Finding the best freelance talent with curated marketplaces

AN increasing number of people are hopping off the corporate ladder to find more flexible work arrangements. This way of working provides ample benefits and allows individuals to be in charge of their own workload.

It is an attractive option for workers and short-term talent is in high-demand for employers. CareerBuilder’s 2017 forecast described how more than half of employers were seeking contract workers, a 47 percent increase from the year prior.

In order to meet this demand, today we are seeing a much larger talent pool of freelancers willing to provide their services and expertise. Business and financial software company Intuit, has estimated that by 2020, 43 percent of the US workforce will be freelance.

An increasing amount of industries are jumping on the gig-economy bandwagon- even industries such as banking and accounting are expected to become more gig-centric in the near future.

“These are industries where the perception of ‘expense versus value’ persists, and so more gig-centric tech businesses will start to appear. ‘Expense versus value’ is now much easier to calculate with the wider flow of information and industry knowledge,” Nick Erskine-Shaw, co-founder of 90 seconds, a cloud video production platforms that connect brands with skilled creators told Tech Wire Asia.

But with this rapidly growing gig-economy, comes the issue of an overcrowded talent pool. Freelancers are located in large unregulated pools, leaving much of the gig economy in a grey area. How can businesses figure out which freelancer is best for their company? And equally, how can workers connect with a brand that best suits them?

Curated marketplaces can solve this problem, allowing organizations access to vetted talent for a more consistent and successful experience.

With the gig-economy vastly expanding, companies are quickly coming to the realization of needing to include more quality control in order to ensure better work from their freelancers.

“As the marketplace evolved into wider industry verticals, customers saw multiple uses as part of their daily lives. This, in turn, increased expectations on service delivery and quality control, most common among service businesses,” explained Erskine-Shaw.

With the use of curated marketplaces, the best possible outcome can be assured for both parties.

“Curation brings certainty on value delivery and also allows demand side to look at higher price purchasing. From 90 Seconds’ perspective, over the years we have moved from smaller transactions to seven-figure deals with large global enterprise brands, who are confident to invest in our Global Production Marketplace thanks to the curation, quality and value we deliver,” added Erskine-Shaw.

An increasing amount of marketplaces are also harnessing the power of curated algorithms to make better matches between freelancers and clients.

“We recognize the power of prescriptive analytics, which is why everything we do now is based off systematic data, collected across over ten thousand jobs, to improve our hits on matchmaking,” says Erskine-Shaw on describing the potential of curated algorithms.

According to the co-founder of 90 seconds – which has over 16,000 creative professionals on the platform- curation is key to the success of a marketplace:

By first building up on our database, we were able to back our technology with algorithms that make informed decisions tailored for different needs and characteristics of our customers.

As more and more workers go freelance, the competition for higher-level talent is bound to intensify, and there is no doubt that curated marketplaces will be valuable in finding the right worker for a job.

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