How to Find the right Freelancer for Your Tasks?
On our previous post, we pointed out the reasons you should work with freelancers for most of your tasks and today, we will shed light on how you can find the right freelancer and the best techniques for a perfect collaborations. If you didn’t know, there are tons of freelance portals out there who are full of talented professionals. You can find full-time freelancers and those who are balancing their day job with freelancing for additional revenues as well. You can start by signing up for such services and look for freelancers from their talent pool.
Such portals are very popular in India and abroad and you can actually find potential and talented freelancers for your tasks. The best part is that these portals have several categories of freelancers. If, for instance, you are looking for virtual assistants, there are categories and experienced assistants who can take care of your requirements on the portals, there are designers, accountants, voice-over artists, animators, ad-film makers and more. You can interact with them, give them sample tasks and decide if they would fit your role requirement and hire them.
Facebook Groups
There are several Facebook groups out there by freelancers from diverse backgrounds, looking for potential work opportunities. You can join the groups and let them know of your requirement and within an hour, you will be surprised to notice the responses. You can then interact with them on messenger or get on a call and discuss your requirements with people who deem fit for your business needs.
The professional social network, there is nothing like a shoutout on LinkedIn. Full of enthusiastic professionals who intend to create an impact, an update or a shoutout on LinkedIn can fetch you amazing results. Being a professional network, you can feel free to discuss your business requirements and go the extent of sharing details you wouldn’t on other social media platforms. The more people know about the project, the precise responses you will get. This statement, however, is applicable only for LinkedIn.
How to Work with Freelancers
You found a few talented freelancers and they are all enthusiastic about projects but how do you know which one to recruit? What if the excitement is short-lived and responses die out after a few initial interactions? Well, here are some best practices to work with freelancers.
1. Get to understand their personal preferences and work culture before hiring them. As much as they are technically strong, know about their work styles and ask for testimonials or samples from their previous works to gauge their quality and commitment.
2. Notice when they bring up the topic of payment during your interaction as it can convey a lot more than you imagine. If they ask you about payments before completely understanding your requirements or abruptly amidst a conversation, understand that their priority is not the output but the outcome.
3. Involve them in brainstorming sessions and ask them about ideas on how they can manage it better or some inputs for successful task completion. If they are really experienced and talented as they claim to be, they will give insights from their experiences and impress you at the time of conversation.
4. Get a contract signed by them, writing down every bit of your requirement and condition in place. This will avoid tons of consequences in the longer run.
5. Never ask a freelancer if he or she knows any other freelancer. They won’t recommend and it is not a good ethic as well.
6. Be a good partner. Just because you are providing an opportunity, it doesn’t mean you are his/her boss. Your project is your boss and both of you are working together for a common cause. Be a good partner you expect your freelancer to be.
7. Have clear ideas and approach to your task and give instructions beforehand. If you give instructions as feedback, you are wasting both of your time.
8. Make timely payments just like how expect timely responses and delivery.
Taking these approaches will pave way for a fruitful collaboration and better output of your final product or service you are working on. A lot of people have bad experiences with freelancers because of not following any of the point mentioned above. Hopefully, you won’t. Good luck!
