Get More Pay Less out of your freelance employee.
Working with someone outside your office can be a nightmare. The fact that this doesn’t guarantee the best ratio of quality versus compensation makes it really intimidating for individuals who are new to the world of freelancing. This is also true to some veteran employers who are at this point still struggling to find the right person to do the right job for them. While the industry of freelancing is ever growing, and that hundreds of aspiring freelancer comes on the internet every day, the process of finding the right person for the right job is almost like finding a needle in a stack of hay. And so, it is very essential that you know how you to effectively play in the freelancing world. This interactive presentation features 10 suggestions on how you get the best out of your cash.
I know you are a busy person, so I intend not to waste your time by making this presentation as clear and as simple as possible making sure you got the thought in the least possible time. Enough for so many words, let’s get started.
The Golden Rule
Time is money. Respect your freelancer’s time as they are respecting yours, in addition, avoid direct insults and try to be professional in every way. In return you can build a warm relationship that will ensure the success of your future projects.
Perfect job description fitted for a well written job title.
A clear job description is the key part of finding candidates best suited for a project. It may help to take a really close look at your job description, making sure you have outlined everything to your needs and expectations as you would not want to pay extra charges for revisions caused by missing lines in your descriptions. Please note that even a single word modification can twist everything and would take some time to accomplish, this is especially true in graphics designs. The best way to accomplish this task is to sit with your friend or boss or colleges and have a little brainstorming.
Isolating the whites from the colored.
As you would expect, there are a lot candidates rushing their way hoping they would win the bid on your project, but how in the world would you know which of those candidates stands higher from the rest? Here is how;
- Rating; that won’t lie. (not unless he hired a couple of friends to hire him and give him a good start… clever, though effective).
- Portfolio; that will do the speaking for them. Analyze it really well if the style fits your needs. Remember not all freelancers are created equally.
While those two categories only apply to experienced freelancer, please also consider hiring new comers especially for a less painful project. Help them expose their talents. Who knows you might land a gifted one at the least expense.
Revealing the real deal
Hiring someone for your organization is no small task, but this doesn’t mean it has to be painful. But how would you know who is real deal? The answer lies in the interview process, as an experienced freelance artist, I have encountered countless interviews in my whole career, approaches vary largely but I want to point out only one strategy which I think is the best in most cases. Invite the candidate to have a small chat, give a little exercise on the spot, this should take no more than 15min as veteran freelancers would not invest more than 20min for free thereby missing the chance of picking the best. Grab a cup of coffee while waiting (you should wait to measure the candidates efficiency). Now you got the results, you can now see who the real deal is.
It is not always what you expect it to be.
No matter how rigorous your candidate search is, how hard you explain the project during the active phase; Outcome is not always what you expect it to be. This is the reality in the world of freelancing, and because of this, it is most likely you will ask for revision. But how do you effectively manage this situation? The best way, take time to study the outcome, make up your mind and finalize everything that you want, I mean everything as you would not want to keep coming back for more (this is not a cola in anyway J), remember revisions are time and money wasters if caused by a poor judgments.
Feedback is helpful
Saying nothing but, “I don’t like it”, “this is not what I expected” isn’t enough to go on to make the changes you will be happy with. As I have stated in the golden rule, try to be professional in every way you can. Relate what you don’t like and tell us what we can do to address the issue. This way you can get better results. Don’t worry though – you won’t offend us.
A better communication
A good communication leads to more successful project. Establish a good connection with your freelancer; check the progress regularly and always request for updates. This way, you can see how the project is molded thus giving you a chance to request changes before it actually happen. How would you do that? A chat client is a good option and is really easy to establish, but I encourage you to find a free web collaborative tool to actually monitor how things unfold.
Consider Time zones
No matter how well the project commence, information is not always good enough to finish the job and that issues always occur in a certain point in time. As I live in Philippines, which is almost halfway across the globe and my potential clients, I soon realize that I must work at night, I needed to work on my clients local time as I would often seek my client’s advice, and I needed answers when I need it. I wouldn’t want to wait for 24 hours waiting for my client’s advice, this is such a time wasters. Remember to ask their working time zone them and let them commit and stick to it during the course of the project.
Is cheaper really cheap?
Think it again. Why some freelancer rated themselves cheaper? There are a couple of reasons here; maybe a newbie, perhaps not confident on the project, or maybe the competition or perhaps out of project as of the moment. Try to give this a thought and perhaps have it figured out. You wouldn’t want to pay $10 for an unusable piece, or pay some $4/hour that would took 5 hours to complete while you can hire someone at $8/hour and finish the job in less than 2 hours. Know the reason behind the rate
Consider Long Term Relationship
Every person has different personality, what looks really well to one actually would not work to others. Having a long term relationship with your freelancer assures you that every project can be as close as what you expected it be, since your freelancer literally learns more about your personality, your likes and dislikes, your rules and regulations. And this will lead to a success in every project, giving you more value to your money.
