How to identify the marketers that are experts in my type of business?

[36581698]

Salam!

I just came to Upwork today, on a friend's recommendation.

I am here to hire some of the really good freelancers that charge high but work with aweseomeness.

My concern is how to indentify whether a freelancer knows my business segment and can target the market for my audience properly to suit the business goals.

Please help me generate some effective interview questions.

Thank you so much!

[m_sharman]

hi and welcome!

my personal recommendation, is less about your interview questions and more about the questions/approach the freelancer proposes. 

I'm a business generalist and my experience, combined with the questions I ask my clients both before and during our collaborations, work well even if I'm not an expert in the field.

I find the canned interview questions Upwork provides as silly and non-productive. When I interview for jobs, I provide a rough outline of my approach, including multiple client touch points.  I never work more than 2 or 3 hours without providing clients with work product to review so we can both confirm the project is heading in the right direction.

Hope this helps!

[prestonhunter]

Hire six freelancers. Measure their effectiveness. Then end the contracts with all of them except the best one.

[m_sharman]

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Preston H wrote:

Hire six freelancers. Measure their effectiveness. Then end the contracts with all of them except the best one.

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Interesting, seems expensive for what I consider soft skills work, which marketing is. 

[prestonhunter]

The original poster said he is looking for awesomeness.

How will he know awesomeness if he hired only one person? What would he compare to?

He specifically stated he is looking for high-end freelancers - freelancers who charge high. So his primary interest is in finding the best people for this position. The budget is not a central consideration.

[m_sharman]

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Preston H wrote:

The original poster said he is looking for awesomeness.

How will he know awesomeness if he hired only one person? What would he compare to?

He specifically stated he is looking for high-end freelancers - freelancers who charge high. So his primary interest is in finding the best people for this position. The budget is not a central consideration.

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I think the bolded is a presumption. Again as someone whose projects are primarily business strategy and writing, my process involves a lot of client communication. I ask my clients a lot of questions to understand their objectives, target market, etc - these aren't always easy to assess from a job description or materials. Maybe this client will approach things differently, but for what I suspect he needs, it's more involved than hiring 6 people and giving them a task.  

[petra_r]

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Preston H wrote:

The budget is not a central consideration.

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Until it comes to paying.

This is also the person who is asking about getting refunds if his freelancers underperform...

That "Hire indiscriminately, hire a bunch of randoms, see who does OK" kind of approach of yours might work for cheap, low value and low spec contracts where the quality (or lack thereof) is easily and immediately obvious (in marketing, that is not the case) and when the cost per trial is very low and more or less irrelevant.

It is not practical or intelligent in every, or even most situations.

When your contracts are, on average, worth less than half an hour of your time, and mainly stuff you get done for your own entertainment or hobby, or to have freelancers create your portfolio items for you, that "throw sh*t at the wall and hope that some, or at least any of it, sticks" approach might not do any harm. In that thirtysomething Dollars of play-money per contract scenario, it might work. Or at least do no real harm, because it is not real money, anyway.

In a real world, business setting, with a real project and real money, that is not the case.

[prestonhunter · Accepted solution]

Petra, I see what you are saying, but I would actually invert the logic.

The bigger a client's budget is, and the bigger a project is, the more they are likely to derive benefit from hiring multiple people.

So set aside that part about "hiring indiscriminately" and "hiring randoms", which was not part of my advice in this thread.

Focus on the key valuable techiniques that high-dollar projects can benefit from:

- hiring multiple people

- evaluating the value they provide to the project

- continue working only with the very best people for your project

Just imagine a project for which the client needs 200 customer accounts handled.

The client interviews 10 freelancers, and only hires ONE of them.

This freelancer takes 5 hours to handle each customer account.

But what if the client had hired multiple freelancers, and found one that could handle each customer account (with the same level of quality) in only 2 hours?

The client certainly would have made a financial mistake by hiring only 1 freelancer, rather than hiring multiple freelancers for a few hours each to figure out which one is the best.

If the budget is not really a concern, then hiring only one freelancer may be fine if the first one you hire provides you with the quality you need. But if a client needs to minimize cost, then the larger a project is, the more savings can be realized by evaluating multiple people.

[m_sharman]

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If the budget is not really a concern, then hiring only one freelancer may be fine if the first one you hire provides you with the quality you need. But if a client needs to minimize cost, then the larger a project is, the more savings can be realized by evaluating multiple people.

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I believe this approach may be more suitable to technical jobs, i.e. programming. It's the old question of if takes a 9 months to make a baby, can you do it faster with 9 people? Or course the answer is no, and I am probably misquoting this adage, but the point is, some tasks are not improved by multiple people. Based on what the OP shared, and my experience in the business world, his need will not be met by multiple people.  He is trying to determine the best way to find a highly qualified freelancer.

In addition to the advice I posted previously, sometimes you just have to go with your "gut." People misrepresent their experience and skills, all the time - whether in the real world or on Upwork.  The best way to protect yourself as a client in a situation like this is limit the first set of deliverables in terms of budget and evaluate the quality from there.  

Clients misjudge freelancers and freelancers misjudge clients. There is no perfect question, or formula (in my opinion) to finding the match. And sometimes the FL may be highly qualified for the job, but work style isn't a fit.

Basically as with anything, the OP should be thoughtful in his approach and protect his exposure. 

[36581698]

Preston, You are a super hero! I find all your suggestions to be very logical. I will try multiple resources to measure their worth and will take the best ones to the last. Thanks a lot.