April 13, 2010

Do you have to be an idealist to be a freelancer?


The QR code takes you to this page of their site.
(You can see previous work from the Freelancers Union here.)

1 comment:

  1. More than a quarter of British adults (of working age) are currently out of work, according to a study conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) earlier this month.

    Traditional back to work schemes and corporate hiring programmes will not get us out of this mess quickly enough but new working methods and initiatives could help to increase the current rate of employment (72%) – the lowest since this Government came into power.

    Organisations like blur Group support the Gig Economy model through focused Crowdsourcing of virtual crowds and agencies. The crowd is filtered into groups of particular industry specialists. This allows Crowdsourcing companies to identify the best-suited individuals from a wide range of fields (including designers, artists, writers, marketers, entrepreneurs) who match the required profile of the client’s specification.

    Crowdsourcing filters product and service providers to match the client’s budget and requirements, ensuring a highly effective selection process. The clear advantage for SMEs lies in the lack of overhead costs to their company. They pay their freelancer a fee, but nothing more. They do not have to necessarily facilitate their freelancer inside an office space, nor retain them beyond the end of a project. Recruitment through Crowdsourcing enables clients to select many individuals, each with their own specific expertise, to work on multiple projects.

    The era of big spending on big projects has been transferred to thrifty alternatives. Regardless of the size of the business, Crowdsourcing methods address the question of how to maximise the potential of a project from a smaller budget. Rather than spending copious amounts on expensive consultation methods, Crowdsourcing pinpoints specific individuals who can complete the project at a fraction of the price.

    Companies such as blur Group are not going to single handedly resolve the enormous deficit between the number of jobs available and the number of people requiring work – but it offers the unemployed and the ‘economically inactive’ a no-lose opportunity to involve themselves in a project related to their specialism.

    For the jobless, the very least that could result from entering a Crowd would be an open debate with other Crowd members, a dialogue with businesses of all sizes and an insight into the types of skills and expertise required to be cutting-edge and succeed in their particular industry. It is easy self-promotion, which if successfully executed, can lead to well paid work while the elusive search for the ‘perfect job’ continues.

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