“Professionalization” of Professionals
Editor’s Note: This article is from WeChat public account “ Fen” (ID: tongyipaocha), the author is a god.
You don’t have to lose your major, you can also become a freelancer
A few years ago, my company expanded its new business and formed a new team. The head of the team was part-time. Every week, the company came to the company for half a day, and usually contacted online. First, because the business scale is not big, the second is to save costs, and the talents in this industry are very scarce.
Later I found out that this part-time head had four or five teams outside. What surprised me even more was that he had a formal job – a university teacher. In total, the annual salary is hundreds of thousands, and there are technical stocks. More importantly, the working hours are free, and every day there are empty children to leave school.
In fact, our boss also graduated from related majors. He couldn’t help but feel that he had run this hard-working company in the past, and his profession was lost. Otherwise, hehe… Well, it’s good to do business, not to work for employees. In this era, it is more reliable to be “professional.”
Before I “Anti-vulnerability: Why the more stable the work, the more vulnerable life is. The freelancer is mentioned in the book. The reader’s subconscious reaction is, must I change careers?
Before, when it comes to freelance, everyone thinks more about writing,Accountants, lawyers, designers, consulting industry, skilled workers, and some small businesses that focus on sales and do not hire people.
But the new trend now is that the scope of freelance work is getting wider and more technical. Like the part-time development team leader mentioned above, I must have been a full-time technical director. I still know the answer from a chicken consultant. He resigned from a big company a few years ago and specialized in helping small families. The scale chicken farms have improved their skills and their income is five times that of work.
There are even some outsourcing platforms that provide a variety of industry expert resources for companies in need.
So I have a bold prediction: Most professionals are likely to become freelancers in the future, and the more professional, the more likely they are to get a richer return through part-time work.
This judgment stems from three major trends in professional outsourcing.
Three major trends in professional “freelance”
Before meeting the operation manager of an e-commerce brand, he has not continued to be the director of operations or product director, nor has he started the company himself (the two main development directions of this profession), but has become a freelancer. Provided consultants for several traditional companies to develop products suitable for the spread of social platforms such as vibrato and fast hands.
Compared with traditional marketing work, this advisory role involves a wider range of roles, and deeper cooperation with companies, often with a one-year service cycle, not only to participate in product development, but also to develop marketing strategies and help companies Forming relevant teams and sorting out business processes is equivalent to most of the roles of product directors.
Before, there was another reader who wrote a message in the background. He is a professional technician of a new material listed company. He has deep accumulation in high temperature technology. At present, there are many companies engaged in research and development in this area. He is outside his own work. Most of the time, they provide technical services for these companies (both competitors and other industries). He is very entangled and asked if I should resign as a freelancer.
If you want to judge freelance careers, you must first understand: Why are these companies not recruiting full-time staff? Is this a temporary phenomenon? Still the trend of the times?
First trend: innovation driven, breaking business boundaries
When the industry enters a low-speed development period, it is easy for business operations to meet the ceiling. The first step is to develop new business; the second is to speed up the technical upgrading of products, which leads to the frequent addition of new job types across industries and industries.
The more you enter an unfamiliar area, the more you need to recruit experienced experts. But everyone thinks, if you are an industry technical expert and find that a pig farm wants to recruit artificial intelligence experts (don’t laugh, pig raising is an important application area of artificial intelligence), your interest may not be too big, because it is not a core business, Business failure leads to a high risk of unemployment.
But if a friend introduces you toJob, you are likely to try it.
So from the perspective of the enterprise, if it is difficult to recruit people, it is better to find a part-time job, which is not a core business. Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, it is even more impossible to recruit senior industry experts for a new business. As enterprises become more dependent on innovation, the demand for expert freelancers is also growing.
Someone may say that I am a professional in the core department of the company and there is no possibility of part-time work.
This is not necessarily the case.
Second trend: cost control and management improvement
No matter how good a company is, at least one-third of the time for professionals is unprofessional, such as cultural activities of various group companies, wrangling between colleagues, and management between the upper and lower levels. Waiting for a meeting, waiting for overtime, waiting for reporting, garbage after work and before work…
In addition, if you don’t like management by nature, then managing teams, collaborating across departments, and training employees is a waste of time, which adds up half of your work time. In other words, half of the boss’s salary is paid in white.
In fact, half of the professional duties of professionals are just to make you “looking busy.”
What’s even more frightening is that the fixed monthly salary system makes you waste your own time and instead has the illusion of “accounting for the company.”
Maybe you have to ask, these phenomena have always been there, why is the boss willing to pay half of the waste? Because the boss ensures that the work goes smoothly, in order to find the people in the first place when there is work, it is regarded as the necessary loss of management.
Therefore, if you can change the way of thinking, if you can ensure the smooth progress of the business, you will not delay the construction period and will not affect the communication. Even if the personnel in important positions exist in part-time form, the boss can fully accept it.
Because of the richness of social tools, the information flow in the professional circle is faster, and with some professional platforms, the difficulty of finding people is getting smaller and smaller. Now the core problem is the communication link – can you guarantee not to sit? Can two people together work together?
The third trend: a large number of professional outsourcing will wait until the emergence of a new management revolution
The case at the beginning is actually to divide the responsibilities of a technical director into two parts. Some of the team management responsibilities are assigned to other senior management of the company, and the responsibility of the other part of the technical leader is outsourced, not only at a lower cost, but also with the employment mechanism. More flexible.
Separate the manager’s personnel management and technical management, and manage the companyThe challenges of level and personal ability are very large. For example, it requires more full authorization, and it is crucial to have a more reasonable allocation of responsibility and authority in the management system.
