How great disadvantages of freelancing can change the future of work
As a (starting) freelancer, have you ever made a list of the pros and cons of freelancing? How did that balance turn out? More cons than pros? And could you easily convert the cons into pros?
Starting of as a freelancer, with a lot of working experience (15+ in year in commercial management), I saw a lot of advantages.
- The flexibility, when and where I work of course; managing my own schedule. I can decide what job I want to take or not, and for whom I want to work.
- Being my own boss, making my own decisions.
- And as I’m an inquisitive person, I was really looking forward to experiencing different types of jobs and learning about different types of organizations.
- The satisfaction of using all my knowledge and years of experience to help people and companies in developing themselves.
- Finally, perhaps not for everybody, but Corona took remote work to the next level for me.
However… besides the advantages I also experienced some of the disadvantages (and I know now, a lot of freelancers do):
- The fact that there is uncertainty about income and workload. It took me quite some time to get used to that.
- Finding the right work-life balance. I don’t feel like I can close the door behind me at 5 o’clock.
- The time it takes to find a next job. Marketing myself, signing up at websites, agencies and maintaining my network.
- The online jungle with all the websites, platforms, agencies out there. I really had really no idea which platform, website or agency would work for me, besides the fact that I receive a lot of e-mails with job proposals that are mostly not a match.
- Every time I have to sign up again and create a new profile and maintain it. If the profile doesn’t look good, or is incomplete, I feel I have less of a chance of getting hired or it may effect my earnings.
Some of these disadvantages even became frustrations for me. Every time I have to sign up, I need to create and maintain a perfect profile. The profile is the first impression employers have of me. My profile looks different on each platform, and the reviews I collect as a freelancer are posted to a specific platform and are not interchangeable, so not really mine. Shouldn’t these profiles and reviews be all about us as freelancers instead?
As a freelancer we already are entrepreneur of course, but I found out pretty quickly that besides the advantages of freelancing, I really like the freedom. I also wanted to start my own business, build and grow a company and experience every facet of it. And when I met my first co-founder, these 2 merged together.
The idea of doing something for freelancers was already there, but how and what we could do to reduce the disadvantages and frustrations, became clear after a while.
Wouldn’t it be great if we, as freelancers, only had to create one perfect profile, with interchangeable recommendations, verified skills, education and experience which is set-up the way it works best for you? And only we decide who sees al this information? And isn’t it clear that for different kind of freelancers, a different structure of one’s profile is important? When you are a designer, your portfolio is more important than your working experience, and when you’re a software developer, your hard skills are more important.
Freelancing will emerge more and more as a prominent way of working, the future of work will continue to change in a how we contract, but also in the way we work together, such as in flexible teams.
I truly believe that freelancing will develop in a very professional sense and that freelancers, as well as the hiring agencies and companies, will search for a match on different levels; core values, (hard and soft) skills, industry, experience, portfolio and in different combinations.
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Do you want to join us (www.aforceof.one) or do you want to share your experiences, good or bad, as a freelancer? Or do you have a strong opinion about our vision, please let us know on https://twitter.com/aforceofone or in the comment.
