Staying on top of current hiring trends is one of the best ways to craft a successful hiring strategy. This is particularly relevant at the moment, as the US and global economies are trending towards an uncertain future.

The hiring landscape is constantly changing. At the same time, a range of external factors are impacting the U.S. economy and businesses’ ability to recruit. As a result, there’s more pressure on employers and staffing agencies to be on top of their game when it comes to sourcing top talent.  

A huge part of this is understanding the key trends that are shaping the market; and adapting your hiring practices accordingly. In this article, we’ll take you through what some of these trends look like, offering clear insight on how to maximize them to achieve the best results. 

1. Change in Working Patterns 

Gone are the days of the traditional 9-5; especially right now when more people are working from home than ever before due to social distancing measures. At the same time, according to the American Staffing Association, 16 million temporary and contract employees are hired throughout the course of the year; so clearly, temporary workers make up a big part of the U.S. workforce. 

There are a number of reasons why temporary staffing is getting more popular. For the most part, people want more flexibility and working part-time or on a contractual basis gives them the freedom to balance their personal and professional lives effectively. 

Alongside this, according to a study from TrueBlue and Emsi, the main reason why people take on gig work is to earn extra income; followed by a desire to get their foot in the door with a company. 

Additionally, findings from Staffing Industry Analysts show that an estimated 53 million people took on gig work in the U.S. in 2018, with 34% of all U.S. workers performing gig/contingent work last year. 

Clearly, the gig economy represents a shift in employment around the world. Professionals are opting to work on a contractual basis out of necessity and choice. Particularly as there’s little job security in the current economy. 

But what does it mean for your hiring efforts? Well, if you’re finding it difficult to hire full-time employees, it may be worth looking for gig workers instead. It all depends on what your company’s needs are. 

2. Data-Driven Recruitment 

Another trend that hiring professionals need to keep on top of is data-driven recruitment. With more pressure to hire the right people, both cost and time-effectively, many organizations have turned to data to help them make smarter hiring decisions; and avoid unconscious bias. 

It’s particularly useful if you’re working towards key metrics. For example, you may want to measure your hiring velocity to see how efficient your hiring process is; alternatively, you might look at your hiring budget to ensure that you’re not overspending on your hiring campaigns. 

Whichever metric you track, you’ll need to start gathering and analyzing data in order to do it effectively. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) make this easy to do, but there are other tools you can use such as Google Analytics. 

The type of data you might capture includes: how long it takes for people to complete your application forms, how many clicks on your job adverts convert to applications, how long it takes for your offers to be expected, how much ROI you’re getting on your recruitment tools and so on. 

Once you’ve gathered this data, you can then use it to make informed decisions. For example, if it’s taking too long for people to complete applications (or they’re abandoning them altogether), perhaps you need to cut the form down or re-consider the questions you’re asking. 

Ultimately, you’ll want to use data to make informed decisions, save time and money, and of course, to make sure you’re making quality hires. 

3. Candidate Experience 

Candidates have held the power in the U.S. job market for some time now, and considering the most recent economic data on the labor market, the candidate experience remains more important than ever.  

After all, people are more likely to accept your offers if they have a positive route to hire; and reputation matters in the current market. For that reason, this is a key hiring trend you need to be on top of. 

This is especially true as there are more avenues for candidates to air their views online than ever before. Whether it’s social media, or employee review sites; people aren’t afraid to share any negative experiences with other prospective candidates, potentially putting them off applying to your jobs, attending interviews, or accepting your job offers. 

So, what makes a positive candidate experience? Well, it all starts with your job advert. You need to write this with the candidate in mind; what do they want to know? What would make them want to apply? Use engaging language and break the copy up with bullet points so it’s easy to read. If your advert is poorly-written or doesn’t make sense, you’ll fall at the first hurdle. 

You then need to think about the application process and next steps. If they have to jump through a number of hoops just to show their interest in the role, they’ll probably abandon it altogether. Similarly, if there’s far too many rounds of interviews, they may lose interest and go with another employer who’s willing to offer them the job quicker. 

Ultimately, communication is key. See it as a relationship-building exercise. In order to get candidates interested in the role and brand, you need to put the work in. Acknowledge applications, keep them up to date throughout the hiring process and don’t wait too long to offer the job. This will speed up your hiring process and improve their experience; it’s a win-win. 

