How and Where to Hire the Best Freelancers

If you are an entrepreneur or want to break into the startup world, you will realize a few things pretty quickly. Hiring great people is hard and expensive. While startups and companies generally fail for a number of reasons, one of the main reasons is the inability to hire quality talent. If you need a lot of talent but don’t have the budget to hire full-time talent, finding freelancers could be the solution.

In a free labor market, you can choose top talent and pay a relatively low fee for their services. However, keep in mind that the freelance market is not without its challenges. In this article, we’ll give you some tips to help you navigate rough waters and find the freedom solution that works for you.

how to rent

How you hire plays a huge role in who you hire and how you hire. Some things that can go wrong are hiring non-technical people, time zone mismatches, language barriers, and many other issues. Here are some key points to avoid these pitfalls.

Require
Write down your project requirements first. Unlike a full-time employee standing by your side as you chart your way forward, a freelancer needs a well-defined project plan to get results. Identify timelines, deliverables, milestones, and any other detail you can cram into the project plan. Rule of thumb: the more detailed the better.

Budget
Then set a budget. This is the trickiest part. If you start recruiting with a blank check, you’ll get offers ranging from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. To get your budget right, talk to some friends and get budget advice from them. You can also see what other customers have paid for similar projects. Consider setting minimum and maximum values to allow room for negotiation.

recruit
Cast a wide net. Find as many great freelancers as possible and invite them for an interview. What you’re looking for here is usability. The best people are no good if you can’t get them. Once you’ve found a few top-skilled freelancers who have expressed interest in your project, it’s time to consult a vet.

judgement
Check out their past projects. What have previous customers said? How are they rated? How many similar projects have they undertaken? Never take a freelancer’s word for their skills. Test them all to determine their skill level. Once you find one that works, interview freelancers and get to work.

where to rent

Now that you have a good idea of what to do when hiring a freelancer, where do you find them? Here are some things to see.

main market
Today, Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, and Guru are the main marketplaces where you can find freelancers. A key benefit of working with these markets is the depth and breadth of available talent. On the other hand, the biggest challenge is separating the wheat from the chaff. You will have to work harder to find and hire the right people for your project.

Professional market
These are smaller niche sites like 99designs, Toptal, QuiGig – Rent Now, Matchist, etc. These sites offer a better experience as they invest heavily in hiring great talent for their platforms and adding value to their platform features. This makes it easy to attract top talent. One notable drawback is that they tend to be more expensive.

Portfolio website
These include sites like Behance, Dribbble, Stack Overflow, and GitHub. On these sites you have the opportunity to see the performance of freelancers in advance. The biggest challenge with these platforms is that they do not offer project management tools and it is often difficult to determine the authenticity of a portfolio.

Social platforms
Facebook, LinkedIn and Reddit also provide fertile ground for recruitment. Most of these platforms have freelancer groups or communities where you can post jobs and get advice. While this is an easy choice, once you are hired you will be challenged to review proposals and figure out how to proceed.

Hiring the best freelancers takes time and vetting and vetting of patients. However, once you find a talented and reliable freelancer, you can add extraordinary value to your project over time.