Forget Upwork – Hire Top Talent Through Facebook With These Tips
Forget Upwork – Hire Top Talent Through Facebook With These Tips
Through my personal experience, and through my discussions with other startups and businesses, I have to come to the conclusion that Facebook is the best platform for hiring freelancers,especially for most small to medium-sized businesses, and startups.
In the past couple of months alone, I have successfully hired for several freelance positions through Facebook. This includes designers, developers, content writers, and data entry specialists for projects like Windows Clan, and PriceOye. In all cases, I was able to find trusted, skilled freelancers in a matter of hours, and in one interesting case, it literally took five minutes*.
I was able to find trusted, skilled freelancers in a matter of hours, and in one case, it literally took five minutes.
I understand I am uniquely positioned to benefit from using Facebook like this. I do, after all, have a degree is in a software-related field, have written for technology blogs for several years, and I have spoken at tech / dev conferences. However, this shouldn’t take away much from Facebook’s usefulness. Anyone can benefit as long as they follow a few tips to attract picky, highly-talented freelancers. Here’s what you need:
- A decent job / project description: be as detailed as possible about the task you want completed. When you share the scope and scale of the project upfront, it ensures you receive relevant, quality applications. Here’s a good example, and another.
- An active, ideally public profile. Too often, one finds job posts from recently created profiles like “Prince Kashiii” with Lionel Messi in the profile picture. It scares away good talent, so please use an active, authentic profile to post your job. The greater the activity on and authenticity of your profile, the greater the chance of a talented freelancer being convinced they want to work with you.
- Post in relevant groups: I have found success in posting on Freelancers in Pakistan, andPakistan Startups. Both are active, well-moderated, and full of helpful people. If you can’t find anyone directly, people will often refer them to you. Other groups I’ve found useful include Content Writers: Pakistan, and big groups for universities like NUST, LUMS, and FAST.
- Remember to attach an image: Repeated experiments have shown using images in posts on social media significantly increases engagement. I use Pablo to create eye-catching images to go along with my job posts. For background images, I use the excellent Pexels free stock photos service. You may also try Unsplash.
- Optional, but recommended: post your job in the evening. The number of people online steeply increases after 6–7PM, so you can be sure your post will get the most attention. Furthermore, since Facebook posts tend to stay in the News Feed for around 24–36 hours, you’ll be sure to reach out to people who use Facebook in the morning or afternoon the next day, too!
This is how I post job descriptions.
When I post a job on Facebook, it immediately reaches out to thousands of people through my personal profile, and through posts on the aforementioned groups. Within minutes, I start getting applications in my inbox, and by the end of day two, I’ve likely hired someone who has already begun working on their task. It’s insanely quick!
On Facebook, it is also quite easy to find trustworthy people if you are careful. If you have a large enough network (and I recommend you do), chances are you’ll find a mutual friend or two with the applicant. Furthermore, chances are that the applicant will have a public profile you can go through to gauge how they’re like in everyday life, which may or may not affect your decision to hire them. It sure does in my case!
Over the years, Facebook has matured from a basic social network to a full-fledged all-in-one communication and collaboration platform. Those who understand this, and take steps to ensure their time on it remains productive, stand to make the most out of it. Facebook really isn’t all that bad!
I’m interested in learning more about your hiring or application process. How do you hire people? How do you apply for jobs on Facebook?
*A friend of mine messaged me right after I posted the job on Facebook. Since I trust him, and know how skilled he is, I hired him immediately. The entire process took less than five minutes.
malikmuddser