4. Machine Learning & Automation 

We couldn’t talk about hiring trends without mentioning machine learning and automaton. Both have picked up across many industries in recent years, helping to take over some of the more menial tasks and improving the overall user experience. 

In the staffing industry, machine learning may not be something you implement yourself. Indeed, it’s something that industry suppliers are investing in to improve results for users. At Resume-Library, we’ve used machine learning to improve the relevancy of job matches for candidates, ultimately driving more applications to our clients’ vacancies. 

To do this, we manually rated the relevancy of hundreds of thousands of job postings against specific search terms, before feeding this information into a “machine.” The machine is then able to apply this logic to all jobs on our site, ensuring candidates are presented with the most relevant results. 

Another popular way that companies use machine learning and automation in their hiring practices is through resume screening. There are lots of areas of the hiring process that take up time and effort; with screening being one of them. ATS’s like SmartRecruiters are great for this and can help you to make effective, data-driven hiring decisions. 

There are plenty of other areas that can be automated or that can benefit from machine learning. For example, assessment tools can help you understand how well someone will fit in your company and team, and whether they have the ability to do the job. 

Alongside this, there are tools that can help with candidate engagement efforts. Chatbots, for example, are useful for answering any questions applicants might have and/or keeping them up to date on the progress of their application. Interview scheduling tools can help too and save a lot of back and forth between employers and candidates. 

It’s worth considering what areas of your process need streamlining and how you can do this; it might require you to invest in some new technologies. 

Stay on Top of These Trends 

Unfortunately, there are a range of external factors impacting companies’ ability to hire right now. But that’s why it’s more important than ever to stay on top of the latest trends and ensure your hiring process is fit for purpose. 

Take this time to look at its efficiency; are there areas that are slowing it down? Are you spending too much, or too little money? What do candidate say about your brand online and how can you improve this? These are all questions you should be asking yourself. 

Alongside this, it’s worth speaking to your suppliers to see whether they’re staying on top of these trends and how they can help you meet your goals. At Resume-Library, we work in partnership with SmartRecruiters to enable its users to post jobs onto our site directly from their platform; and we’re launching a Resume Search integration very soon.  

Both help to streamline the process and make it a lot smoother for candidates and hiring professionals. 

D&I may not have a finish line, but that doesn’t mean we want to have the same conversation 50 years from now.

Torin Ellis, host of SiriusXM CareerMix, author of RIP the Resume, and leading diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategist joins SmartRecuiters for the fourth year in a row at Hiring Success 19 – Americas for an expert panel on the economic value of diversity.

Torin started a recruiting firm in 1998 and what he saw in the industry wasn’t always pretty. Up close with transactional Talent Acquisition, he was privy to the dearth of diversity across industries. He found himself asking “why” a lot – Why was there only one black person on the whole North American sales team?… Why were there so few in management?… Why were company leaders talking about a ‘war for talent’, yet failing to consider non-traditional candidates? The list went on. And although in his capacity as a headhunter, he did his best to boost under-represented talent, he wanted to do more.

So, in 2010 he decided it was time to face the issue head on and founded the Torin Ellis Brand, a boutique HR agency  to advise companies on D&I strategies and risk mitigation.

During this time of economic recovery in the years after the 2008 financial downturn, D&I was not on the forefront of the workplace milieu, and when it was the news was dismal – homogeneous workforce and biased hiring processes, but Torin didn’t want to focus on the bad press.

“My thought then, and I follow this principle today, is that I need to get more people involved,” says Torin. “If we keep having punitive conversations about D&I, that aren’t solutions-oriented, then I know white men are going to run in the opposite direction. I know that white women may not participate. I know that black men are going to continue to be frustrated when they get passed over for a job or a promotion. And I know black women will continue to have to work until August to make the same amount of money that their white male counterparts made in by December of the previous year.”

His main goal is to not have the same conversation 50 years from now, and what he preaches are solutions-based D&I programs, that achieve more than a press release. Learn the three tenants of successful strategies, and the next challenge work culture faces.

Give us the outline for a D&I strategy that is more than window dressing?

• Empowerment
• Strategic Exploration
• Tactical Execution

Empowerment: We need people to speak up. D&I programs fail when there is silence. So part of the strategy needs to be grassroots where people leverage their own power to tell their higher-ups ‘D&I programs are something we need’. The other part is management creating avenues for those voices to be heard and the concerns addressed.   

