What resources you guys use to hire freelancers?

#1

Post by mandeepj » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 5:07 PM UTC

I have mostly used odesk.com (because there are lot of people over there) to hire free lancers. I have seen most of them are crappy. They are just there to take your money and no worries about the deliverables. Applicants will try to negotiate on your total budget and will ask for 30%-40% advance. It's upto your negotiation power and you might be successful in bringing the advance to just $30-$40 and once they take that, they are gone.

I have lot of ideas (iphone apps, websites) . I am not looking to hire a dedicated full time team, just free lancers - billed on a fixed budget.

Please let me know what resources you will suggest to look and please share your experiences also.

Much Thanks.

Re: What resources you guys use to hire freelancers?

#2

Post by maheshguruswamy » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 5:22 PM UTC

Have you thought about building it out yourself? I know a few business folks who taught themselves enough programming to get a website built out.

Re: What resources you guys use to hire freelancers?

#3

Post by mandeepj » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 5:28 PM UTC

maheshguruswamy wrote: post #2

Have you thought about building it out yourself? I know a few business folks who taught themselves enough programming to get a website built out.

Thanks for replying. I am coding for two websites already. Coding for iphone means first I have to learn objective-c, xcode and lot of other things along the way.

I think delegation of work is a great idea instead of doing everything by yourself, IMHO.

Re: What resources you guys use to hire freelancers?

#4

Post by mchannon » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 5:55 PM UTC

Odesk, but with a few must-do approaches:

Hourly only, with work tracking.

Limit the hours authorized to just long enough to figure out if they're worth their rate (2-3 is what I use), then up them only when you like a candidate

If a task is important, hire the best 3 candidates to do the first two hours' worth. Usually 1 will totally flake somehow, 1 will almost do ok, 1 will be good.

Weigh heavily on iterative solving (inspect their work daily (archived attachments are a must), interact, and don't give them too long of a to-do list)

Avoid skype and off-oDesk emails; it's always good to keep things in writing to maintain perspective

Recognize that they have other projects going on and that you can't occupy the lowest-bidder and highest-priority spaces at the same time (though one or the other isn't too much to expect)

*Don't be afraid to walk away and stop throwing good money after bad if performance suffers (usually that means they get unresponsive or slow to return work)

Re: What resources you guys use to hire freelancers?

#5

Post by david92 » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 5:56 PM UTC

There's a monthly HackerNews thread for people seeking freelancers and freelancers looking to get hired. The thread is usually titled "Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (month year)"

I think that might be worth checking out. The rates will probably be higher than the ones on odesk.com, though.

Re: What resources you guys use to hire freelancers?

#6

Post by mandeepj » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 6:12 PM UTC

david92 wrote: post #5

There's a monthly HackerNews thread for people seeking freelancers and freelancers looking to get hired. The thread is usually titled "Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (month year)" I think that might be worth checking out. The rates will probably be higher than the ones on odesk.com, though.

Thanks, I will look into that thread.

Re: What resources you guys use to hire freelancers?

#7

Post by avinash88 » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 6:22 PM UTC

I'm in the process of creating a new dev team (A small one), would you be interested in working with one of our developers? We can discuss negotiations via e-mail :)