3 Ways To Find High-Quality People On oDesk and eLance + Why You’re Probably Hiring The Wrong People

There was a period of time where I felt like there was no way to get good quality work done by anyone on oDesk or eLance. At that time I thought I had it all figured-out, I could pay someone far away $8 for something that someone here would charge $50 an hour for and boom, my business would be growing at a fraction of the cost.

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I hired a lot of people on oDesk and what I learned is that if you pay $8/hour for a job that should cost $50/hour, don’t just expect a fraction of the cost, expect a fraction of the quality. Especially when it came to developers, pay an “Expert PHP Developer” $6 an hour and see how great your new app looks when it’s done.

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Here’s the disconnect. At the end of the day you do get what you pay for, on oDesk you can definitely save money but try to save too much and you’ll dramatically sacrifice quality. Here are three ways to find high-quality people on oDesk:

  1. Don’t look for people with incredibly low hourly rates – when you first go onto oDesk you can be tempted to hire people charing $3 or $4 an hour, it seems to good to be true. It is. Try to get above $15, you’ll find much better quality in this range.
  2. Find someone in the same country you’re in – it’s nice to be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone that works for you. If you can’t do that then you’re stuck trying to find them on Skype or email. Yes, you’ll pay more to hire local but you’ll without a doubt get better quality and communications.
  3. Don’t just let people come to you – I used to post jobs on oDesk and just let everyone come to me. Now when I post a job I go out and try to find my own top three candidates. Remember, there are a lot of lower-quality people on oDesk looking for any job they can get and they’ll most likely email you right away. The best people who are in high demand might not ever apply for your job…which is why it’s up to you to find them.
Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton