How to Hire a Freelancer | Candidate Selection Guide

So, you have a bunch of impressive CVs or portfolios in front of you. All eye-catching, well-written, and within the scope of your needs…

It’s the step you should take right after you’ve received a bunch of applications or profiles. This stage marks the beginning of the candidates' flow, where an influx of potential candidates enters the selection process after your job is posted.

Candidate selection is where hiring a freelancer gets tough.

Hiring a freelancer in 2025 shouldn’t be based on first impressions or gut feelings. Not sure what to do instead? Here is our first piece of advice on successful candidate selection:

Start with shortlisting.

Candidate selection process involves multiple steps, beginning with the application process and gradually narrowing down potential candidates to identify those who best fit your needs.

Shortlisting means filtering out the applicants who don’t meet your requirements and focusing on those who do. You should use clear selection criteria and candidate selection criteria, such as:

• tech-skills
• experience
• communication
• budget
• relevant experience
• key competencies

Simply shortlist 5–10 of the strongest ones based on established selection criteria and candidate selection criteria.

It should basically be your hiring draft pick list. At this stage, your goal is to find the best match for your project requirements.

What is shortlisting?

Shortlisting is a recruitment process of narrowing down the list of candidates to only the ones who are best aligned with your requirements.

It's the step you should take right after you've received a bunch of applications or profiles. Go through them, filter out the clear noes, and create a “short list” focused on the top few people you want to interview or test further.

Got 500 applications?

Simply shortlist 5–10 of the strongest ones based on established criteria like tech skills, experience, communication, budget, etc.

It should basically be your hiring draft pick list.

What to do after shortlisting?

Set your priorities straight.

Do you know exactly who you are looking for?

Maybe it would be wiser to consult your project needs? Before jumping straight into scheduling calls with candidates, it is worth asking yourself:

• Am I hiring for execution or ownership?
• What’s more important: speed or polish?
• How Async is the team workflow setup?
• What’s the budget, and how flexible is it?

To formally start the process, create a clear job description outlining the role's requirements, and, if applicable, submit a job requisition to initiate the hiring workflow.

If you have difficulty in answering those – write a 3-sentence project summary.

Add bullet points for what the freelancer actually needs to do. Include a timeline.

When listing requirements, specify the necessary skills, candidates' skills, and key competencies needed for the job. Also, highlight the importance of soft skills, problem solving abilities, problem solving skills, and communication skills as essential attributes for success in the role.

Add a “this will not work if…” section (e.g., you’re unavailable on Slack, you need daily check-ins).

Why?

Because it sets clear expectations before the first call. And it filters the people who ghost when things get real. Use selection tools, assessment tools, pre-employment assessments, and skills tests to help identify the most suitable candidates for the position.

All those questions should lead you to a mini guide.

Setting expectations early helps you aim to find the right candidate, a suitable candidate, the best candidate, and the most suitable candidates for the job.

Finding candidates gets much easier when you have a solid hiring process established in advance. When narrowing down the pool, it's important to identify candidates who have the right culture fit and can excel in the specific job or jobs you are hiring for.

Not sure where to start?

Remember, employee selection is the broader process that encompasses all these steps to ensure you hire the best talent for your needs.

Click here to read more about: Hiring process >

Once you've shortlisted someone and decided to contact – don’t just send a generic “Hi, let’s chat.”

Be specific and respectful of candidates time.

Here’s an example:

• Reach out with clarity – Say exactly what caught your eye and what you’re looking to explore further. Freelancers appreciate direct, no-fluff messages.

"Hey [Name], I came across your profile and liked how you handled [specific project or skill]. We’re building [X] and need help with [Y]. Would love to chat if you're available."

• Set expectations – Let them know what comes next is this a quick intro call? A paid test project? What timeline are you working with?

“This would be a short paid project to start, and if it clicks, we’d extend it.”

• Keep the tone human – You’re not talking to an agency this is a real person. A little warmth goes a long way.

If you’re reaching out to multiple people, keep it personalized. Everyone knows when they’re getting a copy-paste message. And nobody likes that.

The meeting is your moment to gut-check everything the portfolio can’t tell you.

Skip the trick algorithm questions. Ask questions like those below instead:

• “Tell me about a freelance project that went wrong. What did you learn?”
• “What do you need to do your best work?”
• “How would you like to receive feedback?”
• “What happens if you miss a deadline?”
• “Can you walk me through a past project from brief to delivery?”

