Guru.com and Elance.com are two big freelancing sites. They’re not for everyone, admittedly, but if you want a central place to let jobs come to you, these are leading sites to use. We’ve watched for a few years as Elance stayed current with the times and although Guru.com boasted a lot of jobs, it lagged behind Elance in terms of bells and whistles. (For example, Elance has a stronger community, regular helpful newsletters, Elance University, and a faster adoption of social media).

But we have been really happy to see Guru.com make big strides by creating Guru Answers. Guru Answers is basically a forum-style site on Guru.com where employers can post questions about projects and these questions can be answered by freelancers. The questions range from early-stage questions to ‘what now?’ questions. An early-stage question would be “What kind of code should I have my site designed with?”. A ‘what now?’ question would be “How do I get more of the right kind of freelancer to bid on my project?”

This is a good move by Guru.com for a few reasons:

First, it helps the employer to feel an enhanced sense of value from Guru.com as freelancers offer free advice and guidance to help employers plan their project. Employers who perceive this value will be more likely to post the project on Guru.com and hire a freelancer from there. This helps avoid the all-too-common situation of employers posting at all job boards but hiring their niece’s boyfriend to build their website.

Second, it helps the employer create realistic projects. In some of the questions we’ve seen so far, employers wondered why no one was bidding on their job and answers helped to point out criteria that freelancers have when bidding, which helps the employer to fix his or her project. One example was when an employer said “I invited hundreds of freelancers but barely got any bids.” To which the freelancers pointed out that they often ignore bids with more than 20 or 30 bids on them; or other freelancers pointed out that that projects that are too small aren’t worth the time to bid on. These are important considerations for employers looking to hire professionals.

Third, it gives freelancers another way to connect with employers – to demonstrate their expertise and to get involved early in the project. We know of one freelancer who has acquired two jobs in the past month simply by answering questions on Guru Answers. It’s a way for freelancers to “jump the line” and get their name planted in the mind of the employer so that when the project is posted, the employer will recognize the high value freelancer who connected with them early.

Guru Answers isn’t perfect. The sorting and searching mechanisms are fairly rudimentary. And, because it’s new, there aren’t a lot of questions posted yet. But this is a good move by Guru.com and can help to make a big difference for freelancers on Guru who want to win more projects.

Guru was lagging behind Elance but it’s making strides to catch up: It’s now on Facebook and Twitter, a blog is coming soon. We’ve been bugging them for more user-training tools. We’re hoping to see Guru catch up and bypass Elance to offer employers and freelancers the ultimate solution.