Hello, my name is Sandra and I am proud to be a Professional Virtual Assistant! I have worked in the Virtual Assisting Industry as an independent VA and through a Virtual Staffing Agency (VSA). I have done Sales and Customer Service for a VSA and I have been a client with a VA Team of my own. I've seen it from every angle! I have developed a passion not only for this industry but also for mentoring and training women who want to have successful VA Businesses.
Trends on Elance – what do they mean for Virtual Assistants?
Trends on Elance - what do they mean for Virtual Assistants?
Elance, one of the top freelance job sites, recently published a list of the Top 100 skills in demand during February 2009. It comes as no surprise that budgets are shrinking and workloads are growing in this economy. Recent trends on Elance show how these changes are affecting and indeed growing the freelancing industry. Hiring a freelancer isn’t just for solopreneurs and home based businesses; the number of small and mid-sized businesses seeking assistance from freelancers is growing.
Buyers (AKA employers in the Bricks and Mortar world) are hiring freelancers to do online Marketing, research, writing and administrative support as usual but in growing numbers.
I thought it was interesting to see that the trend toward more small and mid-size companies using freelancers in the technology sectors is growing. Skills like PHP, MySQL, and AJAX are in increasing demand. So as companies are laying off people with these skills, they are turning around and hiring freelancers which is, by nature a more collaborative effort than the typical employer/employee relationship.
During the 90’s I did sales and marketing for our local Chamber of Commerce. There were a lot of layoffs in our area and a lot of those people hung out their shingles as solopreneurs. It was interesting to see many of these freelancers being hired by their former companies to do what they used to do. Only now, the overhead was less for the company (no office costs) and the net income for the freelance was higher than the salary they used to get. Now we are seeing another surge in this trend.
There will always be a need for employees in certain business models, i.e. a doctor’s office needs a nurse to be there when patients are but they can outsource billing and transcription work to freelancers.
I wonder if in a few more generations we will only see freelancers in these positions. Technology continues to not only make freelancing possible but more appealing to all parties.
Popularity: 20% [?]
If you're new here, you may want to sign up to receive free updates via email or your favortite RSS Reader. Thanks for visiting!
