These are gigs. A gig is a one time deal or something of short duration. It is not a job. People looking for “gigs” aren’t looking for a job, usually they have one and want to supplement their income or they like the freelance lifestyle afforded by completing “gigs”. Hopefully this will help you find the best person out there and someone who can also complete the gig within your timeframe.

Be specific as to what you need and then what you want. Many times the two are not the same. Experience with XYZ doesn’t tell anyone much. What do you want done with XYZ skills? Specifically.

Be reasonable about the compensation and your expectations for less than reasonable rates. Reasonable is usually a premium over what someone with a “job” gets. Since this is most often a short term or one time deal, expect to pay for someone to deal with that situation. If you want free help, say so right from the beginning and maybe you’ll find that person right away. If you are trying to barter or otherwise exchange service or goods for the work you need done, trying to trade your stuff at retail and get our stuff at wholesale isn’t going to work. We are IT, technology developers and experts, not stupid. For example, if you are hiring a database developer for something and it will take 20 hours, figure on $2500 worth of your goods or services, not inflated to take some advantage.

If you are a non-profit, please, everyone knows that a non-profit doesn’t mean no money. You are getting paid and so is most everyone else working there. You just can’t show profits carried over from year to year or pay dividends and so on. Don’t forget, the people you are asking to do the work need profit to eat and pay bills. We are not part of your non-profit business model, like you, we expect to get paid for our work.

In those situations where time is critical as in you need something done ASAP, qualify ASAP. It’s the “as possible” part of ASAP. That could be anything. It is tomorrow, next week, this month, next 6 weeks? That shouldn’t be difficult to state in the ad.

Help us help you. We want to solve your problems, complete your project and help your success. The more information you give us up front in the ad, the easier it is for the best candidate to contact you. You do want the best person and the best perfomance right? No one likes screening responses and talking to endless lines of people. By writing a great ad, you’ll cut down on the number of people you need to screen.

Here is the biggie: If you have all kinds of experience requirements, extensive workloads and short timeframes, you should expect to pay for it. Just because this is CL doesn’t mean bargain basement for out of work, hard up IT professionals.

Time is money and usually the people you can get on CL can do it right, fast and with class. We know what working on tight deadlines means and can usually accomodate you. Just please remember what you want when someone tells you to drop everything and do something right now. If you just take into consideration some of these things, you’ll get higher quality responses, better work/services performed and a better outcome that makes you shine.