Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Advice for IT freelance expert website needed

Schwan · 09-04-2004, 03:25 AM

I’ve placed this thread in Titled Finance because it’s business related for the most part. If mods think otherwise, then do with it as you please.

BACKGROUND

A while back I’ve been asked to participate in a new website project. The idea of the website was to create a place for freelance IT specialists – mostly programmers and artists – to look for projects to participate in. The website’s CMS allows the freelancers to register and create their on-line portfolios. There’s also a set of tools for people who look for the freelancers – they do this through announcements, in which they specify who are they looking for, exactly. An e-mail is sent out to all the users who meet these requirements. There’s a lot of other features there, but that’s the basic idea, so there’s no point to go into further details.

The website is placed in central Europe, on a developing market, so the initiative is fresh.

THE PROBLEM

Throughout the first month of it’s existence the site managed (thanks to my l337 PR skilzzzor) over a thousand members and a nice, steady flow of new users checking in daily. We also launched an information campaign to various IT companies to inform them that they can use this service for free to look for freelance programmers and so on. This is where things go a bit wrong.

The sites management decided to run a contest in order to check the skills of the users. The results – bad. Out of several hundred entries only two were what you might call professional, but still not anything close a paying customer might expect. It turns out that a lot of the people who registered haven’t a clue about either programming or graphics. The second problem came with the kind of announcements we got form the businesses. Instead of looking for freelancers to participate in their projects, companies placed normal job ads.

SOLOUTIONS

They’ve asked me for possible solutions for these two problems. I’m thinking that either they should bend their whole idea of the website more to the user’s liking – if companies want to look for normal employees this way, then let them.

Another solution would be to sign individual contracts with one or two IT companies, so that they would use this site to look for freelancers. But that’s a bit problematic – the people I’ve talked to are not interested in this, because they don’t trust what the people write on the internet, and they prefer, instead, to look for freelancers through people they’ve worked with. And they are right – judging from the contest results, most of the users are incompetent to participate in large IT projects.

A way to solve the incompetence problem would be an introduction of a grading system, like, say, ebay has, where a happy customer would give out a positive or negative comment to a freelancer, after they’ve finished work. Then again this would be problematic to control.

Finally, I’m going to suggest to them to run a campaign directed at various tech school students. I know for a fact that some of the polytechnic student can put professional IT experts to shame with their skills, only that most of the time they have no idea how to look for a job.

THE QUESTION

The question is simple – does the collective knowledge of TFP have any advice?

09-04-2004, 03:25 AM	#1 (permalink)
Schwan A boy and his dog Location: EU!	Advice for IT freelance expert website needed I’ve placed this thread in Titled Finance because it’s business related for the most part. If mods think otherwise, then do with it as you please. BACKGROUND A while back I’ve been asked to participate in a new website project. The idea of the website was to create a place for freelance IT specialists – mostly programmers and artists – to look for projects to participate in. The website’s CMS allows the freelancers to register and create their on-line portfolios. There’s also a set of tools for people who look for the freelancers – they do this through announcements, in which they specify who are they looking for, exactly. An e-mail is sent out to all the users who meet these requirements. There’s a lot of other features there, but that’s the basic idea, so there’s no point to go into further details. The website is placed in central Europe, on a developing market, so the initiative is fresh. THE PROBLEM Throughout the first month of it’s existence the site managed (thanks to my l337 PR skilzzzor) over a thousand members and a nice, steady flow of new users checking in daily. We also launched an information campaign to various IT companies to inform them that they can use this service for free to look for freelance programmers and so on. This is where things go a bit wrong. The sites management decided to run a contest in order to check the skills of the users. The results – bad. Out of several hundred entries only two were what you might call professional, but still not anything close a paying customer might expect. It turns out that a lot of the people who registered haven’t a clue about either programming or graphics. The second problem came with the kind of announcements we got form the businesses. Instead of looking for freelancers to participate in their projects, companies placed normal job ads. SOLOUTIONS They’ve asked me for possible solutions for these two problems. I’m thinking that either they should bend their whole idea of the website more to the user’s liking – if companies want to look for normal employees this way, then let them. Another solution would be to sign individual contracts with one or two IT companies, so that they would use this site to look for freelancers. But that’s a bit problematic – the people I’ve talked to are not interested in this, because they don’t trust what the people write on the internet, and they prefer, instead, to look for freelancers through people they’ve worked with. And they are right – judging from the contest results, most of the users are incompetent to participate in large IT projects. A way to solve the incompetence problem would be an introduction of a grading system, like, say, ebay has, where a happy customer would give out a positive or negative comment to a freelancer, after they’ve finished work. Then again this would be problematic to control. Finally, I’m going to suggest to them to run a campaign directed at various tech school students. I know for a fact that some of the polytechnic student can put professional IT experts to shame with their skills, only that most of the time they have no idea how to look for a job. THE QUESTION The question is simple – does the collective knowledge of TFP have any advice?