for free whatever you need to do to land that first post college job, even if it's taking an unpaid internship, just do it. Just grovel for that job. And I'm like, how are they going to afford to live if you just go somewhere and work for free? How are you going to be able to live? Our culture is so mealy mouthed about things. On the one hand, these kids are told just work for free, grovel, beg and lick the corporate boots in order to get your first job. But then at the same time, you're some kind of failure to launch a loser if you're still at home with mom and dad, well, how the hell are they going to move out? If they're not making any money, to use the phrase de jure, come on. Man, come on. Man, anyway, as a business owner, when you're spending this money, you want to make sure that the Freelancer you're hiring is doing a good job. You don't want to do unpaid testing. In my opinion, I do not think that's the way to go about it. You can always opt for a paid test or a paid exercise of some kind. I'm a results oriented person myself. I don't really get into the whole What do you pass ass. I hate that question. Seriously, whenever I'm talking to a potential freelancing client, if they want to get in the weeds of what's your process? What are you going to do? Walk me through A to Z Oh. I'm like, Oh, this is not going to be a good fit. I'm a much better fit for clients who say, I just want the end result. If the project goes well, here's what's going to happen at the finish line. I can work with that, but somebody that wants to get into every nuance and oh, yes, I just hate that. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard for me, because I feel like saying, Well, does it really matter what my process is? I've been doing this for over a decade. Clearly, my process works. Otherwise I wouldn't be successful. It's not about the process for me. I really don't care what that Freelancer is going to do. I don't care if they stand on their head and gargle with peanut butter at the same time. As long as I get the end result that I want and that we've agreed upon, that's what really matters. So the proof is in the pudding, and that's one way I think that a paid test or a paid exercise of some kind can be so useful. There's an old saying, Money talks and Bs walks, and it's so true. One of the things that I'm noticing on the freelancing market is it's not only that you have a flood of people coming in. Excuse me, every time I get on my voice tries to break totally fine, until I get a microphone in my hand.

It's not just a flood of people coming in in general, it's a flood of unqualified people. It's people that I can do anything I'll do. I'll do anything. I can do it. I have no background, I have no credentials, I have no experience, but I'm desperate for your money, so I'll claim that I can do anything you want. To be really careful with people like that have no experience, no expertise, no degree, nothing related to what they're purporting to be able to do. So for me, one strategy is ask really insightful questions during the interview process. Ask something that you feel like or based on your own expertise, you know that only someone with similar expertise is going to be able to answer that question correctly? Some people will be honest. Well, no, I really don't have experience doing this, but I need a gig. A lot of people won't be that direct. However, it's up to you to suss out who's telling you the truth and who's running a scam. Paid testing can be an opportunity for you to say, All right, I'm going to take two hours at your hourly rate, and I want to see what you come up with, or I'm going to set a particular dollar amount that we agree upon, so that everything's fair and above board, everybody's in agreement about what's going to happen, and then give them the space to perform the task, if they ghost you, if they turn in sloppy, shoddy work, then at least you know you have some idea before you've gone off the deep end with this person and trusted them with your project, or paid hundreds or 1000s of dollars, at least you're only out that small amount, and you haven't Put yourself in a position where this person is going to really and truly rip you off. It's sad that we have to think in these terms what we really do. It's hairy out there, not only for somebody that's looking for a job and can't find one, but for somebody like myself that depends on freelance labor as a solopreneur and a small business owner having so many unqualified people submit proposals that make no sense, that ghost you, that give you obviously dishonest answers, you have to have a way to separate the wheat from the chaff quickly. And for me, what I have found in my experience, I always say, I don't give you advice, I don't tell you what to do. In my experience, asking really good, insightful questions, not not being in too big of a hurry to hire somebody. Even if you need somebody urgently, you still want to go through a list of questions to make sure they know what they're talking about, and that your expectations are clearly communicated to them. Everybody's on the same page, and then having some kind of paid trial to really see when the rubber meets the road, what kind of results can they produce? Stay safe, stay sane. Keep your money safe, and I will see you in the next episode.

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