It might be worthwhile to take a look at dribbble. If you haven't heard of it before, it's like a social network for designers to showcase their latest design work. There are some incredible designers on there with fantastic work, specifically around website/UI/etc.
Particularly useful to you might be their hiring section [1]: designers can opt to mark themselves as available for work. I know of a few designers who've been hired through dribbble and it seems to work well. Also, the person hiring can see the kind of design work they tend to produce.
I run a product design agency, I won’t mention it as it’s not a plug for me. Just a word of caution - Dribble shows off nice looking screenshots - mostly UI - but rarely good UX. In fact, quite the opposite.
Not to say that’s the norm, but if you want design thinkers and not just Figma jockeys, be sure to throw a few UX questions their way.
I agree with this. You'll want to do due diligence before you hire anyone. But someone of the best designers I know of are on dribbble because it's such a popular site. That does mean there's a lot to sift through, of course.
Particularly useful to you might be their hiring section [1]: designers can opt to mark themselves as available for work. I know of a few designers who've been hired through dribbble and it seems to work well. Also, the person hiring can see the kind of design work they tend to produce.
[1] https://dribbble.com/hiring