Freelancer scams are on the rise. When choosing between freelancers, their rates and ratings become the deciding factors. And with millions of freelancers in the business, there is fierce competition to attract the limited number of clients. In addition, the sophisticated algorithms of online hiring platforms use the combination of ratings and rates to rank freelancers across search results.
To get on the radar of an employer, a remote worker must rank high in search results and for that to happen, the worker must have many positive reviews and a competitive per hour rate. For those workers who are freshly starting out, it has become tougher than ever to break the cutthroat competition. So, what do such workers do?
For getting a positive appraisal, the independent worker must have a project in hand, and to get that, the worker lowers his (or her) hourly rate for the first few projects.
The freelance market is a mixed bag of all types of people: established professionals, aspiring professionals, amateurs who thought of ‘freelancing’ as a cool word, and shady people who are trying to rip off employers. We know that quality and cost go hand-in-hand, so the best freelancers will charge a lot, and those with lower skill levels and malicious intent will have lesser rates. But as we have seen, there will be some aspiring freelancing professionals with a good skill set at the lower end. However, searching for such freelancers can be extremely time-consuming.
So, how do you separate the gold from the garbage? To answer that, we first must look at how freelancers deceive the employers.
1. Captured portfolio
This follows, “what you see is not what you get.” A freelancer steals the portfolio of another freelancer — usually that of a top-ranked one — and rebrands it under their name. Since freelancing platforms do little to verify the works of the freelancer, these freelancers get away with their fake portfolios and end up stealing the employer’s money.
2. Freelancer disappears after accepting a prepayment
Most freelancers request an amount upfront before starting work on a project. This is normal as the freelancers want to make sure their employer can pay them. But some freelancers with malicious intent use prepayments as a scheme to dupe the employer.
We commonly refer this to as ghosting and it is a widespread issue across freelancing platforms. A ‘ghost’ freelancer requests for a payment in advance and then disappears completely after the payment has been received.
3. Poor quality of work & abuse of licenses
These problems are usually an issue with freelancers who charge ridiculously low. Picture this: you own an entertainment blog which has to cover the Golden Globe Awards (Jennifer Aniston + Brad Pitt == I wish, I wish). You hire a content writer for the task who guarantees a top-notch article for a rather cheap price. The result? An article full of grammatical errors which appear to be written by a first-grader who is just dipping their toes into the English language. Such freelancers fake their portfolios and testimonials (trust me, this isn’t hard to do) which leads you into believing that they can deliver great work.
Another widespread issue across freelancing platforms is the abuse of copyrighted materials. A freelancer might pass on to you someone else’s licensed work as their work.
How to protect yourself against freelancer scams?
Now that we know the tactics freelancers might use to con the employers, it becomes easier to work out the solutions.
1. Avoid freelancers who charge ridiculously low
Before you hire a freelancer, you must make a note of the average rate by looking at what other freelancers of the same niche are charging. If you come across a worker who is charging low, the worker is likely a defrauder. Even if a talent is starting out as a freelancer, they aren’t going to outrageously drop their rates.
2. Hire verified freelancers
If not the works, most freelancing portals now at least verify the identities of their workers using a government identity card, video call, and other means. If the profile of a freelancer is verified, you will see a blue or green checkmark next to their name.
3. Ask for sample work, resume
As mentioned before, you can tell whether a worker is authentic by looking at their profile. The resume will comprise skill details and the experience the freelancer has had, while the work samples will tell you how good of a work the freelancer can do. Another way to evaluate the freelancer is to hire them for a very short duration, have them do a short task and judge them on its basis.
If you want to avoid freelancer scams entirely, you can hire a pre-screened talent whose identity, skill level, work quality, and communication abilities have already been verified.
Originally published at www.hirecream.com