It is always good to remember that hiring means seeking for much more than just an employee – it is about hiring a communicator, problem-solver, and solid teammate.

Conducting multiple rounds of interviews with the hiring manager or hiring managers allows you to evaluate candidates more thoroughly at different stages. Such a candidate-based approach identifies the most suitable candidates through multiple steps in the selection process.

If you are about to jump on another call soon – here are a few red and green flags worth looking for:

Use the information gathered during the interview process to make data-driven hiring decisions and identify the best candidates for your team.

Evaluating job performance potential and ensuring candidates are consistently good in their work is crucial for long-term success.

As the final step in the selection process funnel, run a background check, reference checks, or background checks. Use recruiting metrics, such as yield ratio, to assess selection process funnel effectiveness and optimize your hiring outcomes.

Running a paid test is one of the smartest moves you can make when hiring a freelancer – especially if the role involves ownership, speed, or nuanced decision-making.

A freelancer's portfolio only shows what someone has done, not how they'll work with you, in your environment, on your kind of problems. A short, scoped, paid test gives you a live preview:

• How they communicate,
• How they handle unclear inputs,
• whether they ask smart questions,
• If they meet deadlines,
• If the quality matches what you need, etc.

Since it's a paid task, you're respecting their time – which sets the tone for a professional working relationship right from the start. It also filters out the people just “shopping around” for projects.

The ones who say yes to a paid test are already showing a bit more seriousness and confidence in their ability.

You don't need a big budget or a massive scope – just one meaningful task that mirrors the real work. Something with enough complexity to reveal their thinking, but not so much that you end up wasting time if it goes sideways.

Think of it as buying a glimpse into what working together actually feels like – way better than making a hire off a polished pitch or a few Zoom answers.

Scope Framework for Candidate’s Task

Set a 3–5 hour task based on real work. This approach can provide way more information for you than most interviews.

Through the candidate's task, you'll see how they:

• Communicate
• Handle feedback
• Ask questions
• Estimate time
• Deliver quality

Task example:

“ Please complete the following task within 7 days of receiving it:

Main goal:
Build a simple login screen using React, based on the provided Figma design. You can style using CSS, SCSS, or Tailwind, whatever you're comfortable with. Make sure your code can be run locally using npm install and npm start. Use React functional components and hooks (useState, useEffect, etc.), and organize your code as if it were part of a larger app.

Requirements:

The form should include email and password input fields, and implement basic validation: show errors for empty fields, invalid email formats, and passwords shorter than 6 characters.

Error messages should be displayed clearly and enhanced with simple animations (e.g., fade-in, shake, or color changes). The form should be responsive and user-friendly.

Once complete, please submit your solution as a public GitHub repository or CodeSandbox link. A short README (optional) explaining your structure or key decisions is appreciated. ”

Always Check for Red Flags During the Trial

Remember, if they treat even the test like real work – they're worth considering. They document, ask smart questions, and deliver clean, thoughtful output.

Additional red flags to watch for:

• Delayed responses (“Sorry, I was offline for 3 days”).
• Overpromising (“I’ll have this ready tomorrow” → they deliver the task 5 days later)
• No repo access, vague commits,
• Can’t explain their own code.

If everything fails – follow your heart and guts.

The right people always resonate with you. Good vibes can also be an indicator of potential good cooperation in the future.

However, before making any final decision, always ask yourself – like a real co-founder:

• Would I trust this person in a crunch?
• Would I feel comfortable handing them a messy Notion doc and saying “go”?
• Do they overcommunicate or undercommunicate?

Remember, the job offer is the final step in the employee selection process, marking the conclusion of structured assessments and interviews.

Your hiring decisions at this stage determine who becomes your new hire, and the quality of new hires and hires overall will directly impact your organization’s success.

A bad hire can have significant financial and operational consequences, and the costs of a bad hire differ according to various sources; mis-hires or even a critical HR incident can result.

Consider the annual salary of your new hire and how their performance, as measured in the annual performance appraisal, will affect your team and business outcomes.

A great freelancer can be your unfair advantage. But the wrong one will drain time, energy, and money – fast.

Take your time. Run small tests. And trust your gut – but verify with outcomes.

And if you're ever unsure – ask someone who's been there.

We get it – sometimes you just need one sharp dev to move fast. Other times, you need a whole squad to actually ship the thing.

Still not sure which one’s right for you, but running out of time?

Let's talk.

Click here to schedule a call with us >