Some interesting innovations at vWorker

vWorker is one of the top three freelance job boards. Like oDesk and Elance, they’re matchmakers between people with work that needs to be done and freelance workers that can do it.

Ian Ippolito, President and CEO of vWorker wrote to give us a heads up on two innovations they’ve developed:

1) Trial Sourcing

They surveyed people who hire online and found that the #1 difficulty they have is selecting the right worker.  The wrong one can kill a project, but it’s very difficult to distinguish the good people from the bad.   The fact is, people often don’t know enough about the job that needs to be done to know who’s qualified to do it. Those that do understand the requirements still have difficulty avoiding workers who post fake resumes or claim others’ work as their own. In any case, the interview process is usually time consuming and slow.

So vWorker came up with a unique solution—trial sourcing. Instead of trying to guess who the best worker might be, an employer can now decide who’s the best with an on-the-job trial.  This eliminates guesswork and uncertainty, and lets them pick the best choice.

For more details go here.

2) Crowd Sourcing

To get a design for a new logo, business cards, t-shirt, marketing motto, etc., crowd sourcing can work great, but it has limitations, too.  First, the amount of money offered is usually fixed, so it may be too high (costing the employer too much money) or too low (so no one participates and the project fails).  And second, it’s tough to use on anything other than small creative projects.