When you are inviting someone into your home to work on a project, you want to make sure you can trust them. Not only is it important for their work to be top notch, you probably won’t be directly supervising them the whole time and you need to be confident that you haven’t made a mistake.
Look for Experience
In order to find someone who you can trust and who can complete your project the way you need, you need someone who has actually completed similar projects before. One of the best ways to evaluate this is to look at their portfolio. If a professional has a robust portfolio, complete with pictures and details, you can reasonably trust that their work is high-quality. If you can’t easily find a portfolio or there isn’t a lot of information there, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t good, but it can be a little suspicious. Why wouldn’t they want to share their successful projects? Missing or sparse portfolios generally indicate a lack of experience or a lack of satisfied customers.
Seek Out Information Online
In the age of the internet, there is no shortage of information about any company out there. If you have a list of professionals you are considering, start doing some online research on them. Look at what their current and former clients have said. Reviews tend to come from the most satisfied and most dissatisfied clients, so make sure you read both the good and bad reviews to get more accurate pictures. You can also check out sites that collect reviews and create company profiles. Sites like HomeAdvisor have built-in safeguards to prevent customers from fraud.
Talk to Them
Talking to the professional you are considering hiring is an important step that not a lot of people think about. How they treat you as a potential customer and how you feel during your interaction can be a great indicator of the quality of their work and how trustworthy they are. It is really easy to portray whatever they want online, but it is a lot harder to fake it through an in-person encounter. Come prepared with a list of questions and pay attention to how they answer them, in addition to what their answers are.
Use these techniques to sort through the contractors available. It is possible to find one that has the experience to complete your project properly and who you can trust. It takes a little more work, but it is totally worth it.
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