The Benefits Of Hiring A Freelancer On LaborX

Instead of going through a lengthy recruitment process, which may ultimately prove unsuccessful in any case, one alternative is to hire freelancers to fill an immediate skills gap. There are lots of websites and agencies that offer to connect freelancers with businesses. However, there are various problems with these. Can companies find reliable freelancers at the right price? Do those freelancers have the right skills for the job? What quality control is there on freelancers – or conversely, does the website unnecessarily exclude suitable candidates? What fees will the platform charge?

LaborX is an open freelancer platform, built on the blockchain, that solves all of these problems and more.

1. Access to a global labour market

Freelancer websites are generally run by companies that have a presence in a particular jurisdiction. As a result, they draw from large, but necessarily limited pools of freelancers, and often filter their users by various arbitrary criteria.

With LaborX, you have access to a truly global labour market. Because it’s built on the blockchain, there are no restrictions around who can set up a profile and offer their services or post a job. No one is unnecessarily excluded because they live in the wrong country, or because payment providers don’t work or can’t with certain groups of people.

At the same time, LaborX allows users to filter who they work with. A secure reputation system, based on blockchain transactions, user-provided data, and feedback from completed jobs, enables anyone to check how reliable and skilled a freelancer really is – or, for a prospective employer, to check their track record to see what it’s like to work with them.

Thanks to this, LaborX’s employers have access to tens of thousands of freelancers, located all over the world, offering many different skills and a range of prices. There’s someone available for every task and every budget.

2. Emphasis on blockchain talent

Certain sectors are experiencing particular difficulties when it comes to recruiting good people. The blockchain industry has struggled worse than most, since there was already a shortage of experts before the latest explosion of interest. It takes years for someone to learn everything they need to access the best jobs in the space, and months at least to get started in a decent entry-level role. For most blockchain projects, the only way to hire someone suitable is therefore to poach them from another organisation. This is obviously unsustainable and has driven up compensation to the point where the best blockchain developers can expect to be paid $200,000 or more, and experienced marketing professionals well over $100,000.

Freelancers of all kinds use LaborX, and customers can find someone for almost any job. However, as a blockchain platform, it has naturally attracted plenty of talent from the crypto space. If you’re looking for a blockchain developer, or someone with experience of digital marketing or communications in the sector, it’s a great place to find what you need – and to test out someone on a shorter project before offering them more extensive work.

3. Flexibility

LaborX started out as a freelancer platform, connecting employers with individuals interested in gig work and short-term opportunities. However, the reality is that most businesses are still looking to fill their recruitment needs with full-time employees. Consequently, LaborX started exploring permanent recruitment arrangements too.

This flexibility makes it an ideal way to find good people and make sure they are suited to the job before offering them a full-time contract. There is a huge amount of risk involved in hiring new people, especially for sought-after roles in the blockchain space, which command high salaries and competitive compensation packages.

Hiring someone on a freelance basis is an excellent way to start a commercial relationship with them, check out their strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately decide whether they’re someone you’d want on your team full-time. If so, you can upgrade to a permanent position. Alternatively, you can keep using them on an ad hoc basis.

4. Crypto payments

LaborX uses cryptocurrency to settle payments for freelancers’ work. There are a number of benefits to using crypto, including:

• Fast, efficient payments to anywhere in the world – in contrast to the slow and generally expensive system used for international payments by banks.
• No restrictions. Anyone with an internet connection can receive crypto. This means the significant proportion of the world that lacks banking facilities (the ‘unbanked’ or ‘underbanked’) can still find employment and provide work, rather than being excluded through no fault of their own.
• Payments are irreversible, so cannot be tampered with by payment providers, who may cancel or block transactions just because they involve a particular country.
• Transparency. Users can check immediately if a payment has been made, and generally payments are available to spend within minutes.
• Highly convertible. LaborX supports multiple cryptocurrencies, all of which can be exchanged for other cryptos and local currencies for withdrawal to bank accounts and other payment systems, or that can be held on-chain as an investment if preferred. Stablecoins are also supported.

5. Smart contract protections

LaborX removes the middlemen who make conventional freelancer recruitment slow, expensive and inefficient. By using crypto payments and smart contracts – code that runs on the blockchain – the trust-based processes used by regular freelancer sites are replaced by decentralised, trustless ones.

Payments are deposited to an escrow smart contract by the customer before work begins, and held there securely until the freelancer completes the job. Once the customer approves the work, the payment is automatically released. This ensures employers can’t get away with refusing to pay for work. At the same time, there is a dispute resolution mechanism, so if a freelancer does not provide work of the required standard, or finish the job in the required time, the customer is able to recover their payment.

Engaging with the gig economy

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the change in working patterns, with more people now being prepared to work from home and pick up part-time tasks rather than commute to the office for a 9-5 job. Companies are understandably finding it hard to fill their vacancies, since they have not yet adapted to this new norm. By embracing the gig economy, rather than ignoring it or trying to work around it, companies can remain competitive and find the people they need.

LaborX provides access to tens of thousands of freelancers, all around the world, with robust smart contract protections and efficient crypto payments. Browsing the listings of freelancers is fast and easy, so it’s straightforward to choose the right person for the job and try them out on a short-term basis. If they work out well, there may be the opportunity to hire them full-time. Either way, LaborX reduces the risk and increases the convenience of recruitment at a difficult time for employers.