Working with freelancers and remote specialists, like freelance developers, has a lot of advantages, benefits and positive aspects. As we have mentioned in our previous article “How to make the remote work more effective?”, the remote workforce can:
- save your company money.
- give your company an opportunity to grow.
- allow your company to attract top professionals worldwide.
- get you highly motivated and engaged team members.
- reduce sick absences.
- increase the overall productivity.
Although to utilize the remote workforce trend at full capacity and make it work well for your company you need to know about top issues which can occur during the process of hiring freelancers, freelance developers or remote specialists.
1. Choosing a freelancer is time-consuming and painful
A business owner who ever had a chance to look for a freelance programmer knows how time-consuming and frustrating this process can be:
- posting a project on the freelance-marketplaces.
- reviewing applications and web developer portfolios.
- assessment preparation and its review.
- technical assignment preparation.
- technical assignment update and explaining.
- project presenting.
- budget and deadlines negotiation.
Every stage of this process remote worker search, for example, a freelance software developer or coder, is equally important and cannot be skipped.
Hiring a web developer may seem to be an easy task, but the underlying potential problem at this stage of cooperation with a freelancer (freelance web developer or freelance programmer) is the fact that on the one hand, a freelancer with a low hourly rate can present a fake portfolio with examples of high-quality projects he never worked for, and on the other hand the positive reviews and high freelance marketplace scores of a top freelancer do not always guarantee a high standard of work and meeting of deadlines.
2. For a part-time freelancer, you are always a client
One of the reasons why we decided to work only with the long-term projects on a remote basis is that, as a matter of experience, a part-time cooperation (less than 30 hours a week) does not allow a remote specialist to flow into the project and become a part of a team. Due to this reason, part-time freelancers do not feel responsible for the overall project outcome. Whereas full-time remote specialists with correct motivation and employer’s attitude may feel as a team member.
3.Hard to assess level of professionalism in tech spheres
Another important issue which may take place during the freelancer search is connected with the difficulties of assessing freelancer skills and knowledge, especially in the tech sphere during the process of hiring freelance developers.
For example, a junior web developer may include more web technologies and skills in his CV than he can really use in the process of web development as long as theoretical knowledge doesn’t guarantee fantastic results in the real life.
Our recruiters very often see equal skills in the CVs of junior and top specialists. How to choose the right one? At Soshace recruiters and tech specialists are working in a team and are using the most efficient Fortune 500 testing approaches and background checks. Our remote developers are taking several technical tests before they get a real project from our client.
4. Freelancers with low hourly rates work at as many projects as possible at the same time and have problems with the deadlines
Hiring a part-time remote specialist (a freelancer) you should always remember that very often a person may decide to work independently for a low hourly rate not because he is professional enough to afford this freedom of being “self-employed”, but because he is having a problem with finding a full-time job or probably he has financial issues and is taking as many projects as it`s possible to cover his needs.
Both situations should not look appealing for a potential client, but very often a client forgets that there aint no such thing as a free lunch and hires this freelancer in hopes of fantastic and fast results for a very small budget. Of course this freelancer, for example a software engineer, who has to work several projects at the same time, doesn’t meet deadlines.
5.Language issues for the English market projects
The remote workforce trend, financial issues and currency devaluation in the developing countries are the main reasons why top American and European companies, including fortune 500 list, started to post job offerings on the job aggregator websites in the developing countries.
Although in pursuit of cost reduction recruiters forget that not only customer service and sales talents, but also web developers and tech specialists should have a very good level of English to communicate inside the company and work efficiently.
6.Price
Price issue may seem strange for you, but you should know and always remember that top 1% freelancers may charge more than in-house specialists and cooperation with freelancers with low hourly rates may cause 9 other top hiring freelancer issues. That’s why we recommend you cooperate with freelancers and remote specialists, charging reasonable rates.
7.Freelancers are unpredictable
Project managers who had a chance to work with part-time remote specialists would not argue that the majority of them are very unpredictable. Very often even after 1 week of stable work they may disappear, stop to answer fast enough or cancel a project.
Our experience shows that the more projects they have the more “workload protected” they feel as if they spread their risks. A remote specialist who is working for one long-term project is much more predictable than a freelancer with 20 tasks for one day. Freelancers with so many tasks think that they are free to work when they want and how they want. Even if 1 unhappy client leaves he or she still has 19 other companies who are happy to pay the very little price and wait for their projects for several months.
At Soshace we guarantee that our remote specialists are predictable, always deliver deadlines and projects at highest standards.
8.Communication problems
Freelancers, as some companies, may have no knowledge in the proper customer service attitude and may ignore basic ethical standards. A human factor and the lack of responsibility for the overall project lead to various communication problems and missing a deadline.
9.Training problem
Another important issue when hiring a remote worker, for example, a freelance web programmer, is a training problem. Very often freelancers and short-term remote specialists do not plan to get deep enough in the overall project strategy and in the best case feel responsibility only for their small tasks. For the article creation or a small web design job it may suit well, but when you are hiring a programmer or a software engineer, responsible for the logical models of your web resource, its more reasonable to hire a full-time remote specialist, who will be able to work in a team and is open for training and deep dive in the project.
10.Time tracking
The last and the most dramatic part which bothers every business owner when he/she is planning to hire a remote specialist is a question of how he/she will be tracking time spent by a freelancer.
For a small task when a project manager is paying only for a result delivery a freelancer has a deadline and a project manager doesn’t need to know how much time a freelancer really spends, as it doesn’t affect the costs.
However, when you are having a large web development project for several specialists and you pay hourly rates, you need to track how much time every remote specialist really spends. To do this you can use time tracking tools (for example, Hubstaff).
Summary:
According to our analysis of the top 10 issues with freelancers, we came to the conclusion that:
- for the large and complex projects, it is better to work with full-time remote specialists than part-time freelancers.
- Cooperation with part-time freelancers is good only for small and easy tasks.
Soshace will help your company to find the top remote specialists for your complex web development project and neutralize the major freelance risks.
Fill the form and hire your first remote professional now!
