Finding the right freelancer is only the first step. No matter how ideal the candidate, if you do not competently build a work with him, then everything runs the risk of sinking. Over the years, we saw the main risks when working with freelancers and developed tactics for avoiding them at each stage of the work. We have reduced our mistakes in this area and we want you to reduce your mistakes, so we share our experience. But let’s start with a small but important digression.
What projects we do not do with freelancers
We do not work with remote workers in the following situations:
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the project is limited in time, it is impossible to lay a margin of time for risks – this is fraught with failure of deadlines, “loss” of the worker from the project;
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our full-time developer will not be able to conduct a code review, and for a project, we can only take an unverified person that we have not worked with before. Here it is worth waiting for difficulties with the transfer and support of the project, and in case of a critical situation there will be no one to “pick up” the project;
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some part of the work is on a third party;
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the agreement provides for the operational correction of bugs within a few hours (for example, under a technical support agreement).
Risks when working with freelancers
We hired the first freelancer five years ago and for the last two years, we have been actively working with them, recruiting more than 30 people to the freelance team. Yodel, Locals.Maps.me, RocketGo, My Home – this is an incomplete list of projects that we did with the involvement of freelancers.
However, it was not complete without full cones, and these are the key problems that we encountered.
The timing
Failure of deadlines and stretching tasks always painfully affect the project. Similar situations sooner or later arise with each of us, but with remote workers, this is compounded by the fact that we can be in different parts of the country and the world and are deprived of live communication. It is easy for a freelancer to “fall out” for a while or get completely lost. There is always a reason: he got sick, was moving, etc.
Before co-working
We have already mentioned that the selection of a worker in us consists of several stages – from compiling a sample of potential candidates to an interview with the team and signing the contract. And the freelancer’s behavior at all stages is indicative: how much he fulfills his promises and tasks within the specified time. If the developer postpones the deadline or is lost before the start of the collaboration, this is an alarming bell.
We are trying to ensure that by the end of the selection we have not one candidate left, but at least two or three good specialists. They can become a reserve if a critical situation arises and the selected freelancer disappears.
Quality
It is important to define development standards for remote employees. The code should be written in the same style. The uniform design of the code and the use of one technology stack affects the support and transfer of projects, saves time, improves the quality of work, and makes team development possible in principle.
Advice to managers: call and write to the developer more often, build relationships like with regular developers, advise how to make the task better. This manager’s indifference to the freelancer, to the project and the final result is always felt and transferred to the freelancer. Then he shows himself to the maximum.