Strategic Exploration: Be willing to sit amongst people that are different from you and explore a variety of strategies. Know that there will be gambles and mistakes. Be genuine with apologies, and don’t be afraid to recalibrate. Most of all, trust that the community will be receptive to genuine efforts.

Tactical Execution: Not everyone can be in the meeting making the decision, so include people at different levels. Talk to the people on the ground, understand their needs, and empower them in the execution of  the program goals. These people can be the evangelists, amplifiers, and action-takers that translate your D&I efforts from paper to practice.

Last year you started your session ‘The Power of Diversity’ by quoting Bernard Coleman the III, global head for D&I at uber saying: “The house burned in front of them but they wanted the data to prove it. That is the audacity and ridiculousness of making the business case: convincing one of the obvious. If the smoke doesn’t alarm you, the fire certainly should.”

Why did you share this and what does it mean?.

That quote arrested my spirit. It made me think, there is absolutely no reason, people like myself, should have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to create a business case for diversity.

For the last 20 years, people have been saying there’s a war for talent. Well, if there’s a war for talent, then why are organizations not embracing – or even seeing – different talent pools? Why are organizations not looking for ambitious and creative ways to nurture non-traditional candidates?

Too many companies are paralyzed in their comfort zone of ‘we are preparing a white paper on why diversity is important’… It’s a thin veil covering a lack of progress.

Watch last year’s session below!

Looking to the future, it’s hard enough to implement D&I programs in a traditional workspace, how will organizations find success in the gig economy?

We have a more disparate workforce than we’ve ever had before. Companies struggled with D&I programs when everyone came to the same place to work. So, how are we going to do it when people are all over the place?… How are we going to make sure that remote workers still feel a sense of culture and inclusion?

The truth is we don’t have definitive answers to ‘what’ will be successful in this, the fourth industrial age. We are beginning to employ the tools from like big data, analytics, AI, and nanotechnology, which is a great start.

What people need to understand is that D&I doesn’t have a finish line, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get somewhere.

Workers are quitting their jobs en masse to pursue the spoils of freelancing, but managing this fluid workforce is proving difficult for companies rooted in traditional employee relationship management.

It had been a disheartening failure to capture Jerusalem, and on the way home from the calamitous Third Crusade, King Richard I was captured and imprisoned by Austrian forces in December, 1192. Thousands of knights and men-at-arms loyal to the Norman king returned to England leaderless, or put another way, jobless.

In the peaceful years that followed, Europe was overrun with thousands of trained soldiers who lacked practical skills outside of combat. In order to earn a living wage, many soldiers of fortune pledged their allegiance to any wealthy patrons willing to hire them for battle. As a result, mercenaries became common war fodder for nobles and feudal lords during the Middle Ages, essential to the Crusades and other military campaigns up to the 14th century. In the early 19th century, in his novel, Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott collectively defined them as “free lances”.

Step into any coffee shop or coworking space today and see modern “freelancers” in their natural habitat. Today, the term includes all self-employed, patron-seeking workers, and while they wield wifi and laptops instead of swords and shields, they represent a steadily growing section of the American workforce in our post-manufacturing economy.

In 2015, Elance-oDesk relaunched under the name Upwork and rolled out a freelance talent platform that grew to become the world’s largest online marketplace for contract workers. The company estimates that 57.3 million Americans currently freelance—that’s 36 percent of the US workforce—and projects this growth to reach over 50 percent by 2027. Today’s independents are more agile than ever, and the promise of entrepreneurship, project-based work, and home offices draws new converts as fast as companies are reassessing strategies to accommodate them.

But for those who dream of quitting their desk jobs and adopting the lives of digital nomads, the reality is that, while companies are hiring more on contract, many lack processes and infrastructure to support these new workforces. Without proper relationship management in place, abuse will continue to rise, forcing many freelancers to push back against inept management, acting as their own enforcers and debt collectors.

* * *

Early this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the number of open jobs outstripped unemployment totals, a state of affairs that was encouraged, according to Upwork, by 63 percent of independent professionals going freelance in the last two years—as a choice, not a necessity.

For many companies, this shift represents major strategic challenges for recruiting. As more workers swap their cubicles for home offices—coupled with the widening skill gap across multiple industries—companies with openings are experiencing a talent shortage. In 2017 Upwork reported that 39 percent of hiring managers felt hiring had gotten harder over the previous year because of this shift.

