So, you need to grow your business but you don’t have the budget to hire additional staff. You decide to turn to freelancers to get the work done. Then you realize that you’ve still got to write a job listing, go through candidates, sift through junk applications, and navigate contracts and salaries. If you use a freelance job board like Upwork, you may find that these challenges are compounded.
These job boards can be more trouble than they’re worth. Here’s why:
Upwork is over-saturated
Upwork is one of the top freelancing platforms in the world. Freelancers and clients all competing on the same few markets. When a job is posted, it will be inundated with applications, many of which are posted by spammers or bots. Freelancers don’t fare much better, having to compete with people willing to work for pennies.
Your freelancers might not be who they say they are
There is a huge market on social media platforms for freelancers to buy and sell active Upwork profiles. That means that instead of getting a native English speaker in your desired time zone, you might be getting someone in another country who doesn’t speak English well. If you’re hiring a copywriter or someone in a role where they must have an excellent command of the English language, that could be a huge issue. Also, it’s just not the best practice to hire someone who isn’t honest about their identity. On Upwork, you have little way of knowing otherwise.
Upwork penalizes even good freelancers
Did you know that if freelancers perform good work but don’t get feedback, their success score drops and they’re less likely to be shown to you as potential candidates? Did you know that Upwork deactivates longstanding freelancer profiles if they go even a few weeks without successfully obtaining another gig? The problem is that you, as a client, may not be able to find their application in a sea of spam proposals. That means you might not be able to find a quality freelancer on Upwork.
Upwork charges you fees to pay someone
When you hire a freelancer on Upwork, you pay Upwork 2.75% of their rate. Meanwhile, the freelancer is having 10-20% taken out of their rate. That means that Upwork is making 25% off each transaction, and both you and the freelancer are losing money.
There’s a better way
You can obtain an accounting, administrative, marketing, design, and communications services without having to navigate Upwork or cough up fees. With one monthly rate, you can hire a virtual assistant who can take care of the most essential business tasks for you. The appeal of a virtual assistant, such as those offered through Life of Automation, is that they perform tasks in a fashion that effectively automates your business.
Virtual assistants are professionals who can provide a range of skills including searching for job boards and recruit new talent. Ready to save time and money? Check out Life of Automation and supercharge your business with high-quality, yet affordable virtual assistants.
Want to know more about the benefits of hiring a Virtual Assistant? Click here.