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We tried to do something along these lines in Melbourne, Australia. It was called Dragonfly. A few points: - We emailed people to update their availability. If

We tried to do something along these lines in Melbourne, Australia. It was called Dragonfly. A few points: - We emailed people to update their availability. If they were available this week, we'd email. Otherwise they could set their busyness to between 1 week and 3 months. - We tracked where people were working and used that to bill the companies that hired them. First we charged a flat subscription rate of $3600 per year but people didn't want to pay that. We then charged $100 per week per freelancer. They wanted to go back to paying the subscription again. Then we went broke. - People won't keep their availabilities up to date. They won't like you asking them to keep their availabilities up to date either. They really won't like you asking them where they're working this week. - People will ask you how you're curating the list. If you're not curating it, theirs no point in using it as I can get list of people to hire anywhere. I want a list of people that are good at what they do. - Recruiters function because they hide the cost of hiring freelancers. You're a design agency, your charge out rate is $250/h. Hiring this gun front end developer through a recruiter costs me $100/h. I make $150/h, simple math. The most important things to solve from POV is how you're going to curate the list and keep the bad coders off it. You want to start with A's and only have A's. As soon as B's creep onto the list then your reputation goes down. Also, because you want to keep showing growth, C's and D's begin to creep onto it. Also, your friend who you like but sucks at JavaScript will ring you up and ask to be placed on it. Good luck.

Rodeoclash 13y ago
You also want to have a look at these guys: http://workingnotworking.com/ http://workingnotworking.com/
pkinsky 13y ago
>- People won't keep their availabilities up to date. They won't like you asking them to keep their availabilities up to date either. They really won't like you asking them where they're working this week. StackOverflow Careers handles this rather nicely. If you mark yourself as available and are contacted, you get a notification email. If after N days you don't respond (through SO) to the contact, you are automatically marked as unavailable. It's not perfect, but in most cases it should remove stale list entries after their first contact.
ianwootten 13y ago
I'm not an agency. This is an app to indicate availability for freelancers.
OnSite 13y ago
Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you. We are doing something very similar with http://onsite.io http://onsite.io, and have encountered some of the same problems. People won't update their availability for 2 reasons, they can't be bothered or they want to keep their options open. Good freelancers will often have a few offers on the table at the same time and can pick and choose between jobs. One of the ways we have attempted to deal with the problem is by building in the option for available and qualified freelancers to state an interest in a position. Hiring companies are still returned a list of matched candidates, but can further refine it by showing only those interested in the job. We are looking at also building in a simple 1 click update via email (I'm booked next week, I'm booked for 2 weeks, I'm booked this month) that will allow freelancers to update their availability without having to sign in. Unfortunately people don't like emails much either. So this will require careful testing. Agree that curation is important. Nobody is going to pay for access to a list of people of dubious quality. They would rather have 4 good results than 200 bad ones. You will get accusations of elitism, but if you are serious about building a valuable product, quality control is paramount. Cheers.

Rodeoclash 13y ago

You also want to have a look at these guys: http://workingnotworking.com/ http://workingnotworking.com/

pkinsky 13y ago

>- People won't keep their availabilities up to date. They won't like you asking them to keep their availabilities up to date either. They really won't like you asking them where they're working this week. StackOverflow Careers handles this rather nicely. If you mark yourself as available and are contacted, you get a notification email. If after N days you don't respond (through SO) to the contact, you are automatically marked as unavailable. It's not perfect, but in most cases it should remove stale list entries after their first contact.

ianwootten 13y ago

I'm not an agency. This is an app to indicate availability for freelancers.

OnSite 13y ago

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you. We are doing something very similar with http://onsite.io http://onsite.io, and have encountered some of the same problems. People won't update their availability for 2 reasons, they can't be bothered or they want to keep their options open. Good freelancers will often have a few offers on the table at the same time and can pick and choose between jobs. One of the ways we have attempted to deal with the problem is by building in the option for available and qualified freelancers to state an interest in a position. Hiring companies are still returned a list of matched candidates, but can further refine it by showing only those interested in the job. We are looking at also building in a simple 1 click update via email (I'm booked next week, I'm booked for 2 weeks, I'm booked this month) that will allow freelancers to update their availability without having to sign in. Unfortunately people don't like emails much either. So this will require careful testing. Agree that curation is important. Nobody is going to pay for access to a list of people of dubious quality. They would rather have 4 good results than 200 bad ones. You will get accusations of elitism, but if you are serious about building a valuable product, quality control is paramount. Cheers.