Startups, This Is How Design Works – by Wells Riley

Think of Zerply as LinkedIn for designers, developers, and entrepreneurs. It’s an exquisitely designed platform that operates on a network connections and recommendations. Members can be “recommended” for excellence in a variety of disciplines and skills.

Zerply allows you to search for designers by location, skills, and talents. The system is free to use.

Dribbble is an exclusive online community of designers from around the world. Signup is by (rare) invite only, which helps cultivate some of the best design talent in the world.

Designers post works-in-progress (wip), completed projects, teasers, and fun work so designers and 'spectators' from anywhere can catch a glimpse of what they're working on.

The site allows you to search for designers by skill, availability, and location. You can also advertise on the dribbble job board to allow some of the world’s best designers to come to you.

Behance: The Platform to Showcase & Discover Creative Work

Behance is a great place for anyone to browse top creative works attributed to the actual designers who created them, not agencies. It lets designers showcase work as their own and on sites like LinkedIn, RISD, Zerply, and AIGA, and their own personal websites – enticing some of the world's best talent to join the network.

The JobList makes it easy to reach over 1,000,000 skilled designers, sorted by field, location, or even specific tools and skills. Tons of startups and big companies (like Apple!) are already using Behance to recruit top designers around the world.