By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
From Uber and Lyft to FreeLancer and Upwork, the gig economy has taken off. For you as a worker, you may be coming to groups with those changes. Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses the importance of facing gig work head on.
Are You Thinking of Freelancing?
If you haven’t been paying attention, you’ve missed something that’s been taking place structurally in the US economy, and that’s the change to part-time work that’s become so prevalent. You see, if you take a look at the recovery—I want to be clear, this isn’t a criticism of government policy or anyone politically, this is just an observation about how businesses learn to cope with number one, the opportunities caused by the change technology or the changes in technology, and number two, well, they just don’t see the value in hiring full-time workers anymore.
So, what’s been happening more and more frequently is that companies are hiring part-time workers now, and that’s in the government statistics. Now some of it gets buried in this notion of the U6 report where the statistic basically talks about people who are working part-time who would like to work full-time. I question that a little bit now, and what I’m seeing is part time can be broken up into two categories: one is part-time workers, and the second one is the new gig economy, free agents, freelancers, people who are working whatever hours they need to in order to do a particular task.
Now, some of those can fall to the category of virtual assistants; some might be web designers who are working on an individual project, writers, editors, a whole host of people, recruiters, and approaches, people who are working basically to do specific functions with particular people. They’re not working 40 hour work weeks. Some are lucky, less summer working more. Some may work 40 hours, but they’re self-employed individuals who are part of this new gig eternity.
Now what I expect is going to be happening with the next downturn is this is going to be ingrained in the culture and ingrained in the society and the economy that much more so. You know, if you think about it, if your business right now, you have headquarters built, that you have buildings around the world where you’re employing people and paying benefits, you’re paying for that building for air conditioning and heat, for phone lines, for computer systems, a whole host of other things, when you really may need these people a limited number of hours a day, a week, a month, through a year.
So, more and more firms, and these can be small firms and these can be large firms, are starting to look at contractors, gig workers, people who are hired to do a particular task and to do it, be paid, and move on. Now you may complain, “Are these people in India again or China or wherever?” but you know I’ll give myself as an example. As I work on launching a new website, jobswhichcoachinghq.com, I started looking at having some videos editor, and the cost of doing video editing in the US was more than 10 times the cost of outsourcing it abroad. What would you do? Already buying clothes are made elsewhere. Don’t criticize me, you’re doing the same thing except you’re doing with your clothes, your food, and a whole host of other things. So, that’s the trend they see really getting ingrained.
Do What Jerry Seinfeld Does
Now how does this affect you? Well, I want you to start thinking about things that you can do on the side or things are part of your knowledge base that you could break apart that will create income for you in case the next recession, in case the next economic catastrophe affects you, and to start now. Now you can do research on sites like Freelancer or Upwork (workers, the successful company Lance and Odesk), and any number of other sites where there’s information and experiences with gig workers. Think of it from the standpoint of what special skills do you have that if you were marketing yourself and your knowledge, how you would sell yourself on a contract basis.
So, for example, you know you’re an accountant, you do tax returns; you know you’re an engineer, you might do design work for different people; you know your programmer, you might write specifications or design documents. What is it that you do that can be broken apart into component parts and marketed now? Go to these sites and just do it for the standpoint of research. Take a little time to proactively think, but don’t delay starting because gigs are going to be much more than norm in the future.
Now, would I look at myself and the work that recruiters are doing, I’m seeing more and more firms hiring contract recruiters. I’m seeing sites that basically are paying for hourly work from recruiters. So, for example, there’s one site that I’ve seen where, you know, recruit who sets the price. I’ve seen as long as $25 an hour from the US for recruiting work, and they’re not paying a fee at the back end. Basically, you’re hired to source and find and refer, period. It’s happening that way, folks, and you need to be ready for. If you’re an administrative assistant, obviously you can run that doing virtual assistant work. Start thinking ahead, start laying the foundation where you can be doing work for others on a part-time basis now, so that if the economy craters, if a recession hits, if you lose your job, you’ve got financial wherewithal for last until you find your next job, which may take longer than you think. Hope you found this help. Hope it’s been provocative, and hope you have a great day. Take care.
The 10-Step Guide To Making A Career Transition
