How To Make Freelancing Work For You, Not Against
Roopa (name changed) steps into the office with her 2-year-old child. We had just read about PandoDaily and were more than willing to let the child scribble her imagination on our telephone instrument while we gave Roopa guidelines on the work and talked about deadlines. Hiring a content writer as a freelancer for getting the User Guides for our products ready was a big decision. We had little time on our hands and the job was expected to take a maximum of 10 days so hiring a full time resource was not feasible.
At the end of the first day, Roopa was expected to show us the layout and the plan for the whole document. Day one ended without any communication from her. We politely left an email and asked her the updates. Till the end of day 2, nothing comes from her. At the end of day 4, we get the deliverable for the first day – a much delayed and much inferior document. We understood that things were not going to be as smooth as we had imagined. We started a regular follow up with her in the coming days. A week later, another deadline is dishonoured. Three days after the deadline, another document arrives which is of pathetic quality.
During the course of this entire wait, we kept calling her on her phone which was not available on most occasions. When she did take our call, her baby would intervene in a high pitch wail and beg us to end the call.
I don’t wish to say much about working mothers and professionalism but here’s a quick list of things you need to ascertain before going to a freelancer:
1. Double check your in-house resources and get the work done by your own employees as much as possible (even at the cost of paying overtime at a premium)
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