Finding a Freelance Developer

Nostregar

I am in need of some help and this seems like the right forum for the question.

I work at a small-ish company (13 people) and while it isn't our core business we have recently ended up doing some website and software development for a few clients of ours (being a small business, we do whatever our clients ask within reason). We pulled off these initial projects but we're finding that the person we're working with just isn't that great or easy to work with. That being the case, we're in the market for a freelance web developer with a certain set of skills, but we have no idea how to go about finding one. We used Google searches before and ended up with this guy, but we didn't really have a lot of luck finding good freelancers that way - it was mostly development companies.

My question to you, forum, is this: what is the best way to go about finding a decent freelance web developer? I know that that's a broad category but I figure I can narrow down my search once I know where to look.

Are there websites that people like this use to find work and where one can post projects? I don't know a lot about this but got stuck working on it since, again, small company, so I'm trying to figure out how to locate this type of person.

On a related note, there is an decent chance that we would be needing a full-time developer of the same sort starting in the next month or two for another project we have. It would be a paid position, just like the freelance stuff, but I have no idea where to look for such a person. I can always post to Monster or similar job sites, but is there a better place to look?

Any help or guidance would be great. I know there have to be a ton of people out there looking for this kind of work, I just have no idea how to reach out to them!

Thanks in advance!

kime

Craig's List?

[Michael]

Are you looking for someone local or is telecommuting okay? If it's local, check out the nearest university and see if you can't get something posted somewhere. From the post, it doesn't sound like you need someone with tons of experience, just someone who knows what they're doing. If you're willing to sift through the applications / interviews, senor undergrads and recent graduates in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, etc., can give you some great bang for your buck. You're really going to have to sift though.

Smashing Magazine is a web development and design resource I read pretty regularly, and they have a job board section. Might be worth checking it out.

bowen

Monster and craigslist are your best bet. Those are the two I check.

Ganluan

Check elance.com, they have a lot of available talent. Keep in mind this is just for the freelance portion, and it may not need to be someone who lives near you.

If you're looking to hire someone FT, I would go through sites that focus on IT professionals. Most of our job application activity from developers is based around DICE.

GnomeTank

CraigsList is where I find most of my freelance side work that I do outside of my daily development work. That said, most of the jobs there tend to be pretty small one off deals, not full blown apps.

Also, for freelance work, you're best bet is to be very open to telecommuting. If the project is small and siloed to one developer, they can work on moon time for all you care, as long as they are making deliverables (which you shouldn't pay until they can demonstrate anyway).

Rend

You should send me a PM with the details. No promises but I may have some interested friends, depending on your pay and telecommuting policy, unless you're san diego based.

GnomeTank

You could also send me a PM, because I might be interested myself. I just wrapped up a freelance project, so I'm looking for another.

Rend

GnomeTank wrote: »

You could also send me a PM, because I might be interested myself. I just wrapped up a freelance project, so I'm looking for another.

You should send me the PM first.

Just saying.

Kidding!

Nostregar

Thanks guys! We work with a lot of freelancers and are quite used to remote work - we work with around 1000 remote freelancers per month, just not for development. So, telecommute stuff isn't an issue and we're totally fine with it. I should have mentioned it, but yeah, don't need the person to be near us (Annapolis, MD).

I'll PM the two interested people, but thanks for all the pointers to craigslist - I should have thought of that, but it never occurred to me!