Freelancer vs Offshore agency

In today’s competitive world of business everyone recognizes the need to have virtual remote employees. This trend of hiring remote employees for companies has been growing rapidly over the years. The benefits of such employees are undisputable. Not only do they help the company by saving costs but they also bring in a lot of quality and talent that might just not be available in the local area. So we understand the need for going offshore to fulfill business requirements. So, how does one go about acquiring themselves a remote employee? Well, there are two popular ways to getting yourself an employee in a different part of the world. You can either employ the service of an offshore staffing agency or you can simply work with freelancers. Both these methods are not new to business territory. But let’s have a quick look at them nonetheless. A freelancer is an individual who is self-employed and often work from project to project without offering any long term commitments to those who hire them. Whereas an offshore staffing service is an agency that you work with to recruit and manage members for you. Both these approaches to get your work done are used widely and each have their own pros and cons. In this post we’ll discuss the advantages that hiring an offshore agency has and how it might give you an edge over hiring a freelancer.

There is no question that when conducting any kind of business cost is always one of the priorities. Any company would want to save as much as they can to make profits, and a freelancer is without a doubt the economical choice out of the two. They don’t need to consider any overheads while quoting their price to you and because of it they might appeal more to any company. Whereas when you hire an offshore staffing agency, they provide you with the necessary office space and other infrastructure, which understandably makes them costly. But what might appear to be a huge drawback on paper is actually a blessing in the long run. Let’s take a look as to how.

You save yourself a lot of time and trouble when you entrust the responsibility of screening and recruiting employees for your company to your offshore agency. Recruitment for any company, whether it be a single member or a whole team, is a diligent task. It requires a lot of time, energy, focus and patience. So letting your agency handle it for you is a major advantage for your company. Offshore staffing agencies are committed to provide you with the most skilled of professionals from a large pool of applicants. They have a thorough screening process in place to ensure you land with the best of the bests. They provide you with the top choices and you get to hire the ones you deem fit for your company. You completely avoid the hassle of going through various freelancing sites and then finding and selecting the best individual as per your requirements.

Furthermore, these employees hired are chosen based on the needs of your company, they have the necessary skills and experience required to work for you and deliver quality output. Whereas you may not get the desired result from a freelancer even after carefully selecting them for your project. An offshore agency, additionally, not only readies the staff for your company but these employees work just for you. While the agency might recruit them, these workers are employed by you and work according to your instructions. You have control over their working hours as well as the work they do. They are completely dedicated to you and are properly supervised to ensure efficiency. They are also equipped with the requisite tools to work in a proper office space. This often results in delivery of high quality work with deadlines being met.

A freelancer may abandon your project before finishing, but you can depend on your offshore staff because they work only for your company. They are in your employment for as long as you require. You even have the room to scale them as you need. If your work requires additional members, the agency can hire more for you. If you need to scale down, it can be done too. You need only to communicate with your staffing agency. Lastly, your trade secrets are secure with the offshore staffing agency. A freelancer may or may not sign any documents to ensure confidentiality but an agency will make every employee they hire sign NDAs. You can rely on them for safeguarding your company’s work with legal guarantees.

An offshore staffing agency is almost always the safer bet when hiring remote employees. They make work easier for you when they manage your employees for you while at the same time delivering quality results. The agencies work in tandem with you as you focus on the work and they focus on management. It is definitely the better choice if you are looking for hiring more than one employee. Freelancer may be the smarter choice when dealing with a single project for one person, but if you are a small or medium enterprise looking for a team offshore, invest in an offshore staffing agency. They will be worth your money in the end.