Hiring the top 1% of contractors for your agency 🤝

Welcome back to The Agency CEO (by me, Jesse Gilmore at Niche in Control).

Every Thursday, I send you a quick 10-minute read on the tools, tactics, and systems that the top 1% of agency owners have used to scale their businesses to 8-figures and beyond.

This week, we’re talking about how to hire the top 1% of contractors.

Let’s dive in 👇

Hiring the Top 1% of Contractors

At one point or another, any scaling agency will find themselves in a position where they need the support of one or more contractors.

This is a good thing! Delegation is key, remember?

But, finding and vetting the right people can be a headache if you don’t know where to start.

So, to save you some trouble, here’s our simple 5-step framework for identifying, sourcing, and hiring the top 1% of contractors…

Step 1: Clarify Your Business Needs

Despite this being the most important step, this is one that most agencies may rush through. 

Avoid the trap of hiring the most convenient contractor available, and instead take the time to define if you really need additional support, exactly what it is that you need, and how long you’ll need it for.

Consider:

• Do you actually need a new employee/contractor for what you’re trying to accomplish? Could someone you’re already working with take this responsibility on?

• Are there any process improvements or automations that you should put in place before bringing on a contractor?

• Will the role be ongoing or temporary? How long will you need this contractor for?

Block off some time to answer these questions before moving on to Step 2.

Step 2: Understand (and Document!) the Contractor’s Goal

The goal of a contractor is to leverage their strengths against your weaknesses. To do this effectively, you need clear, documented expectations and quantifiable success metrics. 

Clearly define what these are, and include them in the contractor’s job description before publishing. When everybody understands the expectations up front, misunderstandings are minimized and engagements tend to go A LOT smoother.

Upon beginning work, set weekly or biweekly check-ins to track progress against the goals and metrics you set at the start.

Step 3: Leverage Staffing Flexibility

Having defined our needs and expectations, we can now think through how to best leverage the staffing flexibility that contractors offer. One of the biggest perks of hiring contractors is our ability to adjust demand without the fixed costs associated with employees. 

As such, we may want to hire either a generalist or a specialist contractor, depending on our needs.

• Generalist contractors are not necessarily specialized in any one area, but are capable of handling a variety of tasks and assignments.

  • This would include VA’s, administrative assistants, etc.

• Specialist contractors have deep expertise in specific areas and, as a result,  are generally priced at a higher rate.

  • Examples of specialist contractors would include media buyers, copywriters, and graphic designers.

With the full scope of the support that we’ve defined in Steps 1 and 2, determine whether or not these responsibilities require a specialist or could be covered by a generalist contractor with some initial training.

Step 4: Source Wisely

Where you source contractors is, in many cases, going to be determined by the skill level required for the role.

• For low-level skill or specialty tasks such as administrative work or data entry:

  • Try local job boards, Craigslist, or Upwork.

• For medium-level skills or specialization, including writing, editing, or project management:

  • Try Upwork, LinkedIn, and Indeed.

• For highly-specialized skills such as media buying or niche-specific expertise:

  • Post requests on your social media, leverage Quora and Facebook Groups, and try searching on niche-specific message boards.

Step 5: “Date Before You Marry”

One of the best tips that I can give you here is to implement some sort of practical test to assess candidates’ abilities in “real-world” situations that mirror the job.

The easiest way to do this is with a paid trial. You can begin the engagement with a half-price paid assignment as a test of abilities. 

The reduced rate somewhat de-risks the earliest stage for you, and the paid nature of the assignment demonstrates good will (unpaid assignments are not a great look) and provides incentive for the candidate to do their best work and prove themselves.

Hopefully, the above provides you with a broad, useful framework for hiring great contractors - it’s worked pretty well for us (and the hundreds of agencies we’ve helped scale 😉)!

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Until next week! 👋 

Jesse & team.