Tag: Flexjobs

Six Reasons to Dress for Success When Working from Home

~ The Regal Writer ~ Leave a comment
assorted clothes
Photo by Kai Pilger on Pexels.com

A growing number of people are working remotely these days, whether it’s from a co-working space or a home office. How dressed up should you be when you work from home? How much does your wardrobe affect your attitude or productivity?

Certainly one of the benefits of working remotely is being able to dress more casually than if you worked in a formal office environment. But just because you can “dress down” doesn’t mean you should.

Home Business magazine cites several research studies that show the psychological impact of clothing. Their conclusions? What you wear definitely can affect your mood, your ability to think creatively and solve problems, and how you present yourself to other people. While it’s tempting to stay in your pajamas and sweat pants all day, research shows that dressing more professionally when working from home has numerous advantages.

1. Professional business dress puts you in a work mindset. Numerous studies show that business casual attire increases creative and strategic thinking as well as increase alertness and attention. People who dress more professionally when working at home report feeling more authoritative, competent and trustworthy. When you feel more confident and authoritative, that attitude comes across in your performance too. Still not convinced? Check out this remote worker’s experiment to dress in business attire for one week.

2. People respond to you more positively. When you meet with clients, colleagues and bosses for meetings dressed in business attire, they are more likely to treat you with respect. You are perceived as someone who takes their job seriously despite working remotely. You are more trustworthy. If given the option between working with someone who dresses professionally and someone who dresses “down,”, most people are likely to choose the well-dressed colleague.

3. Clients take you more seriously when you dress professionally. Despite the fact that you work from home, there may be times when you need to meet with colleagues or clients in person. Those in person face-to-face meetings tend to have better outcomes when you dress for success. It sends a message to clients that you not only take your job seriously, you take their business seriously.

4. Professional attire helps you prepare for interviews. When you prepare for a telephone or video interview, dressing in professional attire shows you are taking the interview seriously. Professional attire gives you confidence, and that confident attitude is likely to come through the telephone or laptop screen. Be sure to dress all the way down to your shoes too. You never know when you may need to stand up or move around during a video conference call. You don’t want bosses or clients to see you in pajamas.

5. Business attire shows that you don’t have to give up comfort. It’s still possible to be relaxed and professional at the same time. Just because you can dress down for work doesn’t mean you should. You get to define what comfort means to you. If that means staying in your slippers or wearing flip flops as you work, so be it. If you insist on wearing your favorite T-shirt, make sure it’s clean and add a nice blazer over it to dress it up. If in doubt about what to wear when working from home, you can never go wrong with adopting the same dress code as your company or client has. Follow their leads.

6. Business attire can break up your day. By putting on dress clothes before you start your day and then changing out of them at say, five o’clock signals that your work day has ended. A shift in your schedule also shifts your mindset to one of work to one of relaxation. As the remote worker who experimented with business attire for one week discovered, without the changes of clothes, it may feel like the lines between work and play blur to the point that you feel you are always in work mode.

Here’s a great tip from Flexjobs. After you’ve started working from home, hang onto your business casual clothes and find other uses for them. Don’t donate them just yet. Add the business jacket to your weekend attire for date night, for example. Or combine items in different ways that you had not thought of. Be creative. Design your own dress code that allows you to mix and match and create a style that is all your own.

Working from home has its advantages. Dressing casually is one of them. Just remember that when you are on the clock, you are in business mode. And your dress should reflect that.

Building Your Network: Tips for Self-employed Writers

~ The Regal Writer ~ Leave a comment
group-1630694_1280
Image courtesy of Hubspot

Writing may be a solo activity, but that doesn’t mean you have to operate in a vacuum. When you work from home, it’s important to build a supportive community of like-minded souls because, frankly sometimes you want to get away from your home office and mingle, seek out new environments and meet new people. Or maybe you just want to get reacquainted with people you used to work with.

Networking is important for self-employed writers for several reasons. Meeting new people can inspire you to experiment with new ideas or learn best (or better) practices than the ones you’ve been using. Networking can broaden your sphere of friends and business contacts who can lend you a hand when you are overloaded with deadlines or provide moral support during difficult stretches.

Networking provides a change of scenery too, a chance to check out the new restaurant or office space that you heard so much about. A change of scenery and seeing new faces can reset your brain and open it up to new experiences and new possibilities. Most important, networking saves your sanity, so you don’t go stir crazy staring at a computer screen all day, or worse, staring at four walls.

So where can you go to build your network? Who should be part of your community, your support system, and a source of potential business? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Start with your family and closest friends. They know you best and understand your career goals. Ask them for business advice or introductions to managers at their place of work.

2. Reach out to past clients, employers and co-workers. If you left previous employers on good terms, reach out to them. When they move on to other businesses, stay in touch. They may be just the contact person you need to gain an introduction to the right manager and the right opportunity at their new company.

3. Attend workshops and classes. Pay attention to your professional development. Not only will you keep up with the latest trends and practices for your industry, you get to meet professionals from other companies and other parts of the country to add to your contact list. Be sure to follow up with them after the class and every few months, even if it’s just to say hello. Invite them to connect with you on LinkedIn.

