Why You Should Think Twice Before You Hire a Product Designer from a Freelance Platform
Discover why freelance platforms may not be the best choice for hiring product designers and how they can create more challenges than solutions.
Online platforms such as Toptal, Upwork, Fiverr, and Braintrust have revolutionized how businesses access freelance talent. They promise quick matches to skilled designers, but when it comes to hiring product designers for long-term, strategic roles, these platforms can introduce more challenges than benefits. Here’s why businesses should rethink using these marketplaces for hiring product designers.
Superficial Vetting Processes
While platforms like Toptal claim rigorous vetting processes, the reality is that they often rely on junior talent to vet more experienced designers. This creates a significant disconnect between the platform’s vetting standards and the nuanced needs of businesses hiring for product design roles. Freelance sites tend to focus on general skills or portfolio quality rather than understanding if a designer is the right fit for a business’s specific product challenges or industry context.
• Challenge: Freelance platforms often fail to vet for the nuanced nature of work that might need to be performed for your team.
• Consequence: You may end up with a technically proficient designer who doesn’t integrate well with your team or lacks a deep understanding of your product’s long-term vision.
Hiring a product designer isn’t just about reviewing portfolios; it’s about finding someone who understands your product, collaborates well with cross-functional teams, and fits into your company culture. Freelance platforms can’t assess whether a designer can work seamlessly within your organization, leading to mismatches that waste time and money.
Reliance on technology
While freelance platforms boast sophisticated matching algorithms, the reality is that they overly rely on technology to pair businesses with product designers. These platforms prioritize automated processes over human intuition, using keyword-based searches and superficial filters to surface candidates. This technological dependence often overlooks the nuanced needs of businesses that require designers who align with specific industry demands and company culture.
• Challenge: Platforms focus on algorithm-driven matches rather than understanding the specific goals and dynamics of your team and product.
• Consequence: You might end up with a designer who looks good on paper but lacks the interpersonal skills or deep understanding needed to work effectively with your team and deliver on your product vision.
Hiring a product designer isn’t just about matching keywords or portfolios—it’s about finding someone who can navigate the complexities of your business, collaborate seamlessly with cross-functional teams, and drive long-term success. Over-reliance on technology creates an impersonal hiring process, resulting in costly mismatches.
Transactional Relationships vs. Strategic Partnerships
While freelance marketplaces offer convenience, they often lack dedicated account managers or recruiters who can guide you through the hiring process. These platforms rely on automated systems and algorithms to match you with designers, but without a human point of contact who understands your business, you’re left to navigate the process on your own.
• Challenge: Marketplaces typically don’t provide account managers or recruiters who can build relationships with your team, learn about your company’s goals, and help guide you in finding the right talent for specific roles.
• Consequence: Without personalized guidance, you lack the support you need which can lead to hiring mismatches, wasted time in onboarding, and a constant struggle to find designers who truly fit your long-term vision.
The absence of a dedicated partner means these platforms can’t offer the insights and continuity necessary to make informed, strategic hires that align with both your business’s current needs and future growth.
You Need to do All the Work Yourself
Platforms like Fiverr or Upwork place the onus of finding and vetting talent on the business, forcing you to handle every step—from searching for candidates to phone screening, scheduling interviews, and vetting the talent. Unlike a dedicated recruiter who will do most of the work for you, you’re left doing the legwork, which can be time-consuming and inefficient.
• Challenge: You have to manage the entire hiring process, often without the expertise of someone who knows how to assess product designers effectively for your business.
• Consequence: Without a recruiter who understands your unique business needs, the quality of candidates suffers, leading to higher costs and wasted time on candidates who don’t meet your specific needs.
Cost-Over-Quality Trap
One of the biggest appeals of platforms like Toptal, Fiverr and Upwork is the promise of low-cost services. However, businesses must be wary of falling into the cost-over-quality trap. These platforms encourage price competition, which can drive down rates but also lead to compromises in quality.
• Challenge: Businesses are often forced to choose between affordability and quality, sacrificing the latter in favor of lower costs.
