Are you hiring a freelancer or an unemployed designer?

These "freelancer" heuristics are dubious. Despite that fact that 100% of my income last year is printed on one 1099 or another, I satisfy less than half of them. A year ago, I satisfied zero of them.

I use an @gmail.com address because I don't want to worry about getting spam-foldered when I email a new client. I don't have a business license because sole proprietorships don't need them in CA or anywhere else I've worked. I've never furnished my own consulting agreement because every company I work with already has one they're comfortable with. I only gathered the other paraphernalia of freelancerhood after a long period of being too busy with freelance work to do so.

Notwithstanding false negatives like myself, these heuristics might help you identify who among your consultants cannot be persuaded to become an employee. But they're a poor proxy for judging diligence, reliability, or any of the other qualities you should be measuring by portfolio work and references.

Just fyi, your agreement says 2011 in the url but 2010 in the document itself.

I feel like you're edging a bit into not-true-scotsman territory. A hotmail address does not make a freelancer suddenly unprofessional, and completion of the 5 items certainly doesn't necessarily make one a professional.

And what's wrong with hiring an unemployed designer, anyway? I don't see why it would be a minus and you don't really give any reasons not to. You even mention one reason why we should consider unemployed designers a plus: If we like their work, we can offer them a full-time job!

I've got 'real' email addresses, but still use my gmail address with some clients, partially because it's one of the few things that I can be guaranteed to use at a client's office - I'm often blocked from anything except port 80 when I'm onsite. Yes yes, I can set up my own webmail, but I don't. And I'm not comfortable using google domains stuff, so I split. Probably 50% of my mail with some clients is over gmail, but I have multiple real domains, and much correspondance happens from there as well. I find some clients bounce around - they've got their 'work' email, but they exchange emails from 'home' accounts sometimes too. I don't consider them 'unprofessional' for doing so.

As someone else mentioned too, the 'have your own agreement' thing - well, I've got one, but have only used it a handful of times. More than half my projects have been with mid to larger orgs that already have their standard procedures in place. To use my own contracts either means I don't get the gig, or things will take a few extra weeks while "their people" review things, and they'll inevitably find something to complain about. They are not going to agree to resolve legal issues in my state if they're out of state, so, do I bend, or hold firm? There's no right or wrong answer - each person has different tolerance for this, and it'll probably change over time.

I understand the frustration with people just using the term 'freelancer' without really being a fulltimer - I started indieconf.com last year to address some of these issues that we all deal with, and avoided the term 'freelance' because I think it has a bad connotation. It conjures up images of the unemployed designer between fulltime jobs. Undeservedly so, perhaps, but that's what I was finding. "Independent web professional" is a bit of a mouthful, but conveys a stronger image (and encompasses more than just designers or developers).

The big danger anyone faces in hiring a 'freelancer' is that they won't necessarily stick around for the whole project, or may not be available later to provide followup support. Yes, you face the same with employees, but it's somewhat less of a threat in most cases. That was something I was surprised that the blog post didn't address (or did I miss it?).

The notion that the domain name of your email is somehow indicative of your value as a professional is pretty dumb. It's mindless tribalism at best.

Having your own consulting agreement is a good idea (it enables you to take on clients who don't have their own agreements and can give you a head start in contract negotiations), and being incorporated can be very useful for liability purposes. But those things certainly aren't required.

This is the wrong question.

Ask "Are you hiring a good designer?"

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