Driving Success: Lyft's Creative Use of Contingent Marketing Talent

In this episode of Workforce 3.0, Carrie McDowell, Head of Contingent Workforce at Lyft, reveals how her team improved freelance hiring, optimized contractor onboarding, and reduced costs—all while empowering Lyft’s fast-paced marketing department. If you’re managing freelancers, contractors, or contingent labor in creative or marketing teams, here are 5 key insights you need to know:

5 Takeaways to Build a Faster, Smarter Freelance Hiring Program for Marketing Teams

1. Support Marketing Teams by Acting as a Strategic Partner

Instead of enforcing rigid contingent workforce policies, Carrie focused on partnership over policing. By enabling marketing leaders to hire the talent they need—while ensuring compliance—her team gained trust and accelerated adoption of Lyft’s workforce program.

2. Accelerate Freelance and Contractor Onboarding to Meet Real-Time Campaigns

Speed is essential for marketing success. Lyft’s contingent workforce program reduced onboarding time for freelancers and contractors from weeks to just one day for 85% of hires, allowing teams to respond to events like concerts, product launches, and the Super Bowl without delays.

3. Reduce Marketing Spend by Shifting from Agencies to Staff Augmentation

By analyzing freelance and agency usage, Carrie identified opportunities to cut agency costs without sacrificing quality. Transitioning junior-level freelance work to vetted staff augmentation partners saved thousands and improved return on spend for marketing.

4. Educate Hiring Managers to Eliminate Contractor Hiring Inefficiencies

Training marketing managers on onboarding, cost breakdowns, and talent sourcing strategies helped remove bottlenecks. This proactive education created a smoother contractor hiring experience across the organization.

5. Customize Your Freelance Hiring Program for Creative and Marketing Needs

Marketing departments have unique workflows, terminology, and structures. Carrie made a point to learn their language, integrate preferred suppliers, and adapt policies to their needs—creating a freelancer hiring strategy that’s fast, flexible, and fit for purpose.

Looking to improve freelance hiring in marketing or creative departments? This episode offers actionable strategies to reduce contractor costs, improve speed to hire, and gain stakeholder trust—all while staying compliant and scalable.

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Want more? Dig into the full transcript here: 

Erika Novak: Welcome to Workforce 3.0. Today we’re diving into the unique freelancer and contractor needs of marketing teams. Our guest, Carrie McDowell, Head of Contingent Workforce at Lyft, shares how her team enables marketing to move faster by supporting rather than policing their choices. We’ll also discuss inefficiencies in traditional staffing and how strategic freelance relationships can lead to faster, better hires.

Carrie McDowell: Thanks for having me.

Erika: To start, can you tell us about your background and how you joined Lyft?

Carrie: Sure. Like many, I didn’t plan to go into staffing. I started in retail operations, which I liked, but I didn’t want to keep working nights and weekends. I moved into recruiting at Apex Systems, then transitioned to an onsite role at Apple supporting the Apple Maps team. Within three years, we had 500 contractors on-site.

After that, I moved to Uber under Brett Klinker and supported their Jump Bikes and scooters operations. Later, I joined Pontoon at Google but found vendor-neutral MSP models weren’t for me. I preferred fast-paced, creative environments, which led me to Cruise, where I led implementations and grew operations across 10 cities.

When Cruise shut down operations due to an accident, I was 27 weeks pregnant. I started job hunting immediately after giving birth, and that led me to Lyft. I now manage a $20M program and a growing team. Lyft’s CW program is still early-stage, and there’s lots of opportunity to build.

Erika: It’s great you’ve experienced both Uber and Lyft. Can you share how their structures differ?

Carrie: Uber has 30,000 employees globally across many business lines. Lyft has just 3,000 and focuses mostly on ride-hailing—but we’re still performing well. When I joined, I expected a mature program, but it needed foundational work: program manuals, global policy, understanding MSP roles, etc. Much of my first year has been building these basics.

Marketing is one of our most active departments, but most contractors were on payroll, which seemed off. I dug in and realized marketing had gone through leadership changes and wasn’t fully utilizing the program. I’ve since focused on educating them on our capabilities and optimizing how we support them.

Erika: What’s the structure of the marketing team and the roles they rely on?

Carrie: We have four groups: Brand, Social, Creative, and Comms. Common roles include product designers, UX researchers, illustrators, and content designers. These teams often respond to location-specific performance (e.g., rider data in Chicago) and collaborate across engineering and product.

Erika: How is marketing currently sourcing talent?

Carrie: It’s a bit messy but improving. They rely on three main buckets:

1. Agencies (outsourcing entire projects),
   
   
2. Independent contractors (which we’ve reduced), and
   
   
3. Payroll via staff augmentation through our MSP.
   
   

Marketing teams usually know who they want to hire. Our goal is to support that, streamline it, and reduce risk.

Erika: Why does speed matter so much?

Carrie: Marketing needs to align with real-time events—Super Bowl, concerts, etc. We don’t always have months to plan. For instance, background checks used to delay starts. We simplified that process, cutting clearance time from 1–2 weeks down to one day for 85% of workers. This lets us move faster and stay competitive.

Erika: What inefficiencies are you addressing?

Carrie

1. Manager Education: Managers need to understand onboarding so they can prepare candidates properly.
   
   
2. Cost Transparency: We educate managers on markups and explain what they're paying for—benefits, admin costs, etc.
   
   
3. Skills Alignment: We’re identifying commonly needed roles so we can align staffing suppliers accordingly and avoid sourcing delays.
   
   

Erika: Are you building talent pools?

Carrie: Not yet, but it's a goal. Right now, it's mostly supplier-based. Marketing managers often have their own networks, but I’d like to centralize those into a shared pool for reuse and speed.

Erika: Why did you decide to lean into marketing instead of deprioritizing it?

Carrie: Marketing is high-profile at Lyft. Leadership is focused on growing through effective advertising. I noticed we were paying very high agency rates for junior-level talent. By shifting some of that spend to staff augmentation, we saved thousands. It showed marketing leaders we could deliver value and speed without compromising on quality.

Erika: What’s your first priority?

Carrie: Aligning with marketing and showing them we’re partners. For example, we’ve asked their preferred suppliers to join our program under our standard markups. Some initially pushed back but later agreed—helping us secure fair rates while keeping the talent they trust.

Erika: How do you balance enabling vs. policing?

Carrie: I say “yes, but here’s what I need from you.” My role isn’t to say no—it’s to find compliant, efficient solutions. I’ve seen what happens when programs over-police—people go around them. I’d rather be a trusted resource.

Erika: What should others keep in mind when working with marketing?

Carrie: Be clear that you're here to enable them. I wish I had made that clear earlier. Now that they trust me, we’re collaborating more closely. Also, learn their language. Marketing has its own acronyms and structures—knowing those builds trust.

Erika: Final takeaway?

Carrie: Marketing works differently at every company. Be flexible, creative, and meet them where they are.