The How's and Where's of Finding Qualified Freelancers?

July 23, 2011 9:46 PM

Semi-regular need for freelance experts in things that are not "my areas of expertise," as Hodgeman would put it. Help needed not in finding particular people, but in knowing where and how to find the experts I need.

We have a small business that often requires us to find freelance help in a variety of technical areas. Examples: WordPress developers, e-commerce/php shopping cart coders, inDesign smarties, database (FileMaker) geniuses, spreadsheet gurus, and other similar areas.

Current example: we need to find a more skilled e-commerce developer than what's available locally for our specific shopping cart platform. Ideally would like to find someone that we can return to over the longer-term as new projects arise, upgrades need installing or things need tweaking. So I scour the internets, read forum posts and generally try to see if someone seems to know what they're talking about, seems to be professional, and seems to be trustworthy. And then it's all-in and hope it works out for any given project. There's got to be a better way.

I'm aware of sites like elance.com and freelancer.com, but haven't used them as I'm not really in a position to know which sites are good for which types of projects and other such details.

So, where and how do I find good, solid freelance expertise for specific projects without spending inordinate amounts of time figuring out where to look and what to look for in the first place?

posted by webhund to work & money (4 answers total)

Have you tried MeFi Jobs?
posted by MexicanYenta at 9:54 PM on July 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

I've had good luck joining professional groups on Linked In and posting my inquiries there.
posted by sweetkid at 10:02 PM on July 23, 2011

You might try to posting to the job board at Freelanceswitch.com. Posting is free but it costs freelancers $7 per month to respond to ads. Not expensive but just enough to keep out folks who aren't serious about what they do. When I was looking for a designer not only were there a large volume of responses, but the quality was top notch. Of course with developers, evaluation is trickier, but still doable.

I can also recommend the most awesome Authentic Jobs, but you must pay to post there.

Posting to LinkedIn groups is a great idea. Depending on their settings a lot of folks (like me) will get your post directly in their email.
posted by Famous at 1:53 AM on July 24, 2011

I've used Guru and Odesk and prefer Odesk.
posted by rmless at 7:53 AM on July 25, 2011