A common problem in the development cycle of any website…you don’t have enough programmers to finish the project and deadlines are coming up fast! What to do?! Well, one option is to hire more full-time programmers, but companies often face the problem of limited funds to pay such demanding salaries. Then, there’s the issue of attracting good talent to even come join your company.
Sometimes, the only way to get around this resource problem are freelancers. Enter oDesk.com. oDesk is a growing marketplace for technology freelancers. The good thing about oDesk is it tries to qualify their registered freelancers…rating their skill level and also featuring an ebay-like feedback system. It has a pretty thorough list of tech professionals you’d need, including programmers, information architects, project managers, designers, and even media professionals. It also comes with project management tools to help you manage your project and keep freelancers on track.
Need help in a hurry? I tried posting a request for a back-end programming job on oDesk (yes, it was free to post a job) and immediately got an inbox full of potential candidates. The downside though is that most respondents were overseas candidates (typically freelancers from India and Russia), but the upside is that they have pretty cheap hourly rates if you are willing to work sight unseen and on a different time zone.
I eventually decided not to go with oDesk in preference for finding local talent. Great system and resource though. I’ll definitely give it another look when more US freelancers start using the system.
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