INNOVATORS VS COVID 19

Embracing the Freelance Economy with an Agile Approach

Published

3 years ago

10/29/2020

Kokou Adzo

We talked to Greg Kihlström of CareerGig about the freelance economy and COVID-19.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times?

Greg Kihlström: We’re doing well, though we’re taking care to be safe and take extra precautions. This has changed many things we’ve done or had to do, but keeping ourselves and our neighbors safe and healthy is a top priority.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded CareerGig.

Greg Kihlström: I am an entrepreneur and author that sold my last company, a digital marketing agency, in 2017. After that, I had the chance to write a few books and start focusing my attention on the future of work. In doing so, I worked with my co-founders to create CareerGig, to solve what we saw as some important challenges in the freelance economy.

How does CareerGig innovate?

Greg Kihlström: CareerGig is building the world’s best work-related reputation platform while providing freelancers with benefits traditionally only associated with full-time jobs and providing companies with highly-skilled talent at a fraction of the time and cost of other platforms and services.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Greg Kihlström: We have found opportunities within the global pandemic due to all of the people laid off, let go, and furloughed from their jobs during the recession. We see many new people entering the freelance economy.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Greg Kihlström: As with any startup, we’ve had to move quickly, learn fast, iterate, and optimize to keep up. This includes making difficult choices, but just as importantly, it involves trusting our team to make the right decisions to move us forward.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety? How do you project yourself and CareerGig in the future?

Greg Kihlström: I strongly believe in approaching things with an agile mindset of continual improvement. This involves being methodical about how things are tested, measured, and modified for optimal results. By using this scientific approach, you can avoid being reactive and taking the wrong steps without leaving time to consider. It is a great way to move quickly but still leave time to assess how effective your work is performing.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Greg Kihlström: We technically compete with both freelance platform sites as well as more established recruiting and staffing companies, though we fill a unique niche that we call the Verified On-Demand Workforce. This gives us the speed of a platform with the thoroughness and ability to find the highly skilled talent of a staffing firm. Also, because we provide tangible benefits (like health, retirement, and other benefits in the U.S., and other benefits worldwide)