Freelance Work: The Changing Face of Employment
No more working for the same company for fifty years. Freelance
work is becoming more and more prominent. On-line you can find
work or someone to do a job. Check out www.guru.com
The world sure is changing, and if you look at job employment
you will see what I mean. Let's just go back to our
grandparent's generation, even though I'm sure if we went back
further we would see very different structures of work in the
tribal periods of our history. Our grandparents usually found a
skill, and then used that one skill to work for their whole
career. An example is my grandfather who was a salesman for the
same suit company for 44 years. There is nothing wrong with
this. His job was secure; he knew there would be a
superannuating fund when he retired, and that there would always
be food on the table for his family. These days in the 21st
century things have changed, and they are still changing rapidly
as we speak.
Nowadays it isn't strange for a person to have around five
completely different career paths in their lifetime. You might
think that job security is much lower, but there are new types
of jobs emerging everyday with the advent of modern technology.
Older people can go back to schools and be educated in totally
new areas that are greatly desired in society. One of the
greatest changes in recent times is the fact that a lot of
people are now working for themselves as freelancers from home.
Society is still getting all the necessary work done, but the
structures in which individuals pursue their dreams and goals in
their areas of interest have changed completely. If you are
working at home for your own business, you sure don't have the
old hierarchy of bosses watching over your every move, judging
your worth, and threatening you with dismissal.
People are now self-motivated as they know that if they don't
get out there and share their skills and attributes with
society, they simply might be forgotten. There is a new way of
acquiring work these days that is so very different than the
days of perusing the job-ads in the newspaper or going
door-to-door asking for work. Surprise, surprise, its on the
Internet! There are now on-line marketplaces for both employers
to offer work and for potential freelance employees to show
their portfolios. There are many, but an excellent example of
one of these sites is www.guru.com. On Guru.com once you have
registered your portfolio for free, you can then bid for jobs
that prospective employers have advertised. On the other hand,
if you are an employer, you can go to the category of work you
need done (E.g.: Creative Writing) and search through a list of
professionals that you can then contact to do the job.
These professionals exhibit the amount that they charge per
hour, how much they have already earned through the site and a
portfolio of examples of their work. They are then given a
rating that has been compiled by the employers who have used
their services. It is quite unbelievable; they've got people and
job types from a multitude of different areas, just about any
type of freelance work you can imagine: E.g. Website design,
marketing, writing, graphic design, legal, engineering,
photography, finance-the list is quite extensive.
So you see, "the times they are a-changin'" my friends. Imagine
if you were frozen in time one hundred years ago and then thawed
out today. All the basic human beliefs and emotions would be the
same, but how would the world look to you? We've got to go with
the flow and not get lost in the structures of old. What's your
goal? Get on the Web!