Starting a business is hard, but finding the right people to work with can be even harder. If you're an entrepreneur or a startup struggling to get projects done, and if you've ever considered outsourcing your work to professionals in another part of the world, then this article is for you. Here's how to find good quality freelance work in Latin America.

1. Advantages and disadvantages to hiring freelancers

Outsourcing your work can help you save time and money. When you outsource your work, you are hiring a freelancer to work on your behalf. You can hire freelancers from different countries for a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time employee, and you can get your work done faster because they are working for you while you can take care of other important projects.

Unfortunately, there are many risks when outsourcing to freelancers. In Latin America, as most of the world, it can be challenging to get work done, especially if you are looking for good quality delivery. This is because not everybody enjoys and gives their 100% while working as a freelancer and sometimes it is not the case where freelancers perform as expected, resulting in a terrible headache for contractors. Also, some professionals could state they have knowledge in a specific skill but they are actually lacking real experience on it.

Having said this, the challenge nowadays settles in finding the right person, with the matching skills and a willingness to give their 100%, to work as a freelancer in your project.

2. Why is Latin America a good place to find freelancers?

If you already hired a freelancer in the past, you would know that when it comes to Latin America or some countries from Asia, have cheaper costs than leading countries. This means that you can get much more for less money.

The problem comes when we think -Okay, but paying less always leads to less quality-. This is not necessarily true.

In 2019, a report conducted by Coursera showed that Argentina was ranked #1 in cutting-edge technology skills (focusing primarily on software engineering). This shows us that there are great technological experts that could be hired at an interesting (thus not expensive) price.

3. How to find good quality freelance work in Latin America

One of the things to take into account is that most online platforms that connect you with freelancers over the world (and in this case in Latin America) are not considering the disadvantages we've just been through. This means that you can hire someone who has some kind of "review score" but is not suitable for what you are looking for; or after hiring, you get stuck with someone who doesn't care to deliver you a high-quality project because their not enjoying what they are working in or because their time-management or supposed skills are not enough for the project.

Here is where some platforms step in the middle to understand these struggles and solve them by pre-screening the freelance candidates to directly offer you a pool of suitable and relevant options. Giving you the possibility to choose between candidates who not only love what they're working in but also are already tested in the skills you are looking for. Some are also adding extra value in their process by using AI to solve part of this screening, boosting the efficiency of the end-to-end process.

Conclusion

Latin America is a very interesting talent-exporting place to find freelancers. As in every other part of the world, there are more/less suitable professionals depending on the project you are looking for.

Consequently, the principal problem lies in choosing who is the right fit for you and your project.

There is a wide variety of countries, platforms, freelancers where you can choose. However, to spare yourself from having a bad experience (and a terrible headache!) in hiring someone who isn't the right fit, you might need to use an "already screened" platform/agency where the candidates that you'll see will hardly disappoint you.

We'd love to hear any opinion on this topic and if there are any other suggestions regarding the issue!

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