[BigJ1211]

I don't do freelance work myself, but based on how software development is done in most software companies I've worked for. Do you not have open tickets that need to be done by freelancers? Or are you simply looking for freelancers to do entire projects on their own?

Most of the software development I do is done based on open tickets that people can pick up and comment on if things are unclear. The same goes for when we hire a freelancer, we have open tickets that can be picked up and completed, once completed they submit a merge request and we go on from that.

That is not to say you can't have a (video)chat, but it shouldn't really be needed for the actual development part of the job. We only have a call/meetup if we expect to be working with them for a longer period of time, or when we haven't worked with them before.

If you were looking to do a videochat with me when you have only a few hours of work for me I don't think I would be open to that either.

[scandox]

Most of the work we want done is project based. Like "Build this API for us and afterwards we'll take it in-house". Mostly I hire for several weeks or even months of work. So yes interviews will occur.

As for tickets...well I don't know how someone can just drop into a complex system and resolve bugs or add features, without understanding how the wider system works. We don't have work of that nature really.

[BigJ1211]

I see, most of ours is as well. But we tend to start people off with simple stuff so that they can get to know the stack and our software. That way we ease them into it. It makes it a lot easier for repeat work. That way we get to know them better and better as well.

We're a small team, but even we often have tasks that are trivial for our senior engineers, those are perfect for freelancers/juniors to find out how capable they are without taking too much risk (financially in case of them being freelancers).