The Art of Job Posting: Do’s, Don’ts, and Definately’s

You have a few projects that no one in house can handle, and you’ve decided to check out these job boards that everyone is raving about. There are many freelancers and service providers that can bid on your job listing. But how do you make sure you are attracting the right kind of people?

1) Professionalism Pays Off:

First off, present yourself as professional as possible. You don’t goof off when interviewing people for your company, so don’t do it when dealing with contractors. Just because some of them work out of the home doesn’t make them any less valuable. Proper grammar and spelling is a must. Avoid slang abbreviations (u, thx, lol, etc), DON’T TYPE IN ALL CAPS (isn’t that annoying?), and format your request so that it is easy to read. You can accomplish this by using headings and subheadings, bulleted lists, and short paragraphs.

2) Understand your needs:

For the content of the post, try to clearlydefine what you need in the project. If you don’t know exactly what you need, it makes it harder for the contractor to understand exactly what you want, and to produce work for your satisfaction.

3) Skills Required: Don’t make them throw in the kitchen sink, too:

Make sure that you list only the skills that you need. Sure, a content writer/flash guru/coding master sounds great, but you have a problem if your required skills list is larger than your actual job request. Focusing on what is the most important skills to have for your project will help both you and the contractor out.

4) How Much and How Fast?:

You will also need to determine what you are willing to pay and how long you are willing to allow for the project.Setting clear price points makes it easy for contractors and freelancers to determine whether the project is going to be worth their while. In general, the higher your budget, the more experience you will have for the choosing. However, sometimes experienced contractors will take on a lower paying job that can be done quickly, or if they’d like more experience in that area.

5) Location, location, location!:

One last, but very important point that you will want to specify in your listing is location. You will invariably find more people for an off-site job than on-site, and if you don’t make it clear what kind of job it is, you might lose out on a few people responding.

You might be wary of hiring on a contractor at first, but you can form beneficial business relationships with those who are easy to work with, and meetdeadlines. The responses you get to your posts will tell you a great deal of information about the contractors, and rating systems also help you determine who is worth your time; but by following the advice above you can ensure that only the best and most appropriate candidates will fill your inbox.