How to do IT Freelancing: A Guide for Newbies
A couple of days ago an article shook the entire household in India, aspiring engineers and loved ones were perplexed as to what lies ahead of them or what is store for them in the near future. The article states that 95 % of the engineers are unfit for software jobs. You can check the article here.
It has been a decade since every talent acquisition team in every organization is struggling to find the right set of candidates for the desired mention role. According to All India Council for Technical Education, more than 60% of the eight lakh engineers graduating from technical institutions across the country every year remain unemployed.
Some highlighted facts were:
• Less than 1% of engineering students participate in summer internships.
• Just 15% of engineering programs are accredited by the National Board of Accreditation.
• More than 60% engineering graduate remain unemployed.
For more details on engineering, employment problems check out here.
“The Pursuit of Happiness”
The purpose of this article is not to highlight the problems, but in fact revisiting the choices, the decisions, the influencing, the peer pressure and the factors causing it. Almost every student goes through this phase and they struggle with it at least once in their lives, this leads to following the bandwagon blindly i.e. The “Tried and Tested”.
I clearly remember back in the 90’s computers were all over and so do courses like Bachelors and Master of Engineering and Computer Science. Languages right from Pascal, Cobol, C, C++, Java, JSP, JavaScript, HTML, .Net (VB, C#, ASP), Oracle, Access were known and sought after. Even the parents also got acknowledged with the terms and geared up to provide amenities, just the way Farhan nitrate and his parents in the movie “3 idiots” did.
Back then, a majority of the parents felt proud about their child having access to a computer as they didn’t want their child to tread the path they were in. So they happily obliged in helping them with any issues like enrolling them for extra classes and courses, networking and checking out their contacts and scouting for internships.
The 20s was all about “Management” right from Hotel management to Business Administration and what not universities. As usual, parents sacrificed their earnings in securing the admissions and again succumbed to the lifestyle it got.
Now, I am not blaming the beloved parents; however this spoon-feeding gave rise to a new generation or tribe to memorize the answers and score good numbers. The tried and tested forget to try and test it in real-time; do they have the aptitude, what measures they are taking to resolve it. Somehow the education system, the teachers are also responsible for this act of valor as they didn’t want any probing questions, but just good numbers for display.
The urge to try to fail is past buried under the plethora of certificates and recommendations. So the day when it dawns on them to test or apply it in real life or at the campus interviews, these folks sometimes fail; sometimes get passed as they outsmart the system by gathering some tricks of the trades; get selected in MNC’s and the journey of an Engineer kick starts.
(Tips: For Indian folks, check out Chetan Bhagat’s novels and for folks outside India, check out Jon Sonmez from Simple Programmer)
More details on engineering education in India check out here
Millennials are hard-wired differently and are pretty much advanced in time management; people management skills; have varied interest; can master your passions like a pro; are early adopters of technology; gizmos and rake the social media like a celebrity.
“Wake up to Start Up”
So why not drive your passion to mainstream? The last century has seen you rising as millionaires and billionaires by tapping into your potential; be it Vlogging, Marketing, Snapchatting and Instagramming and Pinteresting.
Millennials are hyperactive, overachievers and most of the common fact they are all over the places and this gave boost or rise to a new culture called as “The Startup Culture”.
According to NASSCOM, India is a home to 3000 vibrant tech/digital startups and the 3rd highest in the world. If this landscape continues to evolve by the end of 2020 more than 11,500 startups are expected and generating employment opportunities for more than 250,000 people. Government initiatives like the vibrant digital summit, Make in India and NSDC Skills are encouraging startups to create more opportunities within the country. You can see the change and effects on the GST tax structure that has been rolled out recently have exceptions to promote entrepreneurship.
With this startup culture, many employment opportunities sprung up for Web designing, Web development, Software testing, ioS development, Android development. This gave individuals who have passion and willingness to experiment, an opportunity to grow with emerging markets, be it be a full-time job, part-time job or freelancing.
Freelancing is lending someone help in return of some efforts. Efforts may vary situation to situation, sometimes it may be monetary; sometimes it may be providing you the right environment and framework to test and experiment. So freelancing is just not about web designing or data entry work that can be done at your comfort level. Agree to the fact that in freelancing market domains like marketing, business consulting, design, coaching, writing and editing are the most sought after sectors.
So instead of passing on the project work to your geek friend, it may be more harmful than helpful. You are closing doors to all the opportunities that are awaiting to be explored and that too real-time.
According to Payoneer:
India has the second highest number of freelance professionals (about 15M), standing next only to the US (approx 53M). These 15M Indian freelancers take up a whopping 40% of total freelance jobs offered worldwide, this clearly manifests the dominance of Indian Freelancers over their western counterparts. With over 1.5M professionals graduating out of the schools every year; India is undoubtedly the largest producer of skilled professionals in the world and ready to fuel the burst in demand side of this exponentially increasing freelance industry. But that’s not where the number game ends! You can read more here.
“Ride the wave with — technology”
Most In-demand Skills for Freelancers in India in 2016 were:
1. Cloud and Distributed Computing.
2. Content Marketing.
3. User Interface Design i.e UX Researcher/Writer. For more details click here.
4. Graphics Design.
5. Digital and Online Marketing.
6. Web Architecture and Development Frameworks: for more details.
7. Perl / Python / Ruby.
8. Data Presentation.
9. Mobile Development.
10. Algorithm Design.
11. Social Media Marketing.
12. Game Development.
13. Shell Scripting Languages.
14. Middleware and integration software.
15. PR and Communications.
More about freelancing trends you can read here as well as here.
