There are thousands of UK freelancers that are hired throughout the UK to outsource specific jobs across the business.
Outsourcing could seem unsafe and risky but I have collaborated some strategies for you to combat this:
In this guide:
- Refine your candidates by shortlisting them
- Identifying what you need in the ratings and references
- Interview tips
- Protecting yourself
- Using a pilot project and when it should be used
Refine your candidates by shortlisting them
Set the development plan
Freelancing can be considered daunting, but by filtering out the bad ones immediately will save a heap of time. On recruitment sites, this can be as simple as clicking a button ‘thumbs up’.
This enables the search to be refined immediately easily removing the inadequate ones.
Once you have shortlisted then you can go further in your selection process.
Identifying what you need in the ratings and references
Analysing ratings and references
There are options allowing you to view reviews of your shortlisted candidates, so the risk is reduced even further. Here you can see previous clients and employer’s reviews. Using both ratings and reviews gives a good insight to their work ethic.
Ratings
People who have hired the freelancer from upwork are the only ones who can give ratings. This gives a reliable recording to the freelancer.
References
The references section allows freelancers to exhibit work from outside of upwork.
They are genuine references as I validate each one manually.
Assessing freelancers’
When searching for a freelancer and their ratings and references, you should make sure they are describing the personality and qualities of someone you wish to hire says Ciaran Woodcock, a marketing manager at Churchill Knight & Associates Ltd UK contractor accountancy firm specialized in providing accounting solutions to UK contractors and freelancers.
To ensure your first time hiring a freelancer is stress-free you should look for attributes such as having strong communication and who has previous experience working with complicated briefs.
Interviewing tips
At this stage you should only have a few applicants left, preferably a few as possible so you don’t waste time.
Next, you should discuss the project you wish with your applicants before making your selection.
The messaging system allows you to send messages quickly and easily forward documents which is perfect for project work. However, for more complex projects, it may be best to arrange a meeting with your freelancer.
Recording agreements and changes to the project
To ensure that the project doesn’t go off track it is important you put any agreed changes in writing or on the project messaging system, not just verbally as this is very high risk it will go wrong.
Protecting yourself
The final step to diminish any further risk once you finalise that you and your freelancer wish to work together, and before any work is commenced is finally press the hire button.
When pressing the hire button, you are approving that the project will begin and confirming the terms of engagement, hourly rate and budget. Pressing hire, you are protected by our terms of service which comes with support if a dispute arises with your freelancer once the project starts.
Using a pilot project and when it should be used
Using a small lead-in project is a pilot project, this is to ensure your freelancer produces work that you’re satisfied with. For example, you may ask them to create a new landing home page as a test run says Craig Campbell from Glasgow who has 5 years experience in outsourcing complicated one-off projects to freelancers via Upwork.
Pilot projects are beneficial:
- It’s not financially expensive, as these projects can be as small as you like.
- This easily demonstrates the freelancers work standards and ethics.
- The freelancers should feel motivated to achieve, especially with the potential of a larger scale project to follow.
Summary
To summarise, following these steps are strong strategies to enable you reduce your risk when hiring your freelancer for the first time.
