[davidfiala]

I replied to cold outreach from designers. To vet, I took calls to see their actual portfolio (actual prior work in Figma, for instance), asked about their processes, areas of strength/weakness, types of work (illustrations only? css help? slides? products or only landing pages? which types of target audiences they've had?), etc.

Might be useful to comment on what your budget is. Having an external design team that knows you and can work fast when there's a crunch is very useful as it removes the latency inherent with one-off task based platforms. Plus, you get a consistent level of quality.

If you don't have enough work to keep designers busy on a day to day basis, then it may not be worth it to get a long contract. On the other hand, things often take longer than you expect to iterate and refine.