How do you guys hire freelancers?

[Kostya76]

I am getting really frustrated with freelancers on Uprwork and Freelancer.com

I am trying to find someone who I can work with on a long term basis as I need help with data entry and some small to mid-size Wordpress development projects, but it seems like it is impossible to find a reliable freelancer who delivers quality work. I've changed like 10 freelancers in the last 2 months and it's been a huge inconvenience as hiring new freelancer, explaining them the scope, training them, etc takes a lot of my time and work. It also causes significant delays and I don't have any idea how long it's gonna take me to get my website ready.

Some of the most reasons why I have to fire freelancers:
1. They accept the offer, but never do the work
2. They do the work, but their work product quality is way too low. I have to go back and re-do 50% of what they've done. (double waste of time and money)
3. They can follow the script, but when they run into something that they don't expect no matter how minor it is, they can't use a little bit of their brain power and critical thinking to figure out how to make it work.
4. Data entry freelancer can't use Photoshop to perform simple tasks
5. so on...

If you work with freelancers and you feel like you get you get what you pay for, tell me how you do it because I'm getting desperate...

 

[cerebration]

In most (not all) cases - the price you pay equals the quality you get. New/unexperienced freelancers don't have the confidence to charge and are typically working for pennies.
If you untie your wallet, you should get your work done properly (and save time + money).

 

[AAW]

How do you find your freelancers? you can use upwork to find good ones, try to find ones with at least 1000 hour work, 5 stars reviews, completed 90% of tasks and then search based on that, create the job and invite them, do not post the job as you wont find qualified ones.
One very important note: do not expect them to do all work when you have not trained them, get them on skype and give them their duties like 1,2, 3, 4, and then do 5 of them while you are sharing your screen so they can see exactly what you need, sign up to some screenmonitor sites and pay per employee about $7 a month so the site can save their screenshots and show you what they are doing, you can easily monitor them and see if they are actually working for you and doing what they need to do, these sites only show their computer screen when they sign in and they need to sign off to stop you from seeing their screen.

You have to pick them and invite them and you have to train them and be patient with them and after few month you will see a very competent nice people who are trust worthy plus they get to learn new skills from you and you get to have some other people helping you to do more work. I think there are people here may be looking for freelance work too.

 

[geek8]

i'm currently having this problem now.

 

[Captain_Nothing]

I use Freelancer frequently. 90% of the time I am reusing the people I have worked with before but I have experienced the SAME EXACT things you experienced with the people on there.

 

[emtoldme]

well it depends, good quality requires good pay, I'm not assuming anything but it happened to me many times, I'm a freelancers, and when I start a conversation with someone who needs my services I try to understand the project, its requirement and workload, I quote a fairly reasonable price and more often than not the client just stops replying (once I was discussing a project and I asked for $250 which is extremely low for the workload and he said that he had offers around $60 and $70), those kinds of clients are usually looking for a web developer with a $3/hour rate,

Bottom line is if the freelancer accepts the work for a very low price then don't expect anything, sometimes portfolios are just stolen property, it doesn't make any sense if someone with a stunning portfolio asks for a price lower than $40/hour (they usually offer a week worth of work for under $100) it only says that the portfolio doesn't mean anything in his particular case

 

[Kostya76]

After I created this thread back in February, I actually found a great freelancer from India (WordPress development) who I've been working with for almost three months now. He is constantly delivering quality work and he is pricing is pretty reasonable.

So, keep looking people! Eventually you will find somebody good!

 

[Kostya76]

I am one of them, but if you are in US your rate is probably I little high for me. I'm working on a personal project with pretty limited budget, unfortunately...

 

[PinguSpy]

I have exp hiring tons of freelancers via upwork.
Already spend more than $200k+

Here's my experience..

1. Do not hire freelance from India, Pakistan (sorry not try to be generalize.. I believe not all, but majority of them provide shitty quality of work). :/

If you want cheap and high quality of work, I prefer Philippine.