So why not make the most of it when the technology is in the boom.
There are child prodigies who are an inspiration to all of us like Tanmay Bakshi who is the youngest IBM Watson programmer. You can read here for more details and Alec Jones 14 from Victoria from the https://www.christopherbot.co/ who at the age of 14 have created a chat bot to solve homework for the kids of his age group. You can read here for more details. Mind you this kid has a Git/Github account, has written the simplest code that can give a professional run for his money .
“Why Freelancing?”
Some common reasons for freelancing are:
• Multiple channels of income.
• Networking and contacts.
• Extra income.
• Self-independence.
• Increased creativity and confidence.
• Work satisfaction.
• Last but not the least above all No commuting— working from their comfort zone.Making use of co –working spaces or any café also works.
For more details read this.
Due to disruption on the technology front, with respect to Bitcoin, Big data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT to chatbots a whole gamut of options is waiting to be explored, innovate and research embarks upon. Freelancers have a great deal of opportunity to take this further on to next level.
Need of the hour is T-shaped professionals as said by Tim Brown.
The vertical bar on the T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one’s own.
Read here for more
There has been a significant rise and need for Full stack developers.
Full stack developer Job description:
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science
• PHP experience (Ruby on Rails or Python experience a plus) and familiarity with the LAMP environment (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
• Strong software design skills utilizing OOP concepts with a focus on testability
• Good relational database experience
• Understanding of JavaScript, jQuery, HTML5/CSS and client-side performance — experience with LESS or SASS a bonus
• Working knowledge of build systems for automating tasks, such as Grunt or Gulp
• Strong source management skills, preferably using Git
Who you are:
• Passion for new technologies and driven to build the best products
• Initiative and positive energy with a fun attitude
• Thrives in a fast-paced, team environment
• No Ego. Volunteering to take out the trash or helping out a colleague should not be an issue
Source: Indeed.com
Do you think Freelancing is easy and you can break the monotony of 9 to 5 jobs?
People tend to mistake it to a side gig or source to double your potential/income. This depends wholly on the individual’s perspective and how they want to leverage it.
Some pointers to follow when freelancing in the Technical domain.
• Have a GIT account/ Developers account/SDN account created and reach out to the network in case of any obstacles.
• Have your profile updated on Freelancing sites, LinkedIn ProFinder, AngelList. Also, keep a tab on Product Hunt, Stack Overflow, Dice to keep yourselves abreast and updated with the market trends.
Check out this report from Stack Overflow a must watch. Very Insightful click here.
• Always have realistic plans. Also, convey the same to your clients
• Do a good research on clients and what type of outcome they are expecting.
Understand what stage of life-cycle they are in associated with the product or service they require; problems that need to be addressed; are they facing decrement in their sales; what are the factors associated with it; do they want more leads, more productivity?
• Don’t take too much work than you can’t handle.
• Communicate through mail.
• Hustle your way out and work on your goals.
• Time management is a must and does deliver your work on time. In the case of any obstacles inform your clients prior to the delay and offer a value add if possible.
• Always stay mental and physically strong. Craft your own lifestyle.
• Practically this requires more efforts and more discipline off course.
• When working on projects, keep the distractions off the bay.
• Kindly evaluate your base rate before going online. Based on the value you are offering and what is agreed upon, never negotiate your rate just to bag the project/contract. Efforts should not be overvalued (if overvalued you will lose a chance to develop a professional relation) and not undervalued (if undervalued you will lose your confidence, in the end your satisfaction is a must) as well. Check out the market trends and try to find suitable grounds to start up once you get a taste of it and when the response is good, you can keep adding milestones to the value offer.
• Use contract for every project.
• Ask for 50% down payment before starting any work. This is a good elimination factor to rule out the ones and situations which are finical in nature.
• Try to attend most of the industry events and networking opportunities. Word-of-mouth and referrals play a major role in getting clients.
• Start a blog /podcast or a YouTube channel and document your journey, this creates an opportunity to create a following or like-minded audience that will eventually help grow your personal brand and then eventually be a part of your sales funnel.
• Try and have a good balance on Social media as well and connect with individuals, groups host or be a part of twitter chat or hangouts. Use these mediums to grow and promote your individual brand.
• Learn to evaluate and say “NO”, not all offers or gigs are worth grabbing. Kindly weigh the potential and how does that affect you and your client, create a proposition that adds value to both the parties.
• Always keep your client updated on the progress in the form of reports; easy to track your work and efforts as well.
• Even if this is for the first time you are doing this, start acting like a professional so that you will be on track instead of going haywire.
• Last but not the least, self-awareness is the most important factor to be considered here. Know your limitations and bank on your strengths and keep pushing.
So what are you Aspiring Engineers waiting for, the future is beckoning you with new possibilities and opportunities, for that you have to work in the present. Why wait for someone else to change the system, when you can help the system by helping yourself. Help is out there, you just need to ask the question to the right person at the right time.
I have tried to compile and include all the points and the challenges faced while freelancing in technical domain. If some of the points help you accomplish what you have set to do or better yet, if you think you have a better way to approach the freelancing world, do share it here. I’ll be more than happy to know.
@AspirationsSync believes in empowering students by imparting knowledge of the Coding Languages that can enable students to kick-start their freelancing careers. Students should make the most out of this freelancing tide which is bound to stay.
For more details you can Aspirations Sync, Mumbai at +91 8291932880
