Is Elance a good place to find a designer?

We get this question quite a bit and we don’t mind it as we have a presense on elance as well as other bidding sites for html developers. The problem is not with elance or any of the other sites like it. The problem is with prequalifying the workers.

Do they actually have experience in the field that you want? How would you know?

We have seen many web designers, or should I say so-called web designers who have work online and all looks good. But when given a simple assignment, they fail. Why? We are presuming that it is due to either having taken something over on another website or touted a site they didn’t even make. There are a few issues here. First and foremost is that many designers create for a single size and when expanded, usually because a customer adds a large image into a template, the entire page shifts and the design breaks. This is why we use nested tables to accomplish most of what we do on ebay. There is no guarantee that design shifts won’t happen with templated designs.

On elance and other sites with freelancers, we’ve noticed that many so-called designers simply turn out cookie cutter designs and then attempt to fit them to our requirements which is not custom work. We now hire all our staff in house.

It simply doesn’t work for us to use the freelancers, but for many people it seems to work. The main thing about hiring talent on such sites is to ask them to draft something quickly to show their skill instantly with something YOU asked for, not just something that they have. This will tell you a few things. 1. if they can follow directions, 2. if they can design, and 3. if they are interested in your project. 4. if they are hungry.

Hiring a designer that is not hungry can be problematic. We try to find people who are committed, hungry and thirsting for more. If not you end up with mediocre web design.