“Everybody is chasing the same talent,” says Upwork CEO Stephane Kasriel. “But hiring is time-consuming—you conduct multiple rounds of interviews, meanwhile candidates interview with multiple companies.”

It takes an average of 31 days to fill an open job in the US, with some reports claiming numbers as high as 42, up from 23 days in 2006 and about 15 days in 2009.

“Hiring is also incredibly expensive,” continues Kasriel, citing a study from SHRM that prices the average cost-per-hire for companies at $4,129.

With costs per hire that steep—and the demand for knowledge workers at an all-time high—talent platforms like Upwork, FlexJobs, Guru, Hired, and Hubstaff Talent work well to connect freelancers and agencies with clients who need skilled workers, regardless of where they live.

Upwork’s success hinges on the platform’s all-inclusive talent pool, which includes anyone with an internet connection. Freelancers can create an account and bid for projects within minutes, providing its customers with a nearly limitless global workforce. This business model feels apt given the independent spirit of freelance work, and offers Upwork an advantage in the project-based economy, where more organizations are considering contract workers over location-dependent ones.

“Twenty cities in the US account for over 50% of America’s GDP,” says Kasriel. “These are the places where the cost of living is rising fast, traffic and pollution are issues, and it’s difficult for people who don’t make high wages to live in these places.”

According to Kasriel, our traditional perceptions of work “all stemmed from this idea that work had to be a place,” emphasizing the idea that location-dependant work was an industrial era construct. One need look no further than the mass migrations to tech hubs like Silicon Valley to see this concept in action.

“We are at a point today where a lot of people are being left behind,” says Kasriel. “We aren’t considering the people who are highly skilled, want to work really hard, and just happen to be living a couple hundred miles away.”

* * *

“Freelancing can mean sacrifices, especially if you live on your own,” says Adam McNeill, a freelance web designer, developer, and communications strategist based between Toronto and London, Ontario, Canada. “There’s no safety net, but it’s exciting as hell.”

McNeill pivoted into full-time freelance work in 2016 after a personal injury hindered his mobility. When he asked his managers about working remotely until he healed, his employer dismissed his request, claiming there was no company policy for remote work. Frustrated by the miles of red tape, McNeill shouldered his lance and tendered his resignation. Nearly three years on, he is confident in his decision.

“Working from my home office, not having to commute, setting my own hours—the advantages of freelancing quickly outweigh the drawbacks and liabilities,” he says. “Plus, the ways these benefits affect your emotional wellbeing are impossible to overlook.”

Most self-employed workers report a better work-life balance, better health, and higher incomes than their office-worker counterparts, with a vast majority (97 percent) of current independent professionals electing to stay self-employed rather than return to traditional work.

With conferencing software and shared asset management platforms taking the traditional workspace into the cloud, “relationships with clients can be ongoing,” says McNeill. “This has opened up a new world of possibilities for freelancers at all levels. For many verticals, freelancing could even become the norm.”

Upwork highlights that 48 percent of hiring managers are already hiring freelancers, up 43 percent from last year, and the number of hiring managers willing to consider freelance workers is almost unanimous at 90 percent. The reason for this, according to Kasriel, is that 9 out of 10 hiring managers claim to be more satisfied with the skills of freelancers than those of their most recent full-time hire.

Freelancers are much more likely to have better, more updated skills because, “you have to market yourself constantly,” says Kasriel, “whereas full-time employees are less likely to reskill themselves between jobs.”

For many businesses, extending talent pools to include freelancers allows for greater talent diversity, reduces company spending, and boosts productivity on a project basis.

However, in order for a company to work successfully with its freelancers, the decision must be unanimous, where hiring teams and executives align to lay the groundwork for successful freelance-client relationships.

The Upwork model makes finding great talent convenient, but many organizations are neither aware of, nor sensitive to, the stiff competition and fierce undercutting that occurs on these platforms. Unfortunately for most freelancers, budgets often associated with posted jobs are unrealistic, “I routinely see jobs for 1500-word blog posts that are offering a flat $5 fee,” says McNeill.

