How to choose the freelancer

The success of cooperation with freelancer for their (even though temporary) employers depends largely on their willingness to work with the remote employees. It’s not a secret that, getting burned repeatedly because of bad faith or irresponsibility of freelancers, the employers can easily lose faith in the existence of the adequate and serious remote workers. However, it can’t be claimed that freelancers can't be trusted with the execution of work. Actually, you must learn to choose the remote workers right. Then the work will be done, and you will save both money and nerves. What should you consider when choosing the freelancer for performing work?

The most optimal option is to cooperate with the people, recommended by our acquaintances. This rule is equally effective for the choice of staff and non-staff personnel. However, it is not always possible to find a right performer (especially for the rare task requiring specialized skills), guided only by your friends’ recommendation. In this case, you should visit different websites, visited by the freelancers, place your advertisement or choose from the offered portfolios. We should note that you shouldn’t make a choice only on the basis of portfolios. Firstly, there are many unscrupulous persons in the Internet (they can post other people's work). Secondly, even a large number of positive comments and really great work samples made by one or another person don’t guarantee you anything. Even the work of an expected quality level can be finished long after the deadline. You should motivate the freelancers to respect the agreements (which are usually personal and undocumented) by specifying the possibility of financial penalties in case of missing the deadlines (of course, it it’s not your fault, for example, you fundamentally change all TOR when the most of the work is already done). The deadlines and possible reasons for their change must be also specified very clearly

Another sticky moment: try not to make full prepayments, as in this case you won’t be able to penalize the freelancer for delays or inadequate quality of performance. You will agree that begging the freelancers to finish their work for your own money doesn’t feel good at all. Of course, the unfamiliar freelancer will hardly agree to work with you without some advance, but make sure that the prepayment doesn’t exceed 50% of the specified amount. On the one hand, such advance will show that you mean business, and you really need this work to be done in time. And on the other hand, it will leave you some instruments of influence on the freelancer.

Now let's move on to the selection. The best quality (apart from the professional knowledge in the chosen field) is maximum time spent online, especially during working hours. He/she can be always available on the means of communication and respond promptly to all the questions and messages. Note how much it took you to contact the person for setting up the first interview. If the process took one-two days, it will probably be difficult to contact this worker during the work process. Unfortunately, the remote workers tend to disappear. You will feel better if Skype or ICQ of your remote worker will be always “green” within the specified time. Besides, it will help you to quickly find out about the performance of the task and remind the performer of it, which often helps to accelerate the final handover.

Actually, you should trust to your first impression. Everything that attracts your attention during the first talk, can tell you a lot about the person and his/her interest in getting and performing the task. You can't trust people who disappear for a few hours or days right after meeting you, and then get in touch like nothing's wrong. The same applies to the persons who prove to be aggressive and rude from the very beginning. Even nick and avatar can tell you a lot about their owner (as well as his/her communication style, grammar errors or wrong sentence construction). Don’t think that the person specialized in some other area than linguistics, can afford writing illiterately. Usually, it is an indicator of unreliability, ignorance and even disrespect for the interlocutor