Episode 219: My Hiring Case Study

On today's episode of the podcast I continue the Hiring Series with a case study focusing on my own latest hiring process.

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Last year I did Part 1 of the Hiring Series (start with the first episode of Part 1 here) and now I am continuing my Hiring Series Part 2. If you missed the start of Part 2 last week, go back and check out Contractor Laws State-By-State. Today I am diving into Module 7, Lesson 5 of Profit Rx with info on Contractor Onboarding and my own personal experience with hiring my latest contractor.

Recently I was following a discussion on Facebook of an interior designer who hired a photographer for photos of their designs. The photographer asked why the designer wanted to send her a 1099, and the majority of photographers in the comments said no, she shouldn't get one because she was a contractor and was hired to provide a service. Even if you do not refer to the person you hire to do a project as your contractor, in the eyes of the IRS they are. When I hired my brand photographer, Crystal, it's a Contract Labor expense in my bookkeeping and on my tax return. I could also call the fee I pay my brand photographer a marketing expense. Either way, she's a person, who is not an employee, that is doing work for my business.

In my business I also have contractors who work with me on an ongoing basis. I have a community manager, a marketing manager, a copywriter, and a tech VA. Each of these individuals have their own businesses and work for me on a weekly basis. With contractors, sometimes it comes down to semantics. I would refer to my photographer Crystal as a project-based contractor and the other contractors I mentioned as on-going contractors. A project-based contractor will typically have their own process and should have a contract for you to sign. When it comes to on-going contractors, it may mean they fail parts of the ABC test and we want to provide them our own contractor agreement and run them through a more formalized onboarding process if we are able.

I'm regularly chatting with friends who seem to have a revolving door of on-going contractors in their business. At this time I've had two contractors going on two years, one for over a year, and one is a recent hire. To be honest, I think my flexibility, trust and systems are what helps me have a consistent team. To be honest, I think a lot of business owners could be a lot less uptight, but that's a conversation for another time.

I recently hired a copywriter. I posted a job listing in the Facebook Group Virtual Assistant Savvies looking for an hourly VA that is a very strong copywriter with a primary task of writing regular email newsletters and membership course launch emails and I asked them to DM me a writing sample. Below is a copy-paste of the original post, edited after closing.