When it comes to hiring, companies either rely on their human resources manager or turn to various recruitment platforms for finding the right talent. The whole process is very tedious and more the time they spend, the longer it takes to fill the position. This results in loss of time, delay in project deadlines, and drop in productivity. This is where Starkflow steps in.
What is Upwork?
Upwork is a freelancing platform that allows freelancers to bid for available projects. Companies advertise for new projects when a new task is available, and freelancers bid on it to express interest.
What is Starkflow?
Starkflow is fundamentally different from Upwork where we prioritize your business productivity more than anything else. For the same reason, we recruit dedicated, full-time candidates who work exclusively with one client, rather than hiring freelancers who work with multiple clients. This ensures that whatever project the candidate is working on has its complete focus.
Talent pool
Upwork
Given the low barrier to entry and projects that don’t require deep domain knowledge, Upwork attracts more people who are just starting out in their career. As a result, talented people have to compete for the same project at a lower cost and are slowly moving out of the platform.
Starkflow
We believe in hiring only quality candidates who have experience working at top companies like Microsoft, Google, IBM, HP etc. so you can be sure that your project is in good hands.
Hiring Process
Upwork
Upwork merely provides a platform to connect companies with prospective candidates. Companies have to do their own due diligence of shortlisting, verifying, and finally approving someone for a task.
Starkflow
At Starkflow we follow strict vetting wherein every candidate goes through a multi-step background verification process before they are matched and assigned to work on a live project. We also follow a concept of referral-based hiring, and our talent pool is exclusive to the alumni of a few handpicked companies and to those who are referred by the alumni of those companies.
Quality of Talent
Upwork
On Upwork, the quality of talent is uncertain and varied as there are thousands of people bidding on the same project with completely different backgrounds. So it becomes a problem to differentiate the good from the bad, and who would be better suited for the position you’re currently hiring for.
Starkflow
Our talents are exclusively handpicked from a list of few top companies like Google, Oracle, Microsoft, etc. We follow referral-based hiring and also perform additional checks and background verifications before getting someone on board.
Accountability
Upwork
Upwork as a platform offers little accountability in terms of project delivery and services offered by the freelancers they hire. The hiring can also be a hit or a miss depending on the talent.
Starkflow
We work as a liaison between the companies and the developers wherein we assign a dedicated project manager to take care of all the clients’ hiring needs and perform bi-weekly checks to ensure everything is on track. We do not take any direct responsibility for the project, but make sure that we maintain a high NPS score of >80 for the candidate and the entire process.
Project deliverables
Upwork
Upwork is majorly meant for those who are looking to get something done quickly. Most of the projects advertised there are short-term projects that can be finished in a short span of time.
Starkflow
We strongly believe that it is hard to build anything valuable in a short period of 1–2 months, so to ensure the quality of development we prefer long term contracts where no projects are built in a hurry.
Payroll & Payments
Upwork
Upwork functions as an escrow where they charge a fixed amount based on the payment, and also offer an hourly tracking feature that takes screenshots 6 times in an hour and logs your activity in the billing diary.
Starkflow
At Starkflow, we offer a bundled payment service where we hold a month’s payment in advance and release it to the contractor by 5th of every month. This saves the hassle of paying on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, and the total amount can be sent as a salary transfer by the end of the month.
Tax & Compliance
Upwork
Clients have to hire an external accountant for filing paperwork & taxes.
Starkflow
We take care of all the tax, compliance & paperwork end to end.
Concluding remarks:
Hiring is complicated, and good talent is hard to find. We make it easy.
We take pride in positioning ourselves against other recruiting platforms who merely provide a platform for recruiting and doesn’t solve the problem of actually recruiting.
Companies like Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer who provide such platforms are more focused on simpler, short-term projects whereas we fulfill the demand of sophisticated, long-term projects that require deep domain knowledge of an expert. So if you’re looking for someone who’s more than a freelancer, and no less than an employee then we are here for you!
Schedule an appointment with us today and learn more about how Starkflow can help your business!