News
IT Contractors advised To promote skills online
30 December, 2009
IT Contractors with computer-based skills should promote their specialist expertise online.
As most contractors/freelancers do not have huge advertising budgets, it has been strongly recommended that online advertising is the way to go. Websites are useful for getting expertise known, sharing knowledge and building client bases,
Computerworld’s Julia King recently wrote an article in which she discussed the do’s and don’ts of IT freelancing. She said that contractors need to find their own niche and specialize in marketable skills that are invaluable to particular clients.
Quoting from her article “As companies continue to cut costs, consolidate staff and eviscerate executive salaries, more and more senior-level IT professionals are eyeing corporate exits—or being shown them against their will.
For many such tech execs, the next step on the increasingly rocky, do-it-yourself 21st-century career path is independent consulting.
But do you have what it takes, or even know what it takes, to strike out on your own? Where do you find clients? Should you specialize? What about marketing and finances? Where can you get decent, affordable health insurance once you’re cut loose from corporate benefits?
How do you navigate the enormous cultural changes of minding your own calendar, developing and building your own marketing presentations and, horror of horrors, scheduling your own economy class air travel? How do you make your mark and find paying clients fast, when it seems like every other laid-off IT exec is setting out his own shingle?”
To answer those and other questions, Computerworld rounded up a boardroom’s worth of former CIOs and other high-level IT professionals who successfully made the transition to IT consultant.”