2. Only choose freelance that have:

- 100% success rate (i got scammed previously even he got 90% positive rating, i also got scam from freelance with 0 rate, because he was new, since he work in big company, and the way he explained technically how he gonna perform the task, and yet few months later he still cant finish the job. Conclusion, always choose freelance with >99% rating and above, unless the task is very easy task.

- >$20k Total Earned

- >500 hours of worked
(the more the better, I prefer >1000 and above)

- >20 jobs complete (not a single negative rate)

- Do not hire agency, because the cost gonna get triple expensive. Because for just for a simple job, they will setup team with project manager, customer support and other complex stuff with JIRA/Basecamp witch is you don't even need it.

- Russia and Ukraine programmer are pretty famous nowadays. Their quality of work kind of good too. But be careful, they gonna suck your money dry. Always act 'cheapskate' when you want to deal with them.

- When hiring someone, choose pay by hour, not fixed. Because sometime the task can be complete less than 1 hour, but the programmer will quote you like $500-$1000..
we also din't even know if he/she really working or just watching NETFLIX?
Pay by hour is also good +lower your risk from getting scammed. Because it got video, and system that will track freelance mouse movement, keyboard, screenshot, etc.., any problem if they try to scam you, you can contact upwork engineer and they will just view the video, system tracker, and see what the freelance really does.

 

[Geek98]

I have exp hiring tons of freelancers via upwork.
Already spend more than $200k+

Here's my experience..

1. Do not hire freelance from India, Pakistan (sorry not try to be generalize.. I believe not all, but majority of them provide shitty quality of work). :/

If you want cheap and high quality of work, I prefer Philippine.

2. Only choose freelance that have:

- 100% success rate (i got scammed previously even he got 90% positive rating, i also got scam from freelance with 0 rate, because he was new, since he work in big company, and the way he explained technically how he gonna perform the task, and yet few months later he still cant finish the job. Conclusion, always choose freelance with >99% rating and above, unless the task is very easy task.

- >$20k Total Earned

- >500 hours of worked
(the more the better, I prefer >1000 and above)

- >20 jobs complete (not a single negative rate)

- Do not hire agency, because the cost gonna get triple expensive. Because for just for a simple job, they will setup team with project manager, customer support and other complex stuff with JIRA/Basecamp witch is you don't even need it.

- Russia and Ukraine programmer are pretty famous nowadays. Their quality of work kind of good too. But be careful, they gonna suck your money dry. Always act 'cheapskate' when you want to deal with them.

- When hiring someone, choose pay by hour, not fixed. Because sometime the task can be complete less than 1 hour, but the programmer will quote you like $500-$1000..
we also din't even know if he/she really working or just watching NETFLIX?
Pay by hour is also good +lower your risk from getting scammed. Because it got video, and system that will track freelance mouse movement, keyboard, screenshot, etc.., any problem if they try to scam you, you can contact upwork engineer and they will just view the video, system tracker, and see what the freelance really does.

Wow, I didn't know about the screen recording thing, seems interesting

 

[Kostya76]

Same here!

Who can see the video recording? Can client access or is it only available to Upwork staff?

 

[Geek98]

Same here!

Who can see the video recording? Can client access or is it only available to Upwork staff?

Apparently its a kind of "dispute backup" in case things go wrong.

 

[PinguSpy]

Sorry its not screen recording
Work diary - screen shot - activity level - mouse/keyboard activity

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211062278-Review-Your-Freelancer-s-Work-Diary

 

[Philip Kim]

We have a freelance section here also.. HAF section.

 

[Kostya76]

I have exp hiring tons of freelancers via upwork.
Already spend more than $200k+

Here's my experience..

1. Do not hire freelance from India, Pakistan (sorry not try to be generalize.. I believe not all, but majority of them provide shitty quality of work). :/

If you want cheap and high quality of work, I prefer Philippine.

2. Only choose freelance that have:

- 100% success rate (i got scammed previously even he got 90% positive rating, i also got scam from freelance with 0 rate, because he was new, since he work in big company, and the way he explained technically how he gonna perform the task, and yet few months later he still cant finish the job. Conclusion, always choose freelance with >99% rating and above, unless the task is very easy task.

