We're excited you're interested in handling your staffing through FlashFrame! We hope that FlashFrame will become the go-to place to find and hire photographers online. We've built the flow for hiring based on years of experience staffing events across the globe and seeking to solve issues we've encountered finding quality staff on Craigslist, Facebook, and through word of mouth.
We've aimed to keep this user flow as simple as possible, although we know it can get a bit complicated. This diagram explains the typical flow we would expect an Event Owner to go through as they staff an event, moving from an application phase through managing the staff you've hired.
Lets dive a bit more into the details of how to staff an event. The first thing you'll need to do is ensure you've created the prerequisite event to staff a photographer for. You can accomplish this on the Galleries tab by creating a New Gallery. Please ensure to fill out all of the information and we suggest selecting Make Private for now so that it doesn't show as an empty album on your external page.
Additionally for data integrity please ensure all of your personal details are filled out in both the Settings tab and Gallery>Whitelabel page. Chiefly ensure that you've updated your name, email, and Company Name are up to date so photographers know who you are.
At this point we're ready to begin opening up staffing positions. Navigate to the Hire Staff tab and click the Open New Position button to create a new role.
Make sure to fill out all details for this role so that participants know what role they're applying for. You may also include details such as location, expected experience or anything else relevant to your hire in the description portion. We suggest opening up one role per position on course. For example if you aim to have 3 finish line photographers, and 1 photographer at the halfway point, open up two positions, one for the finish line, and one for down course. You'll have an applicant pool for each role that you'll then be able to determine your hires from.
Now that this position is open, photographers will be able to see it and apply. You'll receive an email notification with each applicant detailing the position they applied for, as well as any additional information they sought to include with their application.
You'll be directed back to this Hire Staff tab where you can review the applicants for each position and determine whether or not to hire them. Applicants will be displayed in blue at the top, while still open roles will appear in white towards the bottom.
By clicking on Review Applicant you'll open a modal that has event/payment information as well as a link to the photographer's FlashFrame page so you can review some of their past work.
At this point you'll have to determine whether or not to hire this photographer. We suggest waiting for a few applicants to accrue before reviewing the photographers and selecting those who's work best fits your needs. It should also be emphasized that in the early days of this feature some photographers may not have many photos on the FlashFrame site so information they send to you via email may also need to be reviewed before making a hiring decision.
Once you've finished making your hires, you'll need to close the position so that no more applications roll in. Simply click on close position to remove this open role.
After hiring a photographer, your workflow will transition to the Manage Staff tab. Here you'll be able to select an event and see all of the staff you've hired, how many applications are still pending, and how much you've committed in payment for this event.
There will be a few actions you'll need to take before event day. You'll need to review and approve the contracts for all of your photographers. This is the standard Freelance Photographer contract that FlashFrame uses, but if you need adjustments please reach out and we'll be happy to work with you on this.
Once you and the photographer have approved the contract it will be emailed to both of you for your records and you're ready for race day. In the status section of this page you'll be able to review photo count by photographer and once the photographer has met the standards of the contract you'll have the ability to pay them via your Stripe account. Until this comes out of Beta we'll be working directly with FlashFrame Event Owners to handle the payments to ensure a seamless experience so you'll be hearing from us via email at this point.
We're looking forward to what the 2020 season has to bring. Thanks for your continued support and feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
- Nate Robinson, nate@flashframe.io