A pittance for your average mercenary, but the problem, according to McNeill, it that “fresh grads will gravitate to those gigs ‘for the exposure’, but they’re lowering the bar for everyone else.” When speaking at local colleges, McNeill warns the next generation of workers about these practices. “One of the values I try to impart to them is not to pander to this crap,” he says. “If you don’t value your own tradecraft, how can you expect anybody else to?”

Many of the professional services offered by most online talent platforms can, in an increasing number of circumstances, be completed by anyone, regardless of location, which often pits workers from North America and Europe against technical and creative contractors in developing countries over pricing wars.

Allowing customers to purchase a service at the lowest cost often results in workers undercutting one another in an “arms” race to the bottom price. As one Upwork user noted, not only does this “drive the perceived costs down for the buyers, but also dramatically drives the quality of the work down as well because the freelancers don’t have the time to pay attention to the details, the budget not allowing it.”

Meanwhile, the companies managing these talent platforms are raking in huge profits. Upwork generates $1.5 billion in gross sales a year, works with over 100k SMB clients, and boasts that 28 percent of its clients are on the Fortune 500 list. To date, the company has completed over $4 billion in work via its platform. In just last week Upwork generated $187 million through its IPO, its shares rising 40 percent above their prior value in the weeks before trading.

Seasoned freelancers are no stranger to the pricing wars fought on these online platforms, but for contractors like McNeill, issues of relationship management are the greatest pain points. “Organizations build their businesses on the near-religious belief that it’s all about trust,” he says, “but when they deal with freelancers they forget that trust and accountability also matter in these relationships.”

McNeill cites examples when he or other freelancers suspended websites and withheld services when clients delayed payment for months without justification. “These were not knee-jerk reactions,” he says. “I’m talking about pulling the plug after 8 months of being told that your check is in the mail. It happens all the time, and with big brands—no freelancer wants to work this way.”

When it comes to getting paid, a recent survey from Bill.com found that 54 of freelancers feel it takes too long. “Most corporations have payment terms of 45 days or even 60, which is brutal when you’re self-employed,” said Liz Steblay, founder and CEO of the Professional Independent Consultants of America (PICA). “To add insult to injury,” she continued, “it’s surprising how many clients still pay by hard-copy check, which can easily add another week to the payment process.”

* * *

Even with trends suggesting that the freelance workforce is growing, are companies really willing to embrace freelancers and entrepreneurs, or are they merely paying lip service to the idea without understanding the full extent of what managing a freelance workforce requires?

For as much as companies strive to continually improve candidate and employee experience—offering benefits packages, further skills training, and hosting team-building events—is the same consideration given to freelancers?

Sort of. Traditionally, businesses saved money hiring freelancers because they were not obligated to provide medical benefits or paid vacation time as part of compensation, but more corporations are realizing they need to make their work environments more appealing to top-quality free agents with perks like retirement savings, health insurance, tax assistance, and workers compensation coverage.

Reticence from companies to hire remote workforces likely stems, in part, from expectations that these benefits packages will become standard offerings to freelancers, which often position companies in murky legal waters. Certain benefits could mean companies must classify its contract workforce as employees, which can result in additional tax and wage requirements for businesses.

But as Millennials continue to become the largest workforce demographic, they are driving change in the workplace by seeking an updated dynamic for how they bring their employers value, and on terms that facilitate the unpredictable demands of a hyper-pressure world.

So what exactly does the future of freelancing look like? Kasriel argues that workforces will soon resemble movie crews, where “teams are self-assembled and everything is project-based. Movies are an industry where flexibility, agility, and specialization are increasing to meet the demands of the labor market.”

The film industry has a long and well-established history, with unions like the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) tracing its lineage back to 1893, only a few decades after Sir Walter Scott’s first mention of the freelance crusader mercenaries of old. Likening the freelance economy to the movie industry sounds like hopeful conjecture, particularly when workers and organizations require more education on sustainable and responsible freelance practices.

“We should be teaching kids how to do this,” says McNeill. “I would really love to see more of a curriculum revelation. I don’t think we’re teaching the future workforce in a way that will prepare and support them for what will likely become an inevitable stage of their careers and lives.”

At the same time, companies need guidance in developing solid foundations for freelance talent management before they start hiring contract workers. This means establishing more efficient communication channels, prompt and fair payment methods, and contingency plans or systems to navigate conflicts and challenges.

Until businesses and contract workers can realize a more mutually beneficial work relationship, it’s likely that most freelancers, despite experiencing greater autonomy and reaping better opportunities than ever before, will continue to trek through the industry like battle-weary soldiers without leadership.

