Laszlo Bock once said, "You need to run your company like a high-end professional services firm." The man who redefined HR at Google understood that great talent isn’t confined to full-time roles. If you want the best people, you need to go where the best people are. And right now, they’re freelancing.
For HR leaders, this shift isn’t a blip—it’s a tectonic shift. The old playbook? Toast. The new reality? A workforce that’s independent, fluid, and allergic to bureaucracy. If you’re still thinking about talent the way you did ten years ago, you’re already behind.
Why the Best Talent is Freelancing
Once upon a time, job security meant a corner office, a pension, and an engraved watch after 30 years of loyal service. Now? Job security means autonomy. It means choosing clients, setting rates, and working without asking for permission.
Freelancers aren’t the folks who “couldn’t get a real job.” They’re the people who got real about what they want. And what they want is freedom. Freedom to work on projects that matter. Freedom from office politics. Freedom from middle managers who schedule meetings to discuss other meetings.
And they’re good. Agencies like Leo Burnett and Wieden+Kennedy have known this for years. They don’t care if their best copywriter is in Chicago or Chiang Mai, as long as the work is great. And HR leaders who get this—who embrace the power of independent talent—are the ones who will win the next decade.
The Myth of the Full-Time Workforce
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HR has spent decades trying to build the perfect team, in-house, full-time. It worked for a while. Then technology happened. Remote work happened. The gig economy happened. Now, the best designers, writers, and strategists don’t want to be employees.
They want to be experts.
And experts don’t want to sit in a cubicle waiting for a promotion. They want to work. They want to produce. And they don’t want to spend half their time convincing a VP of Marketing that bold typography isn’t “too aggressive.”
The best companies already know this. They’re ditching rigid org charts for flexible talent pools. They’re tapping into freelance specialists for high-impact projects instead of drowning full-time staff in tasks they weren’t hired for. They’re using this talent search engine to find proven freelancers without sifting through endless resumes.
The Secret Sauce of Freelance Hiring
The best HR leaders don’t hire freelancers like they hire employees. They hire them like agencies do. And agencies don’t hire based on a résumé—they hire based on proof. Real, undeniable proof of skill.
They don’t waste time reading bullet points about "teamwork" and "problem-solving." They look at the work. They ask for samples. They run trial projects. They use platforms where talent proves itself upfront, not ones where freelancers just upload a list of previous job titles.
Hiring freelancers isn’t a gamble. It’s an efficiency play. A copywriter with a killer portfolio doesn’t need onboarding. A designer with three stunning campaigns under their belt doesn’t need hand-holding. HR leaders who figure this out will build teams that move faster and produce better work.
The “HR” in Freelance HR
If hiring freelancers sounds easy, that’s because it is. If managing freelancers sounds tricky, that’s because it can be.
Freelancers don’t want performance reviews. They don’t want company swag. They don’t want a weekly check-in to “align on goals.” They want clarity. They want fast decisions. They want to be paid on time.
So what does an HR leader do in this new world? They do what Laszlo Bock did at Google. They focus on outcomes, not rules. They build cultures where work matters more than policies. And they rethink everything they thought they knew about retention.
Retention isn’t about locking people into contracts. It’s about making sure the best talent wants to keep working with you. That means paying well. It means respecting boundaries. It means not treating freelancers like second-class citizens because they don’t have a W-2.
The Bottom Line
The freelance workforce isn’t coming. It’s here. The best HR leaders are adapting. The rest are scrambling.
If you want to win in this new era, stop thinking like an employer and start thinking like a talent scout. Find the best people. Give them what they need. Get out of their way.
The future of work isn’t full-time. It’s full-talent. The companies that get this will own the next decade.
