What to Know Before Hiring through a Talent Marketplace

If your organization is not already using a marketplace to find independent professionals, you may be missing out on great talent. Talent marketplaces—online platforms that connect independent contractors with projects—are continuing to grow in popularity. In 2023, 40% of independent contractors said they used a talent marketplace to find work and 47% said they planned to do so in the next 12 months.

6 Effective Strategies to Attract the Best Talent

What are the Benefits of Using a Marketplace to Find Independent Talent?

Marketplaces can help businesses help match the supply and demand of labor, lower recruiting costs, and reducing time-to-fill. However, when evaluating a marketplace, it’s important for companies to proceed with caution. By law, independent contractors cannot be engaged or treated like traditional, W-2 employees. If the IRS or state agencies suspect that workers have been misclassified, your company may be audited.

Whether you’re looking to use a marketplace for the first time, or you are already working with a marketplace provider, ask these five questions to ensure you’re gaining the maximum benefit as well as protecting your company from misclassification risk.

1. How do you ensure independents are qualified and vetted for work?

If you engage a worker as an independent contractor, but it turns out that this worker should be classified as an employee, your company will bear the risk of worker misclassification. This can lead to some detrimental consequences including lawsuits, fines, penalties, and reputation damage.

Many talent marketplaces today simply match clients to contractors. They don’t provide qualification services to ensure that the workers are, in fact, self-employable. As a result, these platforms aren’t enterprise-ready. Independent contractor classification is a complex topic, dependent on many federal and state-level tests, laws, and guidance documents. Enterprises must adhere to these laws—no matter which marketplace they use.

It is therefore very important to do your research and ensure the provider you choose to work with is fully vetting independent contractors. MBO’s platform, for example, is the only direct sourcing solution that’s backed by the proven independent contractor compliance vetting and engagement expertise of MBO Partners.

MBO offers many different engagement options that are designed to appeal to a broad range of independent work engagements and worker types. Our qualification process is current and extensive. Before a contractor begins work, we offer a thorough due diligence process to ensure compliance with state and federal contractor classification requirements.

Learn more: Achieve Compliance with a Flexible, Streamlined Talent Engagement Strategy

2. What are the integration capabilities of the talent marketplace?

Not all marketplaces are able to integrate with existing procurement systems. To avoid incurring additional expenses, dig into the technical capabilities of the marketplace you’re considering. For instance, MBO’s marketplace seamlessly integrates with leading VMS technologies to distribute job postings directly to known talent pools, enabling faster talent identification and engagement.

3. How are contractual requirements reflected in the onboarding process?

The onboarding process can often make or break the engagement experience for independent contractors. Finding a balance between crafting a positive experience and getting projects up and running quickly is key. For example, in order to properly manage risk, it is important to ensure that independent contractors you wish to engage meet the necessary insurance requirements.

Independent contractors value freedom, control, and flexibility in their work; a marketplace that provides an accessible system that automates tasks such as onboarding, payment, and engagement documentation can help create that positive experience both for talent and your company.

When independent contractors are satisfied, productivity and interest in re-engagement increases. MBO’s onboarding process is customized to meet client requirements and ensures those requirements are followed throughout the entire lifecycle of the engagement. Our unique onboarding site educates contractors on the engagement process and accelerates enrollment time, ensuring compliant engagements and a quick start to your projects.

Check out: How to Streamline Onboarding Independent Talent

4. Does the marketplace offer value-added services and benefits to increase independent contractor satisfaction?

In addition to getting independent professionals to work quickly and compliantly, it is important to make sure that the process is a pleasant experience for both the client manager and the talent. When independents are happy, they are more likely to come back to your company for future work. Independents place high value on the opportunity to learn and build new skills. They want to work in a positive environment, they desire reasonable processes and procedures, and they want managers to value and respect their work.

Your talent marketplace should help to prioritize these points of satisfaction. Treat independents with respect, help them complete the project they’ve been engaged to do, and assist them in growing along the way. This extra care and thoughtfulness will go far in building trusting, lasting relationships.

MBO provides additional value-added benefits for independent contractors, such as access to portable benefits and a dedicated business manager to offer proactive service and advice. Providing independent contractors with back-office support enables a positive engagement experience and sets the precedent for a positive working relationship.

5. What services continue once a contractor completes a project?

Marketplaces tend to disintermediate a direct working relationship between independent contractors and the enterprise. That type of transactional exchange doesn’t always foster a desired long-term collaborative relationship built on trust and cooperation. The marketplace you choose should work to create a growing pool of talent that can expand with your company’s needs.

Independent contractors who are satisfied with their client relationships are more likely to return for future work. Re-engagement with proven contractors will save organizations time and money. Working with a contractor again can be a huge plus because the worker has already proven their expertise, they are familiar with expectations, they have established trust with internal managers and employees, and they have already completed and passed onboarding requirements.

With MBO’s marketplace, managers can post opportunities for contractors to immediately respond to, run a search to find talent, or let proprietary algorithms send talent matches to their inbox. By working with a vetted pool of independents, organizations can quickly and easily start projects and re-engage known talent, all with the peace of mind that comes from a compliant, seamless engagement experience.

Try it: 6 Reasons to Re-Engage Talent as Part of a Direct Sourcing Strategy