Freelancing - Spiraling Down To The Lowest Price

I recently felt impelled to sign up to an online freelance website in the hope of gaining some real world experience and earning a modicum of cash along the way. The process has been most informative.

The whole “setting yourself up on a freelancing site” is pretty straightforward and, mainly, without incident. The concept is simple. You put your details on a website and then you either bid for work or hope that someone offers you work. Although I suspect that the likelihood of someone just offering you some work maybe a little farfetched considering the fierce competition out there.

What has struck me is that the world of a freelancing, whether it is for writing blogs or giving HR advice, has become dominated by globalisation and commoditisation.

Firstly, globalisation. Now I don’t have an issue with the idea of a global free market, a place where we are all able to compete for work. But the simple fact is that we’re all starting at different levels of expectation and need. Here’s an example. A UK training company wants a virtual administrator to carry out such functions as student enrolment, typing letters and maintaining a student database. All pretty much bread and butter administration tasks. But instead of employing either a temp or a fulltime employee they’ve called for a freelance to fill the post. A fair number of people applied to fulfil this role on a freelance basis. The two shortlisted, one from Romania and another from the Philippines, both offered to do the work for £4 an hour, much less than the UK minimum wage. I don’t doubt that the two selected applicants can do the job in question. I also don’t doubt that a UK applicant would find it very difficult to survive on an income (before tax AND before roughly 10% is hived off by the freelancing site) of £4 per hour worked. That’s a gross salary of £120 for a 30 hour week.

Secondly, commoditisation. Commoditisation is “A commodity is a product that is completely undifferentiated. If a product becomes less differentiated, so that buyers care less about who they buy from, this change is called commoditisation. The key effect of commoditisation is that it reduces the pricing power of the producer: if products become more alike from a buyer's point of view they will tend to buy the cheapest.” People, especially those who once might have felt that they offered skills and experience that were unique and hard won, are now being savagely commoditised. Journalists, administrators, software developers, HR experts, image processors, video editors etc etc are all having to face the fact that they are now competing with people from across the globe. That their skill sets no longer offer them anything unique with which to sell themselves. This means that commoditisation is forcing down the fees that they can charge for any job that can be done via the net.

It hasn’t been too difficult to foresee this situation. Businesses have been taking advantage of it for sometime, hence the rise of off-shore outsourcing. The real question is “what’s going to happen to those who live and (hopefully) work in the west?” The answer is, I believe, that we’re going to have to accept a much lower standard of living. That our nations, and specifically the governments and economies, are going to have to readjust to a world where salaries are going to be a lot lower than they have been. That prices and taxation levels are going to have to drop and the prices of such sacred cows as property are not just going to fall a bit but come crashing down like out of control aircraft.

We appear to be destined to live through interesting times.

Job Search - The Results Are In?

A recent Business of Journalism seminar inspired me to do a bit of digging into employment prospects for journalism graduates. The results are a tad alarming to say the least.

(Okay, this isn’t a scientific study or one where the researcher (i.e. me) has spent many hours dredging every data source known to man. But I think it’s indicative of the state of the jobs market when it comes to journalism students seeking employment.)

The question I asked was “how many journalism jobs are there in various cities when compared to PR jobs?” 

(Graph of PR Jobs and Journalist Jobs on monster.co.uk 26/01/2012)

I used the monster.co.uk website and searched for “PR” and “Journalist” categories of work. This rather illuminating graph is what emerged. The Monster site showed a grand total of five “Journalist” jobs in ten of the UK’s major cities. The same cities returned a count of 777 PR related jobs. Also note the  geographic distribution. London outguns the rest of the UK on both types of work (4 Journalist jobs and 621 PR related jobs). Now Monster might not be the best place to look for journalism opportunities so I tried the Guardian. There the pickings were a little better.

Sourced from the Guardian 26/01/2012

The Guardian site showed a total of 74 journalism jobs. Hooray you might cry but that’s for the whole of the UK! I looked a little deeper into the various jobs on offer and found that less than 55% of the jobs were paid journalism roles. More than 12% were unpaid, nearly 18% were PR & Marketing related and over 10% were for the state sector in some guise (or NGO). Oh, and many of the journalism roles advertised seemed to be based out of Dubai rather than the UK.

This quick data trawl would indicate that if you’re thinking of working in journalism then you’ve got a mighty battle on your hands. For those of us who might be considering working in the PR/Marketing/Advertising fields the obvious conclusion is that London and the South East is the place to be.

Why not take a few moments out of your busy schedules and look for yourselves? It might help you map out your next move after graduation.

The Brave New World of Job Hunting

In a very short while all of us, in our final year of university, will be forced to face up to the fraught process called “job hunting”.

