Hire a Great Freelancer on Your Very First Try – 10 Golden Tips
If you run a successful small business, then you already know you can’t do everything yourself.
Why do you hire outside experts for accounting, insurance and legal issues? Because it’s more profitable (and more fun) for you to stay focused on your core business.
And so the day comes to hire online marketing help, too.
You can hire a professional to manage all that for you (like this guy). Or you can hire and manage a group of freelancers yourself.
And the internet appears to make hiring freelancers easy. Go to Elance.com (my favorite) or any of a dozen other freelancer sites. Submit a job posting, kick back with a beer and watch the applications roll in.
“Wow! This guy will design my website for $5/hour! And this one will handle my blog for $10/post! Jackpot!”
And then 6 months down the road you wonder why you have a disorganized, buggy, useless website filled with blog posts that no one will ever want to read. And it wasn’t even cheap!
What happened?
Yes, it’s easy to quickly find hundreds of freelancers ready to do any job you want. The hard part is finding the good ones.
And not just finding the good ones, but finding the right good ones for you.
I’ve hired several dozen freelancers over the years, including my share of costly duds. But I’ve also hired some absolutely spectacular team members for reasonable fees, including some who have stayed with me for years.
As time goes on, it’s been more of the latter. But that’s required a reliable, repeatable online hiring process. Here’s mine:
10 Golden Tips for hiring a great freelancer:
This will save you a ton of headaches!
I use the Elance flow as an example, but you can apply these best practices to any freelancer website.
1. Craft a descriptive and enticing job title
You don’t want to just weed out bad freelancers. You also want to attract good ones. And the good ones have lots of options other than taking on your job.
So make the job title appealing. And help them figure out quickly if it might be a good match for them.
NO: “Build a website”
YES: “Build a custom WordPress website for a new match-making service”
2. Describe exactly what you need
You want applicants who are a good fit for your project. That means you need to clearly detail in the job description the exact skills and traits you’re looking for. This may seem obvious, yet generic job descriptions abound.
NO: “Looking for an experienced designer…”
YES: “Looking for a minimalist-style graphic designer who works in Photoshop. Must understand the visual needs of responsive websites…”
3. Ask 3 open-ended questions
Ask 3 specific (and useful) open-ended questions in the job description. This is your chance to voice your top concerns about hiring them or about the project and see how they respond.
You want to see not only the quality of their answers, but also the quality of their communication ability. Are they professional, positive and easy to understand? Do they answer your questions completely and succinctly?
4. Give them an easy pass/fail test
State the following in ALL CAPS at the end of your job description:
We will only consider applicants who begin their proposal with “Yes, I read the entire job description. :-)”
It will surprise you every time to find that more than half of respondents fail to do this!
5. Exclude all applicants who can’t follow directions
If they don’t answer your 3 questions, they’re out. If they don’t paste your requested text, they’re out. If they simply provide a generic stock reply, they’re out.
If they can’t follow directions, or don’t care enough to create a serious proposal, then they’re not worth your time or money.
6. Exclude all applicants who lack a strong track record
Ignore those with fewer than 10 jobs and 10 reviews on Elance.
They may be great, but it will be too much work for you to figure that out. They may be new and deserve a chance, but remind yourself that you’re running a business. As a business owners you’ll want to take some chances from time to time, but hiring help is not the place to do it.
Also ignore those with average ratings less than 4.0
If their average rating is 4.0 – 4.5, read the low ratings to try to understand what caused the poor reviews. Sometimes they had a bad experience with an unreasonable employer. If they received a bad review, see how professionally they responded to it (or not). Avoid those who post angry/bitter responses.
7. Review their profiles in-depth
Now that you’ve narrowed the field to a good-looking handful, you need to dig into their details.
Review their job history and read the feedback left by other employers. Look for consistent strengths or weaknesses.
Having all 5-star ratings isn’t always a slam dunk. There’s peer pressure on employers, too. They don’t want to be “that guy” who gives Mr. 5.0 a poor rating. So make sure the written reviews truly support the high rating.
Review their portfolio (if applicable for the job) and see how well it resonates with you.
Note the % of repeat clients. A high percentage is one of the best indicators of high-quality and affordable work.
This is the time to trust your intuition. Exclude any who set off red flags or leave you feeling uncomfortable in any way.
8. Send follow-up questions
With the good candidates who remain, message them with 1-2 more detailed questions. Find out how they’d approach key aspects of the project, or get answers to outstanding questions you have about them.
Again, exclude any poor performers.
9. Do brief interviews over Skype
Your remaining candidates have passed a lot of tests. Now you need to get the best possible feel for them by talking to them for 10-15 minutes.
They will likely all have Skype accounts, which is easy for you, too.
Take this time to get to learn a bit about them personally and to ask any questions you’re left with.
This is also a good time to ask questions that would affect your ongoing work relationship:
“What are your typical work hours?”
“Are you able and willing to make time for urgent tasks?”
“Do you have any planned vacations coming up?
“What types of communication have you found to work best for you?”
10. Give small test tasks
If you still have more than one potential candidate, give them each a small task representative of the main job and see how they do with it.
This is the only way to separate words from actions and see what they’re really capable of.
Pay them for the task so they take it seriously and won’t feel used if you don’t select them.
Conclusion
After all this, if you still have more than one great-looking candidate, go with your intuition. Your brain has all the data it needs. Now trust your gut.
And if it doesn’t work out, you still have your short list of other top candidates to try next.
Hiring good help is one of your most critical jobs as a business owner and a major factor in your success. Take it seriously, follow these best practices, and soon enough you’ll hire a great freelancer.
Happy hiring!
Oh, and does the thought of doing all this leave you feeling like you’d rather stick pins in your eyes? Then consider hiring a professional who already has a proven team in place. For example, me. 🙂
