How to vet a freelancer before you hire

Read the record before you speak to anyone

Ten minutes here saves an hour of calls.

• Read the description for who wrote it. A person describing their own work names the boring parts. A brochure names the outcomes. If a description could be pasted onto anyone with the same job title, you have learned nothing from it — treat it as a blank.
• Compare the claimed skills against the samples. Every skill on a profile should be visible in at least one thing shown. A skill list longer than the work behind it is the most common overstatement there is.
• Look at the gap between the newest sample and today. Old work is fine. Old work presented as current is a different thing, and it is the question to open the call with.
• Read the rate as a statement, not a fact. On this site and everywhere else, a rate on a profile is what the person says they charge. Nobody who does not process the payment can verify it — see what a directory cannot verify.

Check the work is theirs

Do this before the call, because the call is where you spend your goodwill.

Paste a distinctive sentence from the description into a search engine, in quotes. Reverse-image the photograph. Open every portfolio link and check it resolves to the thing it claims to be. This is five minutes and it catches the cheapest category of fake outright. How to check a freelancer profile is real has the full procedure, including what to ask for when a portfolio looks real but the provenance does not.

Four questions, and what the answers tell you

Ask these on a call, in this order, and let the silences run.

1. “What’s the last thing you shipped for a client, and what would you change about it now?”

A good answer names one specific piece and one specific change, and the change is about the work — a decision they would take differently, a step they would sequence earlier. A person who can criticise their own output has a standard they are measuring against.

A bad answer is “nothing, the client was delighted”, or a change that is really a complaint about the client. Neither is a lie. Both tell you that the work is not being examined by the person doing it.

2. “Tell me about a job where the brief changed halfway. What did you do?”

You are listening for two facts: what they stopped doing, and who they told. Good answers contain a moment where somebody was informed before the money was spent. Bad answers have no example at all, or generalise instantly to “clients always change their minds” — which is a way of saying it has never been handled, only endured.

3. “Which part of this job would you rather not do?”

The answer you want is a real one, sometimes with a recommendation of who does that part better. Somebody who has done the work knows its unpleasant end. “I can do all of it” is not confidence; it is the answer of somebody who has not yet met the parts.

4. “What do you need from me in the first week, and what happens if you don’t get it?”

Good: a short specific list — access to something, one named decision-maker, an example of what “good” looks like to you — and a stated consequence. “If I don’t have the brand files by Wednesday, the first draft slips to the following week.”

Bad: “just send over whatever you’ve got.” You will be the one holding the schedule.

One more, if the work has any ambiguity in it: “How do you charge for a change of mind?” Ask it before you are in the middle of one.

References: ask for the wrong thing and you get the wrong answer

Asking “can you give me some references?” produces the three people most likely to say something warm. Ask instead:

“The second piece you showed me — who was that for, and would they take a short email from me?”

You have now picked the reference. When you get the client, ask them one question and stop talking:

“Would you hire them again for the same job? And would you hire them for something bigger?”

The gap between those two answers is the entire signal. Yes, and yes is a strong reference. Yes, and… probably not is a person who is good within a range. A pause before the first is worth more than any paragraph.

Sometimes there is no reference to give — the work was under an agreement that forbids naming the client. Do not treat it as evasion. Substitute a paid trial, which is better evidence: see how to brief and trial a freelancer.

What actually predicts trouble

Not the things usually listed. These are the ones that pay off:

• They quote before asking a question. A price with no questions attached is a guess, and somebody will pay for the guess later. It will be you.
• They cannot talk about their own work at the level of decisions. “Why is this here and not there?” asked three times about one sample separates the person who made it from the person who has it.
• Every answer is yes. Scope, timeline, budget, stack, hours. A person who agrees to everything has not read the brief, or has and is not saying so.
• They want a large payment before you have seen anything. A first payment is normal. A first payment you would be upset to lose, before any work exists, is not.
• They push the payment somewhere untraceable. Whatever the reason given.
• The start date is always next week. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a queue you are at the back of.
• They will not put the scope in writing. Not a long document. A short one that both of you have read and neither of you can be surprised by later.

Then stop vetting and start trialling

Past a point, more questions produce more talk and no more evidence. The reliable move is to buy a small, real piece of work, pay for it at their stated rate, and grade what comes back. That is a separate procedure and it has its own page: how to brief and trial a freelancer.

What none of this protects you from, and what to do instead

Nothing you agree with a freelancer passes through this site. There is no escrow here, no milestone account, no dispute process, and no arbitration. Your protection is the paper and the sequence, not a platform: a written scope, a small first piece of work, and a payment method with a record.

The published standard every record here is read against is at /standard — seven numbered clauses, and every record prints which of them it cleared and on what date. What that standard cannot establish is on what a directory cannot verify, and it is the page to read before you decide how much of your own checking to skip.