Where do I find a freelancer?
You are looking for a freelancer to help build the success of your business. But how do you find the right freelancer for your business? The number of freelancers continues to rise. In Flanders, 142,446 freelancers were already working in August 2020. Although there is sufficient supply, it can still be quite a task to find the right match. Read below how you can proceed.
Own network
The first way to find a freelancer is by relying on your own network. Recent market research by GIGHOUSE showed that 90% of the participating freelancers still use their own network to find assignments. So it is certainly interesting to inform your network of available assignments. If you ask people in your trusted circle, you have a chance of getting some good suggestions. If no one in your immediate circle is a freelancer or knows freelancers, you can make use of social media. By placing a simple call on Facebook or LinkedIn, you can reach interested parties. By using the right hashtag on Twitter, you also have a chance of getting a response.
However, it takes a lot of time to find a freelancer through your own network. You have to wait for responses from freelancers and then screen the candidates yourself. After checking their specific expertise, experience and cultural match, you should also check whether the agendas of both parties match. Freelancers often have multiple assignments running simultaneously, so matching agendas can be a challenge. Ticking off all criteria on your list can therefore be quite a job. That is why it can be useful to get help from specific websites, platforms or intermediaries. We outline the most popular examples below.
Online marketplaces and job sites
Another way to find a freelancer yourself is to post an assignment publicly on specific sites. Clients post vacancies and freelancers can respond to them. The disadvantage of this method is that freelancers often offer as low a rate as possible to beat other candidates, which lowers the quality of the freelancer. This way you often find a cheap freelancer but you do not get the most qualitative result or the best match with the company. There are also sites where freelancers post their profiles and companies can search for the right person. However, the freelancer often has to pay for this and therefore they dare to raise their rates to compensate for the costs. Although the use of such sites is free for clients, as a client you still pay indirectly.
Also, freelancers often do not share the full picture because these sites are accessible to everyone. They do not like to share their rates, availability and contact information for the entire internet. As a company, this makes it much more difficult to select potential candidates. If you have to contact all those candidates separately, it will cost you a lot of time. In addition, a lot of freelancers will try to apply for assignments that do not completely fall within their field of expertise if they are not offered enough assignments. As a result, you get a lot of candidates who do not have the expertise that your company needs. This is therefore a good option if you have a lot of time for the selection process and want to pay as little as possible. If you want more assistance in finding the right freelancer, you can use an intermediary.
Intermediary
If you want to find the right match quickly, you can use an intermediary. This way, you can call in an office that will look for the profile you are looking for. You explain the vacancy and then they will present you with the most suitable candidates. Most intermediaries work with a fixed percentage that must be paid on top of the freelancer's rate, according to the hours worked. A modern form of such an intermediary is a freelance platform.
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