Guide to hire freelancers for your blog

I have been doing a lot of recruitment this year, especially VA, technical people, and marketing folks.

One main reason is, my to-do list was growing crazy and I was accomplishing less as the list grows.

I realized it is time for me to multiply myself. I started looking out for help.

During this process, I learned a ton of things,

How to find which one to outsource?

Make a list of all the tasks you have in hand.

Go to a freelancing site like upwork.com and try to search for each task.

If you find people to do it and that is the task you will outsource. If you cannot find anyone or if that skill is super expensive for you to afford. You keep the task with you.

Usually, the skills like defining your goals, vision for your blog/business, strategies are something hard to find. Even if you find those skills are super expensive to hire.

All other skills like marketing, technical and management are easy to outsource.

People Types

There are 3 types of people,

Why people – They ask questions like, why are you doing this? which kind of makes you think the purpose and the connection to your long term goal. If they make you think that way – Hire them.

What people – They ask questions like, what do you want me to do? If that what is about just high-level instruction, then you can consider hiring else pass.

Often, these are the people who need to be managed a lot. They will need instructions and guidance all along.

Personally, I don’t hire anyone in this category.

How people – If anyone asks questions like, how do I do it? Run away. They are people who are trying to be trained by you at your expense.

Choose the person who’s life is dependant on it.

When you are picking the person, get to know about his profile, company and what he does for the living and so on.

There are a lot of people in the freelancing world, who are trying to explore to see if they can make some side income.

RUN AWAY from those guys, they never commit.

When the things get rough they disappear without any traces.

At the same time, there would be people who are genuinely trying to do this part time and planning to become full-time when the time is right.
They are great to hire, but it is impossible to find those guys.

When it comes to picking the right guy, ask this one question

What happens when you fire him? – will he happily move on, or will he go broke? If his life depends on the job, then he is the right person for your team.

Don’t Negotiate the price

I personally think, paying them whatever they ask is critical for long-term success. Even sometimes, if they ask below what I have estimated. I go and offer them more.

The reason is it leave so much positive impact on the people when they think that they have been treated fairly. Even if it is few hundred of $ it makes a ton of difference.

On the other hand, if you negotiate and make a good deal for you, they might join the team but they are still mentally in the market looking for a better opportunity.

Know exact work they do – Hour by hour. But don’t tell them.

Before you hire, make a list of the task they do hourly. Know exactly how much time it takes to do a certain task and plan accordingly.

If you are hiring for a 40-hour position, plan for 50 hours and expect 30 hours work to be done.

More importantly, don’t share the plan. It will scare people away. It is just for your reference.

This exercise brings in a lot of clarity on the goals you are trying to accomplish with your hire. Otherwise, you will run around trying to figure out the next task and end up using them for something else.

Eventually, you won’t see the value, they won’t see a value and everything falls apart.

Should be smarter than you

One critical thing to look for in the hire is, the person should be smarter than you.

Don’t hire people to enforce your ideas rather hire people who can perform tasks at much higher level than you.

They will do wonders.

If you find someone to take your commands and do it your way. You are stuck at whatever level you currently are.

Listen more than talking

Smart people talk a lot.

Genius people listen a lot.

The more you know the less you talk. The reason is confidence.

Find those people, who says. I got this. Not the one who explains the whole process of how it is done. These guys are not confident and are validating their ideas with you.

At the same time, don’t misjudge a quite guy to be smart. He might be quite because he doesn’t know anything that you are asking.

When you ask can you do this, the person should give a precise 2 liner answers on how it is done. Anything more, you are wasting your time.

You are funding for their ideas and not yours

Furthermore, always remember. If you get the right people on your team, they drive ideas and execute them as well. All you have to do is listen to the idea and if you also think it is great, fund it.

Don’t try to brainstorm or counter with another great idea. You either fund their idea or pass. Once they know it is their idea they will execute with much higher passion.

If the team doesn’t come up with an idea, fire them.

Be prepared to fire after the 1st week

Just like hiring, firing is an important aspect of your business.

Usually, you will know the quality of the resource in the first week itself. If you are not too excited about the person in the first week, you need to let the person go.

There is no point in delaying the decision. Sooner you do it is better.

Test the job description by conducting trial interviews

Before you start looking out for people, many times we don’t know what is the right terminology to use to search for the skill.

The best way I do is, put out a sample job posting in upwork.com and start talking with the applicants. Carefully note the keywords and problems they are trying to explain it to you.

Those are the terminologies and the problems are the description required for the job. Use that to craft a better job posting to attract top talent.

Resume, cover letters, and profile are useless

People are prepared for all these. They know how to get the best resume template and copy others cover letter to get the first pass.

Just Ignore all that.

Start with a chat in Skype or a video call and see how the person responds to you. Based on the interview decide.

Be flexible on everything except the goals

The freelancer asking to work on his own hours, provide reports in a different format, vacations. You can just let go all of that. But make sure the person is fully responsible for the goal you hired for.

Going for vacation great, but it is the person job to figure out how the job gets done the way they promised.

Be clear about that expectation, upfront.

Let them make mistakes and learn along

Don’t be super picky on small details.

It is ok to be not perfect. Furthermore, encourage imperfections or out of box thinking.

You will never know some simple ideas could be something great. You will know only when you give it a shot.

Search in uncommon places, not in job boards

The great resources are not on job boards. Moreover, they are not looking for jobs, because they are always in demand.

Talented people hang out in community forums, groups, and online boards where like-minded people discuss their favorite stuff.

Join those forums, listen to the conversations and pick the one who stands out in there. Ask that person to help you with your problem.

Measure people based on results not on being busy

People are tuned to be busy.

When it comes to working, there is a misconception that more quantity of work is better.

If you hold your resource to the number of hours they put in. Then you would end up getting more hours of work.

Instead, if you only measure based on the results they produce. More quality projects will get done.

Hire Fast. If in doubt, keep looking

When it comes to hiring, do it in 48 hours from the time you think you are ready.

Only for the projects that are not super critical or expensive. For critical projects, take as much time you need. (you should).

Small ones, just go for it. If the first hire didn’t work then go for next one and so on.

Remember your time is more valuable that wasting few hundred $ trying to search.

Conclusion

Recruitment is hard. Scary for many.

Let go the fear. Learn to delegate the control to someone.

Believe in people and leverage the expertise of others.

Rule of thumb, If there is someone who can do the work, then you should not do it.

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