The market for talented freelancers is more competitive than ever before. The best and most skilled freelance talent is in high demand and what was already a competitive industry has turned into one that’s beyond challenging for live event companies. If you want to work with top freelancers, you need to understand what will attract them and make them want to work with you.

Event production companies rely on freelancers to do much of the work related to the events they produce, including technical aspects. Freelancer costs can add up quickly and may vary depending on whether the workers you engage are 1099 workers or W2 workers. In both cases, there are direct and indirect costs to consider.

Live event production companies spend a lot of time and money finding and hiring the best AV freelancers for their events. Without the right tools, it’s likely that you’ll spend more than necessary, and that can impact your ability to manage your risks and maximize your profits over time. One way to overcome the challenges of producing live events is to invest in an AV freelance management system.

Event companies need to be agile when producing events. That means they need to have access to the most skilled freelancers to work with their core teams while minimizing risks and maximizing profits. With freelancers, they can acquire skilled labor when and where they need it.

Managing freelancers for events can be time-consuming and complicated without the proper tools. Without a system that allows you to onboard new freelancers, negotiate contracts, and schedule them for events, the process of freelance management can add to your stress and make it more difficult to create events that will wow your clients and entertain their audiences.

Producing a successful and entertaining experience requires event management. With the right freelancers on your crew, everything will go as planned and the result is a happy client. The best way to ensure smooth sailing is to choose skilled freelancers and assign them to event roles where they can do their best work.

On May 15th, the Freelance Isn’t Free Act went into effect in New York City.  Below we share important details of the law and what it means for AV companies working with freelancers in New York City.

Once you have found a potential AV technician to fill a role on your project, what is your process to qualify this individual to determine if they are the best fit?

Here are 6 best practices to select the right people for your project:

#1 Start Early
A best practice for an operation is to start lining up technicians as soon as you are aware of a project's potential, all the way down to the stagehands. You're not the only company with a busy season so make sure you don’t get stuck competing with others to find techs.  If you wait too long, your available quality will go down and your costs could go up! 

The AV industry relies on a large population of talented freelance technicians. But most AV companies are not experts in understanding how to decide whether a person should be an employee or a contractor, and quite frankly, there are a lot of differing opinions about how to make this determination.