By word of mouth (ask friends)

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On special exchanges for freelancers (there are already more than a hundred Russian-language resources of this kind). More beginners or mid-level specialists hang out here.

On forums and in professional groups . Here you will find aces. Choose among those who are highly active and have a good reputation.

On job posting sites. Job seekers post their resumes here - study them. It makes sense to select a contractor here if you are expecting long-term cooperation.

You can post your task on a specialized service high school coaches email list like kadrof.ru/work. You can add an ad with your project here for free, and hundreds of specialists will see it.

Consider candidates who have a well-designed website. Choose a few suitable ones, and then study additional information about them:

Look at their social media pages. You can tell how adequate a person is by what they post there and how they communicate with other people. Don't get involved with a freelancer whose page is likely fake.

Enter the email address into a search engine, then the last name and first name (for each candidate). Study the data that the system returns. Information about professional communities the specialist is a member of may appear. Look there, check what kind of reputation he has there. Do not hire him if such a search yields nothing. But if you decide to entrust the creation of a website layout to a newbie, then, of course, he will not appear anywhere on the networks yet, because he is just starting his career.

Study the freelancer's portfolio . Talk to their former clients (without any embarrassment), ask if they were satisfied with the cooperation (and if it really happened). Don't be lazy to do this, because there are freelancers who compile a portfolio of works that are not their own.

Go to blogs run by experts, see what they write there. Good professionals talk about their work with passion, interest, and enthusiasm. A big plus is that a person has a specialized channel on YouTube.

Conducting negotiations.

Identify several contractors that you think are suitable and send each one a letter with the technical task for creating a website layout. Ask them to indicate in their response how long it will take to complete, how much it will cost, and under what conditions the person generally cooperates.

Look at how people respond to you. A good sign is an interest in the task, clarifying questions. And if you get a short answer like "1500 rubles, three days" - it means the freelancer is busy with work or your project did not seem attractive to him.

Next, if your project is small, then after such correspondence you can already decide on the contractor. But if the cooperation is expected to be quite long-term, then it is better to additionally communicate with the candidates via Skype (approximately 15-20 minutes). This will help you better understand how professional and adequate each of the selected people is.

Prepayment issue.

Freelancers usually take an advance payment to be on the safe side and not find themselves in a situation where the website layout is created, but the customer changes his mind and disappears from sight. If the project is small, the advance payment can be 30-50% of its cost, and if it is large, then 10%.