What’s your favorite website for recruiting remote talent for an online business?
The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.
1. Virtual Staff Finder
Comparing to the more traditional oDesk and Elance, Virtual Staff Finder has one big advantage: it takes the pain out of finding the right candidates for your job requirement. Once they’ve chosen a group of potential remote talent matching your job description, they interview applicants, test them and pick you the top three people among them. The rest is up to you. Choose wisely.
– Juha Liikala, Stripped Bare Media
2. RemarkableHire
RemarkableHire has pioneered the concept of social evidence for tech. It allows you to actually get a sense of someone’s performance regardless of where she is located. RemarkableHire’s algorithms crawl technology networks such as GitHub, Dribble and Stack Overflow for evidence of performance based on posted code, peer feedback or interaction. It gives you much more confidence in hiring from afar.
– Susan Strayer LaMotte, exaqueo
3. Elance
Elance! One of the most valuable members of our team works remotely from Elance in the Philippines — I’d say her name, but someone might steal her from me! Elance’s platform gives you great background info on freelancers, easy ways to pay and track hours and overall really high-quality work.
– Matt Murphy, Global Citizens Travel
4. LinkedIn
To find remote talent, LinkedIn is a more targeted social media platform than Facebook or Twitter. Also, its “Questions and Answers” function is a great way to make new connections as well as review the talents and skills of potential candidates.
– Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
5. oDesk
We’ve had good luck finding remote talent on oDesk. In fact, some of our most valuable developers started with us on oDesk. The biggest lesson we’ve learned is to test new candidates with small, low-risk projects. You’ll quickly be able to sort through similar candidates and evaluate things like timeliness, communication skills and professionalism.
– Patrick Conley, Automation Heroes
6. Spark Hire
Spark Hire makes hiring talent simple for online businesses. With its capabilities for video interviews and candidate screening, employers are able to watch and rewind interviews at their convenience. Spark Hire also enables employers to speed up the interview process and reduce the stress and cost of a traditional interview.
– Heather Huhman, Come Recommended
7. crowdSPRING
I love crowdSPRING. We have found incredibly talented graphic designers and copywriters who have helped us meaningfully improve our brand.
8. PeoplePerHour
I was recently introduced to PeoplePerHour.com. I’ve already used it several times to hire writers and programmers virtually. The talent level on the site is stellar, and all of the freelancers are priced competitively, which makes it affordable for the employer.
9. GitHub
I strongly favor developers with a strong, open-source portfolio and a history of contributing to open-source software projects. We’ve found everyone on our team from the open-source community on GitHub in one way or another.
– Peter Baumgartner, Lincoln Loop
10. Virtual Staff Finder
Many of the biggest companies in the world have scaled up or reduced expenses drastically by outsourcing to the Philippines, and you can, too! Virtual Staff Finder filters through the best virtual-based workers and has now connected over 1,000 small businesses and solo entrepreneurs with their own college-educated and fluent-in-English Filipino virtual assistants!