Augmenting your team with a knowledgeable freelancer can be a game-changing move for your business, but only under one condition: you make the right hire. The reality is, diving into the freelance landscape can be a real hit or miss. If you aren’t doing your due diligence to vet your candidates, it’s very possible, maybe even probable, that you’ll end up hiring a dunce who has overhyped his or her credentials. To protect yourself from this nightmarish scenario, here are 7 telltale signs that you shouldn’t hire a particular freelancer. 1. They don’t ask questions This is a very common theme among freelancers who only care about convincing you to hire them for the job. You give them a vague description of what you’d like them to do if hired, and before you can even fill them in on the details, they immediately say, “yes sir, I can do this right away no problem!” While every freelancer is understandably going to want to sell themselves as a know-it-all, it’s important to differentiate the ones who are really going to be honest with you and care about their quality of work from those just looking to get paid. From personal experience, I’ve found that the freelancers who care about the details and aren’t afraid to ask questions to be the more valuable options for your business. 2. They don’t read your initial job post carefully If you’re using a freelance website like Upwork, a super smart thing to do is to include a small “test” within your job posting to see which freelancers are really paying attention to your post. That test could be something like, “add the words ‘I have read these instructions carefully’ to your job proposal” or “attach your resume and cover letter.” If an applicant fails to even follow instructions as simple as those, it’s a pretty strong sign that they aren’t going to be able to follow the actual instructions of the job you’re looking to hire them for. 3. They claim to be experts on everything You see a lot of generic cover letters where the freelancer claims to be an expert in 7 different fields that don’t have much in common. Chances are the freelancer is really just including any field they have any slight bit of knowledge in, but is in no way a true “expert” who knows any more than you might. Let’s also remember here that a jack of all trades is really a master of none. When in doubt of a freelancer’s expertise, ask them a few “I gotcha” questions to test if they really know their stuff. Also, ask them to send over their resumes to see what they really have experience with. If someone claims to be an expert in marketing but has little to no actual work experience that relates to this field, then alarm bells should obviously be ringing. 4. Their rates are too good to be true We all have this hope when we’re […]
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