[aedron]

In my experience, you need to work with individual developers and never ever with shops. I don't know how many of those are still around, but I had good work done on what was then Elance.

An easy filter when soliciting work is to include some things in the job description that the applicant has to respond to/think about. Most applicants will not, so you can throw them right out.

I also discriminate fairly aggressively based on country, suffice to say that certain regions usually match my requirements better for developers who match their advertised skill level and think critically about the tasks presented to them. Controversial, possibly unfair, but there it is.

[mdekkers]

Yeah, did the same things. I only work with "Western", Eastern European, and Russian developers. I speak and read a bit of Russian, and sometimes screenshots are a dead giveaway. I also have the interviews, with a surprise coding and reasoning task, and ask for references.

The reality is that today, a "meatmarket" (upwork etc. al.) freelancer is good enough to throw up a nice Wordpress site with a fancy frontend. Unfortunately, the people with the skills and qualities that I look for always end up with full time jobs at some point. All my long timers now have lead-dev type jobs with large firms.

[dhimes]

This is exactly what I do. First thing is to require someone to put something specific in the subject line- that gives an easy filter. Next is to provide a pretty detailed spec so they know that they're not dealing with an ignoramus (either that or a verify that they are dealing with an ignoramus lol).

But I only outsource pieces- plug-innable- of a project. If you make the analogy to OOP- I write the interfaces and outsource the coding.

Often I'll have them modify or incorporate some existing, third-party (like Adam Shaw's calendar- case-in-point).

I've had pretty good luck overall. So I would definitely be willing to use a good site. Hell it might be fun to pick up a couple of gigs there.