• Consequence: Poor design choices made early in the product development process can lead to expensive fixes, redesigns, and delayed launches down the road. What seems like a cost-effective solution can quickly turn into a long-term financial drain.
A lower upfront cost might seem attractive, but the hidden costs of rework, redesign, or lost business opportunities from a subpar product can outweigh any initial savings.
Scaling Challenges
Freelance platforms are often best suited for short-term, project-based work, but they don’t scale well as your business grows. Product design is an ongoing process that demands continuity and the ability to iterate quickly in response to changing business needs. Relying on freelancers for long-term or scalable projects poses challenges in maintaining institutional knowledge and consistency.
• Challenge: It’s difficult to maintain continuity with the same designer over time, especially when scaling.
• Consequence: Every time you onboard a new freelancer, you lose time getting them up to speed on your product, processes, and strategy, ultimately slowing down your product development timeline and affecting scalability.
Businesses scaling their product need consistent, long-term relationships with designers who understand their evolving needs. Freelance platforms simply don’t support this kind of strategic growth.
Upfront Fees and Unfair Payment Structures
Many platforms charge hefty upfront fees for businesses to access talent, and even then, freelancers often face price gouging and are not paid fairly for their work. This model creates a misalignment of incentives, where freelancers may not be motivated to go above and beyond.
• Challenge: Upfront costs for businesses, and unfair compensation structures for freelancers.
• Consequence: These issues can lead to poor work quality and lack of motivation, harming both the freelancer and the business trying to get value from their investment.
Lack of Personal Relationships with Talent
Freelance marketplaces often skip the crucial step of truly getting to know the talent they place. These platforms rely on algorithms, reviews, and portfolios, but rarely invest the time to understand how these individuals work, how they problem-solve, or how they take feedback.
In contrast, we at Academy spend hours on the phone with potential designers, getting to know them personally, understanding their strengths, and helping them improve. This deep relationship allows us to assess not just their technical skills but also how they collaborate, handle feedback, and fit within different team dynamics. We’ve often worked with them before and can confidently speak to their quality and problem-solving abilities. This level of insight ensures that the designers we recommend aren’t just a good fit on paper but are truly aligned with your business’s needs and long-term success.
Conclusion
Freelance platforms like Toptal, Upwork, Fiverr, and Braintrust may offer fast access to talent, but for businesses looking to hire product designers who can contribute to long-term, strategic success, these platforms often fall short. They rely on superficial vetting processes, impersonal technology-driven matching, and offer little to no personalized guidance throughout the hiring process. The result? You may find yourself handling all the heavy lifting while risking costly misalignments, inefficiencies, and subpar design quality that can impact the success of your product. For businesses looking to scale, maintain continuity, and hire designers who are deeply integrated into their long-term vision, a more specialized approach is essential.
At Academy, we address the limitations of freelance marketplaces by offering a strategic, personalized approach. Here’s how we solve the problems that marketplaces can’t:
• Deep Understanding of Your Business: From the start, we take the time to learn about your team, company culture, and the specific skills required for each role, ensuring a perfect alignment between designer and business goals.
• Personalized Vetting: We don’t rely on algorithms. We spend hours speaking with designers, understanding their strengths, problem-solving abilities, and how they handle feedback. This helps us gauge not just technical skills but also collaboration style and long-term fit.
• Proven Talent: Having worked with many designers before, we can confidently speak to their quality, work ethic, and ability to meet project demands, ensuring that you hire someone who is not only skilled but also reliable.
• Historical Knowledge: Our ongoing relationships with both businesses and designers provide continuity, allowing us to leverage past experiences and understanding to smooth the hiring process and enhance future projects.
• Long-Term Partnership: With Academy, you’re not just hiring a designer for a single project. You’re building a lasting partnership that supports your product’s growth, ensuring your team’s evolving needs are met as your business scales.
With Academy, you gain more than a hire—you gain a trusted partner invested in your success. Visit us at Academy to learn more about how we can help you find the right product designers for your business.
