Elance as a Sourcing Tool for Creative Recruiters

Elance has become the single most popular place for freelancers, or Elancers as they may call themselves, of all types to search for gigs. The design of the site is easy to use and the jobs are plentiful. Companies of all sizes are turning to Elance to tap a pool of creative people: writers, designers, voice actors, coders, photographers… and the list goes on and on. Creative recruiters can also utilize the popularity of Elance to find the right talent to meet their clients’ needs.

When you visit Elance’s website as an employer, you can browse through the list of thousands of freelancer’s by their specialty.  Once you narrow down the field based on your search terms, you can view comprehensive portfolios, many of which are seriously impressive.

If you are not already using Elance as a tool in your creative online recruiting toolbox, you may wonder why looking at freelancer’s portfolios is a sound investment for your time. The simple truth of the matter is that for every person on Elance that is advertising their abilities because they honestly want to freelance, there are a dozen more that are freelancing as a way to make ends meet between jobs.

Contacting a freelancer through Elance takes some creativity. Unlike social media networks such as LinkedIn, you cannot directly send a message to an Elancer that catches your eye. When you find portfolios that interest you, you must set up a job with Elance. The good news is that you can invite as many people as you’d like to bid on the job you list. You can limit the invites to specific freelancers or hold an open casting call for anyone on the network to bid.

Consider this job listing as a prescreening tool. It is against Elance terms of service to hire or contract from the Elance pool of talent without paying for the job via Elance’s payment system. While this may be off-putting at first, the majority of your clients will be happy to do a “test project” through Elance. You can also cancel the job listing and be under no obligation to hire any of the freelancers that bid.

It takes some creativity to make Elance a vital tool for creative recruiting, but you will be hard pressed to find such a diverse group of creative talent elsewhere on the web.