“The traditional way of doing things has engendered a false sense of authority in organizations, says McNeill. “Many managers have had it easy with employees who never push back and are happy to take their employers’ money, confident that warm bodies in chairs do productive employees make. This attitude doesn’t work for freelancers.”

The American workforce is becoming increasingly freelance, and Upwork CEO Stephane Kasriel wants to leverage this to establish a new work mentality.  

If data is now our most valuable currency, then time is the greatest commodity. When it takes businesses an average of 32+ days to fill open positions, it’s no stretch to see why companies are delaying, canceling or extending their project workloads. And this comes at great expense. According to Upwork CEO Stephane Kasriel, the competition for high-demand jobs like developers and engineers means talent shortages, multiple rounds of time-consuming interviews, and increased company spending.

Even though traditional hiring depletes company resources, demand remains, and freelancers need to connect with clients who need their skills. To learn more about why companies are foregoing hiring in favor of contracting, we invited Stephane Kasriel to speak at our Hiring Success conference in San Francisco. You can watch his full presentation in the video embedded above, or continue reading for a summary.

Kasriel frames his talk around the historical evolution of work over the last two centuries, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, where labor contracts brought many workers “from farmhouses to factory floors”, which eventually led to the cubicle model of the 1950s, ushering in service jobs that required phones and computers. Over time, these models of work laid the foundation for today’s work landscape, where “technology is removing barriers of traditional hiring models born of the Industrial Era.”

True, many professions today can be accomplished anywhere with a broadband connection, and with the rise of free video conferencing software and flex schedules, Kasriel sees a dwindling need for traditional offices. It’s no secret that an increasing number millennials are embracing the white-collar gig economy, electing to freelance full time, creating opportunity for online platforms like Upwork to address the talent shortage facing many businesses.

According to a recent report from Upwork, three times as many hiring managers felt hiring had gotten harder in 2017 over the previous year, citing issues related to the interview process and hiring costs.

Upwork claims its platform is solving many of these problems by “making online work similar to local work, with added speed, cost, and quality advantages.” Kasriel outlines how improvements to each of these criteria have contributed to making Upwork the world’s largest talent platform, resulting in $1.5 billion GSV per year and 28 percent of its clients on the Fortune 500 list. From developers to lawyers and designers, Upwork covers “over 5000 skills, across a hundred different categories,” says Kasriel. “We are the place where people can find just about any kind of knowledge work that can be done from anywhere in the world.”

And breaking down the borders separating people from work is exactly the kind of messaging Kasriel and his team want to promote, with claims that Upwork can create a new mentality he calls “work without limits”.

“We are at a point today where a lot of people are being left behind,” he says. “We aren’t considering the people who are highly skilled, who want to work really hard, and just happen to be living a couple hundred miles away.”

To that end, Kasriel argues that contracting workers is not only better for businesses, but aligns with the demands of today’s job market and independent professionals. Kasriel predicts that “by 2027, the majority of the US workforce will be freelance,” and points to a study from McKinsey Global Institute, that suggests freelancers could add $2.7 trillion to global GDP over this same period.

The future of freelancing looks promising for online talent platforms like Upwork, especially when validated by companies shifting their talent strategies to include more contract workers. Kasriel says that these companies are seeing results, with 90 percent of hiring managers claiming to be more satisfied with the skills of freelancers than their most recent full-time hire and 80 percent of them reporting increased team productivity thanks to a recent freelance hire.

As more individuals pursue careers as independent professionals, the scale will inevitably tip away from traditional work models, and more companies will evolve their talent strategies in response. In an era where efficiency and cost-cutting are the metrics by which we evaluate business success, for many companies, contracting workers rather than hiring them full time is today’s most convenient solution.

As more individuals pivot into freelance and self-employed work, companies are rethinking how to attract and retain independent professionals.

Corner offices and pensions are no longer the end game for many working professionals, and—as usual—you can blame millennials. As of 2015, millennials are the dominant demographic of the American workforce, and the white collars of this up-and-coming generation have a new career priority in mind: independence. It’s the gig economy, but for professionals, and it could be the answer to the talent shortage currently squeezing the tech sector.

