Ask HN: How do I convince non-technical people to hire me?

[rquantz]

I just had the somewhat interesting experience of interviewing for a freelance gig at a company that has no technical staff. They asked me a little bit about my experience, but their main concerns seemed to be my hourly rate, availability, and willingness to work on-site. I tried to talk about technical matters, how I would solve their problem. I dropped a few buzzwords at the beginning but they had no idea what I was talking about. I came out of the interview without a clue whether it had gone well or not.

What, in your experience, are non-technical people looking for in a freelance hire?

[alain94040]

That's an easy one: they are looking for someone they can trust to solve their problems. They don't care how you do it.

[ariabov → alain94040]

Agreed. Depending on whether you have written a follow up email or not, maybe you can follow up with email now that addresses how you are going to solve their problem without buzz words (perhaps a wireframe or something visual can help too)

[rquantz]

So just to be clear, I didn't just sit there and spout "Ruby! Wordpress! Html5!" and wait for them to give me a cookie. Obviously they want to try to find out if I can solve their problem. But when they say "I want a slider that shows the part being taken apart and put together," they don't need wireframes, they need to know that I can translate their "vision" into code. I can talk about canvas and JavaScript APIs and whatnot, but I might as well be talking about klurblats and snorgflerms, for all they know. They have no way of evaluating whether I can turn their vision into code, unless I have done something else exactly like it in the past.

So my question is, on what basis are they making their decision? Gut instinct? Or are they just likely to wait around until they find somebody who can point to a project exactly like theirs?

[olegious]

I would imagine they're looking for examples of prior work that was similar to their needs or even better, specific advice you can give them on their own needs (wireframes, prototypes, etc).