- >$20k Total Earned

- >500 hours of worked
(the more the better, I prefer >1000 and above)

- >20 jobs complete (not a single negative rate)

- Do not hire agency, because the cost gonna get triple expensive. Because for just for a simple job, they will setup team with project manager, customer support and other complex stuff with JIRA/Basecamp witch is you don't even need it.

- Russia and Ukraine programmer are pretty famous nowadays. Their quality of work kind of good too. But be careful, they gonna suck your money dry. Always act 'cheapskate' when you want to deal with them.

- When hiring someone, choose pay by hour, not fixed. Because sometime the task can be complete less than 1 hour, but the programmer will quote you like $500-$1000..
we also din't even know if he/she really working or just watching NETFLIX?
Pay by hour is also good +lower your risk from getting scammed. Because it got video, and system that will track freelance mouse movement, keyboard, screenshot, etc.., any problem if they try to scam you, you can contact upwork engineer and they will just view the video, system tracker, and see what the freelance really does.

If you don't mind me asking , what line of business are you in?

 

[Kostya76]

I have exp hiring tons of freelancers via upwork.
Already spend more than $200k+

Here's my experience..

1. Do not hire freelance from India, Pakistan (sorry not try to be generalize.. I believe not all, but majority of them provide shitty quality of work). :/

If you want cheap and high quality of work, I prefer Philippine.

2. Only choose freelance that have:

- 100% success rate (i got scammed previously even he got 90% positive rating, i also got scam from freelance with 0 rate, because he was new, since he work in big company, and the way he explained technically how he gonna perform the task, and yet few months later he still cant finish the job. Conclusion, always choose freelance with >99% rating and above, unless the task is very easy task.

- >$20k Total Earned

- >500 hours of worked
(the more the better, I prefer >1000 and above)

- >20 jobs complete (not a single negative rate)

- Do not hire agency, because the cost gonna get triple expensive. Because for just for a simple job, they will setup team with project manager, customer support and other complex stuff with JIRA/Basecamp witch is you don't even need it.

- Russia and Ukraine programmer are pretty famous nowadays. Their quality of work kind of good too. But be careful, they gonna suck your money dry. Always act 'cheapskate' when you want to deal with them.

- When hiring someone, choose pay by hour, not fixed. Because sometime the task can be complete less than 1 hour, but the programmer will quote you like $500-$1000..
we also din't even know if he/she really working or just watching NETFLIX?
Pay by hour is also good +lower your risk from getting scammed. Because it got video, and system that will track freelance mouse movement, keyboard, screenshot, etc.., any problem if they try to scam you, you can contact upwork engineer and they will just view the video, system tracker, and see what the freelance really does.

Do you also hire freelancers to write content for you? How much would you pay for a quality (4/5) 1000-word article in English?

 

[PinguSpy]

Do you also hire freelancers to write content for you? How much would you pay for a quality (4/5) 1000-word article in English?

Rarely hire for that type of task.

Most of freelance that i’m hiring are for programming / web and mobile application task.

 

[macdonjo3]

4. Data entry freelancer can't use Photoshop to perform simple tasks

Of course they can't dude. Photoshop has nothing to do with data entry. If you want someone who knows how to work Photoshop, pay the rate for such and stop trying to get by with paying date entry salary.

Hiring on Upwork is pretty complicated. The CEO of Upwork actually contributed over an hour worth of content to my book on the subject if that gives you any indication of how extensive it can be.

 

[shanna_doll]

Because quality guys dont work for peanuts.

 

[Hira Ramzan]

So i have friends that work on Fiverr as freelancers and the problem is a lot of newbies take up projects but they don't have the time or capacity to finish the project and the price for low enough for them to just drop it.
This is a lot like building customer loyalty, so make sure the cost justifies the efforts and pay a fair amount.
You also need to work out a method of finding professionals so read through their profiles and their comments. Fish out the ones that know what they are doing. Also, make sure you have a good budget. Once you find somebody reliable, just keep reusing them.