By 2020 it’s predicted that 27 million American will transition to self employment, nearly tripling the number from 2015. And it’s a mistake to think those numbers are coming mainly from entry-level task apps like Uber, Postmates, or Task Rabbit. In fact, task workers only account for 10 percent of the 15 million full-time independent workers in the US according to an annual report from the accounting service FreshBooks. The study, which surveyed 2700 full-time independents, found that 43 percent of individuals desire more control over their careers, with an additional 43 percent planning on completely switching their careers once self-employed.

As a result, the labor market is now experiencing a talent vacuum, and employers are desperately seeking to fill a record number of openings. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employers posted 6.6 million available jobs in March 2018, up from 5.6 million the previous year. With 6.3 million people currently unemployed in the US, there is a now surplus of open positions in the job market, allowing more individuals to lead their own charge in the war for talent, and command a premium price for their services.

A 2017 report from MBO Partners identified 3.2 million full-time independents who made more than $100,000 annually, up 4.9 percent from previous years. As a whole, 43 percent of full-time independents said they earn more money working on their own and experience greater job security than traditional work. Top earners in the freelance sector include: programmers and software developers, web designers, content marketers, and graphic designers—and companies are paying top dollar for their work.

Though higher incomes and more stable careers are attractive byproducts of self-employment, many next wave workers value the emotional and psychological payoff of work more strongly than previous generations. Quickly becoming the “work to live” generation, 51 percent of millennials with traditional jobs say more flexibility is an advantage of becoming an independent worker or starting your own business, compared to 42 percent of Gen Xers and 40 percent of Baby Boomers. Meanwhile, 44 percent of millennials with traditional jobs say pursuing a passion or interest is an advantage of working independently, while only 32 percent of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers say it is a factor.

While new independent workers value the flexible and emotionally rewarding lifestyle that self-employment provides, the transition is not without its challenges, albeit ones that millennials are willing to embrace. Independent work often demands longer hours with less availability for time off, even extending the age of retirement beyond the traditional 65 cutoff. Yet, 62 percent of millennials surveyed don’t expect to stop work after age 65, and will continue working as a choice rather than a necessity.

Delaying retirement also seems to have an effect on workers’ overall career satisfaction. Employee satisfaction in a traditional job typically diminishes as the age gap increases, but the FreshBooks report shows that self-employment has an upward trend the longer independents keep working. Despite more time spent working, many self-employed workers report that they experience a better work life balance, better health, and higher incomes, with a vast majority (97 percent) of current independent professionals electing to stay self-employed rather than return to traditional work in the future.

TA professionals also seem to struggle with sourcing and hiring great talent for permanent positions, as a 2018 study from Upwork revealed that 39 percent of hiring managers felt hiring was harder in the past year, citing difficulty in accessing candidates with specialized talents as the biggest challenge. As new technological innovations in fields such as robotics, AI, and blockchain further disrupt the industry, training workers to stay abreast of new technologies will become a high priority for many companies.

In response, hiring managers are now tapping into the independent workforce to fill open positions on a contract basis. Gene Zaino, President and CEO of MBO Partners, highlights how an increasing number of companies are hiring more independent workers over permanent employees as a way to stay flexible and agile in the swift modern economy. “If you are in a very high-change environment,” he says, “making full-time commitments is a bigger decision than just paying someone to get a project done.”

Independent workers may also have a positive effect on team dynamics. Jeff Christofis, VP & Practice Lead of KellyConnect at Kelly Services sees an increase in employee satisfaction and productivity thanks to their remote hiring practices. “Embracing the remote work environment has proven to be a highly effective approach to not only attracting talent,” he says, “but allowing companies to achieve higher levels of productivity, and gain efficiencies while providing employees with greater work life balance.”

It’s no secret that respected and valued employees are prepared to deliver their best work, and independent workers are no different. More companies are realizing the need to become the “clients of choice” for freelancers, and that includes treating them as a more than replaceable and inexpensive labor tools. Including independent workers in the company culture or offering services that promote their growth and success—such as job boards with new opportunities, training programs to expand their skills, and networking events with employees—can be foundational in building strong relationships with freelance workers.

The independent professionals of the future workforce are poised to be some of the best educated and highest paid contract workers in the modern economy, and companies will soon need to adapt their hiring practices and team structures to accommodate them. This shift in the American workforce hails a profound change in the American dream: Rather than climbing the corporate ladder, the next wave of professionals want to be their own bosses.