Marta, the CTO at a sporting goods company, scans her operating metrics and flinches at the continued “red” status of her team’s technical capability. The board is concerned that upstart competition is nibbling away at market share, so Marta is under intense pressure to help the company move faster to market by implementing more-sophisticated digital and conversational AI capabilities. But her in-house talent lacks the deep expertise and experience necessary to transform the company’s offerings, processes, and data and security infrastructures, and her recruitment team has been unable to pry away top professionals from tech firms, despite making generous offers.

Taking stock, Marta (a composite character we’ve drawn from numerous interviews) reluctantly acknowledges that she needs to tap the freelancer market. She recognizes that this is not a stopgap measure and that a major shift in how work gets done is underway. But she has qualms. How can she properly prepare her team for the issues this new blended workforce will unleash?

At almost every company we talk with, managers are facing the same recruiting challenge. They simply do not have the talent they need in-house, and they’re unable to persuade highly skilled professionals to come on board full-time. As a result, companies are embracing the freelance model more than ever before. “To stay competitive in our manufacturing, digital, and veterinary services,” says Michele Cefola, the global vice president of talent acquisition at Mars, “we must continually attract people with the latest skill sets.” This is particularly true for tech and digital experts, her colleague Jeremy Andrulis, the vice president of talent, told us. “And people with the most sought-after skills are more than likely to be freelancers.” He went on to explain why this works for Mars: “Freelancers tend to jump from one project to another. That’s essentially what we’re paying for—their accumulated experiences and the fresh external perspectives they bring.”

Peter Fasolo, the chief human resources officer (CHRO) at Johnson & Johnson, also remarked on the change in worker preferences: “Without question, there has been a huge shift. Many of the individuals we’re looking to attract—in technology, data sciences, machine learning, blockchain, and the internet of things—have a different mindset now. They want more-flexible working arrangements.”

Talented workers have sought flexible work for some time, but it’s only recently that the downsides traditionally involved in freelancing have been addressed. Independent work used to be an unreliable source of income that was heavily dependent on personal networks, but today job-matching platforms—such as Upwork and Fiverr—can instantly match highly skilled candidates with employers’ needs. Some platforms are hyperspecialized, such as A.team and People Analytics, which serve engineers and data scientists. Technology also now provides administrative and other support to independent workers, whether it’s virtual fractional accountants, tax apps, or AI for managing email and calendars.

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