Freelance work, remote work, telecommuting — all of these ideas have really been growing in provenance in the business world the past few years. As the gig economy takes off, certain challenges emerge. It can be difficult to shoehorn certain roles into this structure. Sales staff and janitorial services call for more of an on-site presence. For some positions though, hiring someone remotely as a freelancer just makes more sense than keeping full-time staff, perhaps none more so than that of CAD designer.
We should know! We have thousands of them right here.
Top Three Reasons to Hire CAD Design Freelancers
1. CAD Work Arrives in Bursts
Whatever industry you might work in, it’s very unlikely that you’ll need CAD services often enough to warrant a full-time employee on your payroll. In my own CAD career, I have found it’s much more common to see the work arrive in bursts. Guys would spend months scavenging around the office looking for bits of work to keep busy and appear valuable until all of a sudden, 6 weeks worth of as-built designs come down the pipe and they’re expected to work 10-12 hour days to meet the deadlines set out by the sales department.
This type of boom-bust work is a killer for the average nine-to-fiver and it can result in subpar work being submitted by overworked employees during high times and during low times, you’re having to pay someone to occupy a desk. Therein lies the first advantage of freelancers: they are hired and paid as needed. Your project requires more manpower? Hire more designers. This gives you a per-project flexibility that is simply unmatched by traditional staffing methods.
2. Deeper Investment in Project Manager Satisfaction
This one almost goes without saying especially if you consider the nature of CAD work as we’ve just discussed. Often times in feast-or-famine environments like this, people can sandbag their work in order to appear more useful than they are. This means a project that should take two days stretches on for two to three weeks and more. The employee doesn’t see any more work coming up and doesn’t wish to appear expendable.
At the end of the day, you’re paying them regardless of the quality of work so there is very little incentive to produce an efficient, high-quality product. I’m certainly not implying this is true for all employees, just that it is understandable to have that self-preservation instinct and that during the slow times, it can be difficult for a person to maintain that same high standard for work when they know there’s nothing else coming down the pipeline.
As a freelancer, most of that redundancy is eliminated. As a freelancer, you could be working on a custom wheel design one day and a beach house remodel the next. As a client, you’re paying for the complete package, meaning you don’t pay until you are satisfied with the end result.
3. Better Quality CAD Designers
This is the big one and when it comes down to it, the main advantage to hiring out your CAD design work to freelance groups. It’s not a matter of compromise: you simply get a better qualified, more experienced CAD designer in your arsenal. There’s a few reasons why:
- They have a better work-life balance: According to this article from the Professional Convention Management Association, a survey of over 2000 adults shows the majority of them believe a poor work-life balance has had negative effects on their home lives, interfering with their family dinners and causing them to miss important life events. The mindset of the freelancer is different in that when a break is needed between projects, they are free to go ahead and take that break resulting in a rested, clear, efficient worker sitting down in their own comfortable environment and ready to tackle your project.
- No hardware/software maintenance upkeep costs: As of this writing, it costs 1825 dollars for a one year access license to AutoCAD’s full design suite. That’s to say nothing of the cost of a machine beefy enough to handle it. In freelance work, that responsibility falls on the designers themselves which saves you not only the initial costs but upkeep and maintenance as well.
- Design Contests: Especially effective in product design and 3D drafting, CAD design contests are a great way to find innovative solutions for your project through the magic of crowdsourcing. Rather than reviewing one submission from one employee, you can review numerous submissions from our global network of CAD professionals.
We have a pool of 14,000 CAD designers. This is an advantage on several fronts. The first is that with a talent pool 14,000 strong, project managers are more likely to find someone who can envision their project in the same light and help to bring it into reality. The other bonus to this global structure is that in the event of a time crunch, you have designers available to work literally around the clock to help meet your targets.
A study by the financial software company, Intuit suggests that 40% of the global workforce could be comprised of freelancers by as early as 2020! There are approximately 54 million people working remotely in the United States alone.
At the end of the day, it just makes sense to integrate the kind of fluidity and creativity the freelance structure will introduce into a role like CAD design. Cad Crowd makes it easier than ever to connect with CAD experts. Contact us today for a free quote, and we’ll match you with the industry-leading designers and engineers you’ve been looking for!