Written by Liam Murphy | 01 February 2010

Starting a new business without any resources or employees doesn’t mean that you need to do everything yourself. There are lots of people out there that you can utilize for any type of project and you can get them at great rates. In fact, there are a lot of benefits to using freelancers to complete your projects as you get a level of flexibility that you wouldn’t get if you were to hire full-time resources. This means that you can get the right skills for particular projects or tasks without the overhead.

You may be thinking that it’s going to be a hassle finding these freelancers but you’d be surprised how easy it is. The Internet has made it easy and it’s become even easier with the introduction of new sites that give you the tools to advertise your project or job, interview, engage and track freelancers.

Originally, when looking for this type of resource on the web, I would scour relevant forums, which would usually have a section for people offering their services. An example of this is Digital Point Forums, where you can find people to help you with your website marketing. You would then contact them through the forum using a private message and pay them using Paypal. However, there is no protection for the employer or employee.

I recently discovered a site called oDesk, which targets this exact process. You can join the site as a Freelance Provider, a Buyer or even a Provider Company (where you can earn money as a services firm). The site gives you a range of tools to advertise your job, communicate with potential freelancers and even gives you the ability to interview them.

Once you have engaged a freelancer to do a project, they get tools that can record the time that they have used to do a project, which enables you to give an hourly rate for the work that they do. You don’t have to worry about them giving any false claims about how much time something took and the site even helps with the payroll as you must pay them through the site. Everything is accountable and, therefore, everything is accounted for.

On the freelancer side, the system hosts a collection of tests that they can do online to prove their level of expertise or skill in a number of areas. This way, buyers can choose from freelancers that have achieved certificates in relevant areas.

As a buyer, I was surprised at how cheaply I could get professional people to help on projects that I was running. I’ve used oDesk for graphic design and web work and can definitely recommend it as a great addition to your virtual office for finding human resources.