The Freelance Talent That Enterprise Companies are Looking For

When I first started at Expert360 almost 20 months ago, the majority of freelancers on the platform were your traditional strategy consultants. Mostly these were the ex-Bain, Mckinsey and BCG management consultants, who were looking for more choice in their portfolio or flexible working options.

Fast forward to today, and the breakdown of talent on our platform is completely different. We still have top business strategy consultants, albeit it the vast minority of our base, but we also have top professionals across Project Services, IT, HR, Marketing, Finance, Deal Advisory, Operations, Technology, Design and more. Personally, I get a huge amount of interest from people in my network who are employed full time and want to hear how Expert360 can be used to source work, in a flexible way.

A key trend from our latest data pull found that demand for Data talent among large enterprise companies is growing quickly. Skill sets around Tableau, Data Management and SQL are among the most commonly requested.

I think we’re going to continue to see exponential growth in demand for Data expertise as organisations put Data Strategies at the top of their to do list.

In organisations where projects are broader and more ambiguous, the ability to assemble and disband custom teams of specialists will be a marker of success. We’re already seeing this in the financial services industry where large enterprises like CBA and ANZ are rolling out new operating models and ways of work across entire functions. We’ve also seen the rise in freelance Agile Coaches - those who can lead and manage these project teams.

Managing this flexible talent

Although tapping into on-demand talent means organisations can improve variety and speed to engage when it comes to their workforce, it does create a new challenge. The systems and processes that are in place to manage consultants and contractors are (more or less) the same systems and processes that have been in place for last two decades. Endless spreadsheets, and in some cases, I’ve even heard of businesses writing employee names on post-it-notes to scope out the capacity of full-time and contingent employees. Turns out, this can be easier to plan projects when employee information is scattered across various departments and software.

That’s why a freelance marketplace is only one part of the talent management puzzle. A bigger consideration for corporates and one we’re working to solve is how you manage the contingent workforce end-to-end; both those who are already on the books, and those you source via marketplaces such as Expert360. In my time at Drake International, the end to end Human Capital lifecycle was one I talked to every day and it’s great to apply this thinking again.

Ultimately, given less than half of Australians are in permanent full-time paid roles, businesses have to update talent management practices.

This must include new thinking around freelance on-boarding, off-boarding, compliance, performance management, payroll implications, engagement, retention to name a few.

For me, one of the most interesting implications is how this trend is going to impact corporate culture - across both the permanent and contingent workforce. For example, on the Expert360 platform, every freelancer that has completed a project for a client will submit an online review. For clients, this means that the opinion of your contingent workforce matters more than ever. Businesses need to be asking themselves questions like:

‘If the best Data Expert is considering our projects over the project posted by our competitor, who’s will they choose in this new world of choice?’

Without a solution in place, organisations will find themselves at a serious disadvantage as their competitors are able to tap into coveted resources. It could even be make or break for some businesses. For example, a retail company that can’t engage a freelance supply chain analyst at a time of new product launch, is going to lose sales opportunity. Similarly, a healthcare business that is unable to bring in a marketing specialist, might find their market share drops until they can get resourcing sorted.

As we’ve found at Expert360, on-demand specialist skills shift with market trends. So, it’s important for corporates to remember that it’s not just going to be a ‘set and forget’ solution, they need to be thinking short term and long term about their priorities, projects and this new asset - their contingent workforce.

So much has already changed in the last 20 months and I look forward to what the next 20 months will bring.