IT Dynamo - Freelance Marketplace

IT Freelance Marketplace

Welcome

This section of the website is devoted to providing self employed IT professionals with resources that can aid their development and assist them in seeking out new opportunities. We welcome and encourage you to utilize this area frequently. Your feedback regarding this section of the site is greatly appreciated. My name is Clyde and I act as the moderator for this site. I currently operate within the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) as a small business IT support consultant. Your comments and suggestions can be made within the "Ask IT Coach forum" section and will be responded to as promptly as possible.

To launch the opening of this section this month we provide the following article particularly for the newbies out there, who in this day of unexpected layoffs, may need to move into this mode of employment in order to survive. It is indeed remarkable that, despite the fact we know much of this information, when forced to walk this path we all make the same mistakes and lose valuable time.

The IT Freelancer's dilemma

Finding new business and managing the old.

Like many industries, the IT industry revolves around who are in the know and who knows you. For those of us who try to make a living, working for ourselves, it can be a hard and sometimes uncertain existence. The ability to strike a balance between involvement in doing the actual technical work, while seeking new clients, can generate stressful moments of uncertainty. Many, who have tried, have fallen into the age old trap of wholeheartly applying their focus to the job currently in hand and neglecting the need to acquire new contacts and contracts prior to the end of the current assignment leaving wide gaps in periods between employment and unemployment.

For those who truely desire to manage the direction in their lives, there must be a conscious decision daily to handle all aspects of self-employment:

Self Marketing
Market Research
Technical Retraining
Office Management & Reporting
Financing
Actual Technical work (required to be performed so as to generate income).

In a developed country like Canada and in a city like Toronto, it is increasingly difficult to make in-roads into the traditional IT support markets where size of operation is a major factor when businesses make decisions to retain professional services. To remain competitive and relevant the professional must look at each aspect and ensure the maintenance of a balanced outlook that provides realistic end goals.

Self Marketing

The freelancer must first of all recognize that every contact (social or business) is a lead and learn to leverage information off every new acquaintance so as not to miss an opportunity. By necessity, it must be done in a casual and unintrusive style so as not to appear overly opportunistic and selfserving. At all times, a professional outlook should be projected irrespective of whether the occasion is casual or business to ensure reflection of competent technical ability.

Market Research

The IT industry is a dynamic constantly changing field requiring the practitioner to be ever aware of the latest techniques being developed and anticipating where those new tools will be utilized by business. There is a also a need to evaluate within a test environment these new tools and once a positive opportunity is targeted, it must be pursued vigorously, time is money, wasted time results in loss of potential income.

Technical Retraining

With new focus on the the opportunity targeted, it is important that the professional embark on a program of training and in many cases traditional university, college avenues are not available. It is important to note that most vendors have by neccessity been required to provide free resources to enable propective new users to train on their new technologies. The resources can normally be found in the form of white papers, evaluation software, webcasts, elearning courses. All that is required of the professional is a test platform environment and the application of personal time to acquire the knowledge. Naturally, you must change your mental outlook as to how you would normally learn as the newer format such as elearning and webcasts may not be an easy fit for those accustomed to traditional learning environments.

Office Management & Reporting

Many entrepreneurs are technical but lack the business management skills to run a business, leaving the paperwork to accumulate and failure to comply with government and industry regulations.

It is important that from the onset of the business that there is put in place a precise program of activity to ensure that all documentation has been adequately handled, e.g. invoicing, collection, service reporting and at month end that the requirements of accounting, tax filing and payments are handled efficiently and in a timely fashion. These tasks have been simplified by access to off the shelf accounting and technical service programs that are economical in cost. At a minimum, the use of Excel or Lotus 123 spreadsheets and a word processer can be an effective tool to the small operation.

Financing

This is an area that is not normally very well handled as a freelancer tends to run business out of recurrent cash flow but this is actually not a good approach as it is restrictive to growth and can create wild swings in cash flow causing delays in implementation of good products or services.

It is more productive to define a plan of action and implement asset aquisitions required for the operation by financing over a reasonable period of time allowing the professional to perform in a more controlled environment. Remember in our field there is a need for test environment hardware, the laptop for on the road use and the monthly aquisition of new software for technical support.

Actual Work

Co-ordinate actual appointments for efficiency. While it is necessay that we provide the client with excellent service we must ensure that it is done in an efficient, cost effective manner leaving time for the professional to carry out the other duties noted above.

I am aware that much of the above would appear to be obvious to the well educated professional but it is surprising how much of the knowledge is ignored when the time to implement is required and it is only in retrospect at a later time we recognize that we have been sidetracked in our efforts to be organized and build the business.

_{This article was provided by Clyde Thorpe MCSE SCO ACE A+ Network+ in the hope that it will help those entering this type of employment have a smoother transitionary period to sustainable work income generation.}

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