For the best part of three years we have all been languishing in the bosom of academia. Not concerned with the cruel and heartless world of commerce. Not worried about having to impress the boss each and every day. No, for most part my peers have been more interested in having a good time. But this time of lotus gathering is fast approaching its end and with it comes an entirely new set of priorities.

Firstly, there's the issue of appearance. Yes, how you look is going to have a major bearing on what you'll be doing a year from now. Unless you get “tricked” into signing on for another year of study to get an MA or MSC for which you'll pay handsomely but might find the return on investment rather dubious to say the least (I, personally, think that nobody should be allowed to go straight from a BA/BSc to an MA/MSc without a few years experience in the real world. It smacks of desperation on the part of academic institutions who seek to increase the numbers of bums on seats in these times of higher tuition fees). So, your appearance.

First things first, face furniture. During the last few years you may well have picked up a variety of exciting and unique piercings. If they are out of sight then they're no problem. If they're gracing the pock marked expanse of skin that you call your face then “Houston, we have a problem!” I'm not referring to earrings or even a discrete nose stud. I'm referring to eyebrow piercings, nose rings, lip chandeliers and the like. They don't make a very good impression unless you're applying for a job in a hippy commune or want to work in a piercing parlour. My advice is to take the metal stuff out of your face now and give the holes a chance to heal up. There's nothing as unnerving as interviewing someone who looks like an ambulatory pin cushion.

Tattoos, sometimes known as tramp stamps, are okay if you're looking for a role in a travelling circus or working as a “heavy” in a low budget British crime drama but not if you're looking for a career that'll pay you a real salary. I'm not talking about a discrete tattoo on an ankle or a buttock. I'm talking about tattoos that grace your face or your hands. They may make you look “unique” and “interesting” but they don't do it for corporates who want you to be representing them out there in the real world where appearances ARE important. If you have already besmirched your face with the tattooists needle then look into methods of camouflaging it or having it removed.

Men, and I use that term very loosely indeed, have you considered the advantages of shaving? Why not take this opportunity to learn the art of the daily shave? Banish the face fuzz to the waste bin of history and embrace the advantages of the clean shaven look. Also, have you considered getting a decent haircut? One that doesn't leave you looking like a refugee from a sheep shearing parlour?

Get a suit, a selection of plain shirts, a couple of ties and a good pair of black leather shoes. The equivalent for the ladies. When you walk in for an interview you want the interviewers to think of you as professional, smartly dressed and having made an effort. Turning up dressed as a tramp, smelling of last night's sick and sporting a black eye is not going to help your cause.

Right, interviews. First thing to remember is that you're there to sell yourself. Forget any politically right on ideas of “sticking it to the man” or thinking “everyone is equal and deserves equal treatment”. It's all a pile of moose droppings. What the interviewer wants is a warm body that can do the job, will turn up on time, knows how to behave in a working environment and won't be a right royal pain in the arse. You have to show you can fit in, match the culture of the employer and be ready to be exploited like a crack addicted whore working the streets around Kings Cross. That's what a job is, you exchange your soul for money. If you're lucky enough to get a job, especially in a field you want to work in, then I'd advise you to exhibit some deep gratitude because you'll be amongst the lucky few!

Oh, and before an interview it's a very good idea to do some research into the potential employer. Dig out the simple stuff that shows you have taken a real interest in their business. What do they do? Who are their customers? What threats and opportunities do they face? Showing a genuine interest won't do you any harm.

Feedback from employment interviews. Okay, welcome to reality. The UK, being a litigious country full of lawyers looking for work, is not the place to get real, useful and honest feedback. You cannot blame employers. Legal actions are expensive at the best of times (i.e. when you settle out of court). So if you don't get that job and you get a letter or email (or usually nothing at all but more on that later) don't expect to get anything other than a vanilla style no thank you. You might want to know why you didn't get that exciting job with the company car and top salary but they won't really tell you the truth.

Communications and the job hunt. I don't know why it is but many times during your job hunting quest you'll get no response at all to an application. Many agencies and companies now clearly state that if you don't hear from them by a certain date then you've been unsuccessful. Don't take it personally. In my opinion there are two reasons for this. One, the recruiters are too busy to be bothered with the simple task of sending out a “no thank you”. Two, the recruiters want you to feel like a soiled rag used for wiping down the urinals at a dodgy public toilet in the vicinity of Mayfair.

Looking for a job, normally, can be a difficult task. During the current economic crisis that difficult task can seem impossible. There will be plenty of people who'll just give up. That's their choice. My advice to you is to remember the advice of Sir Winston Churchill: “If you're going through hell, keep going!”