Another type of pure technology job outsourcing, the biggest difficulty lies in communication, this is not a problem of tools, but the lack of communication willingness caused by the separation of geographical locations, just like the couples separated from each other, even if they are online every day, It is also inevitable that the feelings will fade.
This is also the reason why most professional positions in the company are not outsourced, but all the places that can generate benefits must be worth the time and cost. It can be said that with the management concept and practice, this is a big probability to achieve. the trend of.
What’s more, if employees realize that this brings more benefits to themselves, they will force companies to make such changes.
The question is what kind of employees are more likely to take part-time jobs instead of full-time jobs?
What kind of person is more suitable for freelance
A reader had previously shared with me the unique experience of becoming a freelancer.
It was a job, and the interview process felt very good. At the end of the interview, the interviewer knew that he was still in office and suddenly asked him if he would like to accept the position as a part-time job.
This reader immediately has a feeling of being fooled. I can think about it. Part-time is a good plan. He was working at the time, and he was hesitant to quit. It was equal to giving him a transition period.
After picking up the part-time job, he found that the demand for this job was still very wide. Then he began to ask the employer whether he could accept part-time job through interview. When he got three cooperation, he started negotiating with the current company. ……
From the whole process, the liberalization of professional positions is a process in which companies interact with employees. Only the company considers the interests and risks, and the employees are out of character and life planning.
In theory, any professional is likely to become a freelancer, especially those who do not want to do management and want to go further on the professional path, and are more likely to choose this direction.
Of course, whether a person is suitable for a part-time freelancer has many requirements for his ability:
Communication
Freelancers sell their professional abilities on a time-based basis. The time spent on communication is not necessarily long, but the impact of communication efficiency on income is far greater than that of dedicated workers.
So communication becomes the cost of your work, and the importance of communication is no less than professional ability.
Analyze decision making capabilities
In traditional corporate structures, the responsibility for decision-making falls mostly on managers, and professionals provide more professional advice.
But freelancers are essentially an independent company. There are a lot of decisions, how to judge the core of the business? How to price? How to judge customer preferences? How to control the quality of time cost?
Decision making power can also affect your income. And time is the cost, all your decisions are fast and efficient.
Multidisciplinary thinking skills
Most companies must belong to one or two industries, and the dedicated staff only needs to understand the application of their profession in the industry. However, freelancers often serve multiple industries, such as the social marketing consultants mentioned by the former. The services they serve are from cosmetics, toys, clothing and even condoms.
This requires freelancers to have the ability to transfer knowledge, develop their multidisciplinary and cross-border thinking skills, and have a highly applicable methodology.
Trusting customers first
Many full-time professionals will regard the communication with the layman as “the burden of work”, preferring to add a one-night class alone, rather than directly facing customers. And a freelancer –
First, empathy, trying to understand the customer’s business hierarchy and preferences;
Second, patient, stand on the other side to explain your professional work;
Finally, the sense of accomplishment is not entirely from professional competence, but can help customers solve problems.
If you meet the above descriptions, you must already consider a question: How do I get started?
How to start your free career
First, start with your current job
Few people have resigned from the beginning to specialize in part-time jobs. Many times you have to first explore the possibilities of business and the maturity of timing.
Because the part-time job content and scope will be different from the full-time job. Sometimes part-time business scope is only to separate part of the full-time job; and sometimes it includes full-time and its surrounding work.
If you start a part-time job, your first client might be your current owner, your current client, or your peers. This is your second thing to do –
Second, don’t give up any chance
The outsourced teacher mentioned at the beginning started to do the specific project implementation. The marketing manager of the e-commerce started from the e-commerce business training.
From the moment you plan to make this transition, you have to position yourself as a “businessman”. Don’t easily deny any chance, even if it doesn’t seem to make any money, it’s not very eye-catching, it’s not what you want to do in the future, because you need more customers now.
The biggest problem for freelancers is the stability of income. The stability of a full-time job comes from the fact that you sell your profession to a company for a long time. The opposite of freelancers, the more customers, the more stable your income.
In order to win more customers, you need to establish a wide range of personal connections, the most important of which is –
Third, get to know the “contacts” in the industry
A person who understands your actual situation and understands the actual needs of the customer and can bridge the two sides is called a “contact.”
They are not necessarily executives of a company, but they have a wide network of contacts in the industry. Just knowing such a person is equivalent to building a pipeline for many downstream customers.
A lot of the time, the first step in getting you out of a freelancer is often to get to know such a contact.
Fourth, long-term customer strategy
When can you really leave your current job and work full time for freelance?
The core sign is that you have one or two stable long-term customers, and their business alone is able to meet your current income standards, and the service time is much lower than your current working hours.
Of course, the real realization of “professional freedom”, not only takes time, but also the support of the industry’s background, maybe you think that it is impossible. But many times when you are ready to work, when the opportunity comes, you are the first person to seize the opportunity.
Most people’s attitude towards freelancers is both envious and fearful, envious of the free way of working (in fact, there is also a non-free side), and the pressure to survive.
And for a manager who is very professional but not good at it, the so-called guarantee of the company is very expensive. I have also said a rule before. If you can’t become a manager, you can get the money with you. Compared to the contribution, the higher the position, the lower the ratio.
Because of the kind of stability, I was in the previous “ Anti-Vulnerability: Why are more stable work, life is more fragile ” a paper introduces the concept of “anti-fragile”, If people are constantly exposed to small risks, income will continue to fluctuate slightly, and in the long run, careers will be safer.
The real “financial freedom” is not only money, but also a “free heart.”
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