Oops! When a Freelancer Drops the Ball: My Story of How You Can Recover
Hiring contractors is truly an art and something I encourage business owners to master. You will make mistakes; the trick is to learn and grow from them.
Early on in my project management career, I made a lot of mistakes, but learning how to pull myself back up after falling and solving problems have helped a ton. Tenacity and not giving up makes a big difference.
One particular project many years ago, I hired a contractor to help me build out an e-commerce website. I had hired a contractor who I believe could do the job and had the experience to build out the website. About 60% into the project, my contractor was struggling and didn’t return my emails when I asked how the project was going. I could tell something was wrong and I was getting nervous and knew I couldn’t deliver the project to the client on time.
The contractor finally told me that he had hit a wall and couldn’t figure out how to finish up pieces of the project. This is really hard for them to admit and was very uncomfortable for both of us. This delay caused the project to be late and I knew I couldn’t count on the contractor to finish the project. The challenge was I didn’t have another programmer who had the skill set to finish the project. I didn’t know where to turn.
Luckily, I tapped into my network and finally found someone who could fix the website and finish the project. It took extra time to ramp up and get them up to speed, and they were really busy with other projects. I basically had them squeeze this project in between their projects. Finally, around two months past the original launch date, I delivered a functioning website and the client was happy. However, here’s what I learned:
Communication with my client was vital. I made a point to check in with them each week and give a status report. This was very uncomfortable at times, but it did help keep them from wondering what was happening.
It’s critical to know at least TWO contractors for the type of projects I manage. If I take on any project, I have the main contractor and I know of a backup, just in case.
This has been a very valuable lesson that has helped with lots of projects. We are humans and things come up. You will have contractors with family emergencies and all kinds of things pop up. Your job is to make sure the project happens and it creates peace of mind that you have the right people to help you finish projects.