"Do freelancing", I've heard a few times. But it's not like I will get hired as soon as I "go freelance"... is it?
I'm living in Europe and I'm wondering if there are some people here - surely there are - that are doing freelancing. I'd love to hear how you did it and how it was.
I'm a back-end software developer with full-stack experience if that matters.
1. their work (is it impressive? is it relevant to the project we want help for?), 2. their personality (is this someone we could work well with as a team? We're a small, remote team so communication is extra-important) 3. their references (did someone I trust refer them? have they worked on projects or for people or companies I know? If not, is there some other way to vet experience)?
In the past, I've often found folks we've hired as freelancers either via their work (a cool project), their writing (e.g. technical blog posts), or communities we're mutually in where I've gotten a sense of them (alumni networks if we worked at the same place before, Slack groups etc.).
It might be worth joining (if you're not already in) communities like rand or CTO lunches (if you're relatively senior, hard to say from the post) that have regular forums for folks to share if they're looking for / offering work as well. The nextplay newsletters also regularly list roles but I think those are more full-time jobs vs. freelance.
I think if you're really unsure on how to start you could look at a platform like upwork or fiverr but I don't know if that's really what you're asking about here (I interpreted the question more as how do you go freelance and find your first few clients).