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In my experience, no.
Whitespark says on their FAQ page, "We don't currently throttle our citation building because we know how Google merges data with their Places index in chunks. We have tested building hundreds of citations in one day vs spreading them out over time and have not found a difference. We don't believe citation velocity is currently something that Google is considering."
It really depends on the industry and location.
Check out these two resources. I know some of them don't accept reviews, but this should give you some info.
http://getlisted.org/resources/local-citations-by-category.aspx
Here's a great resource for finding the right category: http://blumenthals.com/google-lbc-categories/search.php?q=&val=hl-gl%3Den-US%26ottype%3D1
According to Google Places quality guidelines, "Categories should depict what your business is (e.g. Hospital), not what it does (e.g. Vaccinations) or products it sells (e.g. Sony products or printer paper). This information can be added in your description."
Try the seomoz recommended list: http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended
Using elance and freelancer to find the right person for SEO might be difficult. I'm sure there are good contractors on there, and some just running a (link) farm - literally.
One place to start would be to run an analysis of your competitors, see where they've earned links from & how. Then see where you can add value by creating content and linkable assets.