4. Consider joining social groups. Sites like Meetup.com or other local social organizations can help you connect with like-minded individuals. Whether you have an interest in skiing, dining out or book clubs, participating in social clubs helps you to reach out to people beyond your industry. What brings you together as a common interest could result in a valuable business connection.

5. Volunteer for a cause close to your heart. When you become involved with a charitable cause, you not only show off your softer side, but you also showcase your leadership and creative thinking skills. Like the social networks, volunteering draws people from different backgrounds to a common cause. Use that common bond to build a strong relationship with fellow volunteers.

6. Seek out role models. These are experienced professionals in your industry who have risen in the ranks and gained industry respect. Because of their stature in the field, you value their opinion and would like to connect with them more closely. They can be someone you have worked with previously or someone you know through an online community. For example, if you’re an aspiring writer, you may want to connect with a published author whose work you have always admired.

Once you’ve connected with these individuals, experts suggest the following tips for maintaining relationships with them.

Tip #1: Remember personal stuff about your connection, such as birthdays and work anniversaries. Offer congratulations for their promotions or new jobs. Those little notes, whether handwritten, text or social media, can make people feel special. They will remember the fact that you remembered them.

Tip #2: Offer your expertise. Remember building a network isn’t about what you get from your connections but what you give to them, suggests experts at the Enterprisers Project. Act as a sounding board for colleagues on work projects. Offer suggestions or advice if colleagues are feeling discouraged or need support. Offering your expertise helps you form stronger bonds with colleagues and team members.

Tip #3: Remember to follow up. If you’ve met someone for coffee and chatted with them at a conference, be sure to send them a note of thanks. The experts at Flexjobs say that this advice is especially helpful if you are applying for a freelance gig. After you’ve met with the potential client, be sure to follow up on a timely basis. You will want to stand out against the competition. Following up shows your attention to detail and that you pay attention to small stuff. That can be important in a growing business relationship.

Keep these tips in mind and know that you have plenty of sources to draw from to build your network. Networking can be a challenge, especially for the shy stay-at-home types, but it’s a necessary evil if you want to stay in business for yourself.

Two Surveys Give Differing Perspectives of Freelancing

~ The Regal Writer ~ Leave a comment
Fruit baskets
Image courtesy of Hubspot

What is it really like to work as a freelance professional? It seems many Americans are gravitating toward that kind of work lifestyle these days. According to the 2018 Freelancing in America survey by Upwork, nearly 57 million Americans worked as a contractor or freelancer in 2018, making up roughly 35 percent of the workforce. That percentage is expected to grow to 50 percent by 2027.

In Upwork’s survey, a majority of freelance workers work independently by choice, not out of necessity. While many freelancers surveyed admit they earn less money, they also enjoy better work-life balance (77 percent).

With so many freelance professionals flooding the workforce, it might be helpful to learn more about this independent work arrangement. What is so appealing about working  freelance? What are the pros and cons? What type of work do they do? How do they find clients? What are the benefits and challenges?

A survey by Flexjobs.com of 1,000 flex workers and freelancers provides some valuable insights, including some that are surprising and unexpected.

According to Flexjobs, the typical worker whose freelance work is their sole source of income is a female, generation Xer working in the marketing, editing, writing and creative career fields, primarily for small companies and individuals and juggling two to three clients at one time. She has been freelancing for at least three years and plans to continue freelancing for the long-term.

Interestingly, that conflicts with the Upwork survey, which indicates that Millennials and Generation Z workers are the driving force behind freelance work. I suspect that many of Upwork’s estimated 12 million site users fall into those demographics, while Flexjobs’ users are older, more experienced professionals.

Flexjobs reports that while 45 percent of respondents have been freelancing at least three years, 38 percent have been doing so for less than one year. That’s an awful lot of newbies in the market. Interestingly, that percentage dips to 18 percent for one to two years. My guess is the drop off occurs because the newcomers have decided to return to full-time work or that the first year of freelance was to test the waters.

While most freelancers work in multiple fields, the highest percentage are writers (29 percent) followed by customer service professionals (23 percent) and administrative professionals (21 percent). While writing is still considered a valued skill by employers, it seems they’d rather hire them out on a project basis than full-time.

Roughly 24 percent report that their work is a combination of freelance and employee jobs while 45 percent choose to freelance full-time. While 39 percent of freelancers work between 21 and 40 hours per week, 35 percent work less than 20 hours a week. I suspect those working fewer hours are new to freelancing and have yet to build up a steady client base. Or perhaps they choose to work freelance on a part-time basis.

More than half of respondents said they found gigs through networking (56 percent) and from job sites (47 percent). While you would think large companies would be the source of most assignments, that isn’t the case. Instead, most freelancers work for other individuals (56 percent) followed by small companies (46 percent), and mid-sized companies (30 percent). Freelancers worked for large companies only 17 percent of the time. The takeaway from this is if you want to find work, the best sources will be other professionals or small businesses.

Another surprising tidbit: Three-fourths of freelancers do not have a website to support their freelance business. If your work is good and you perform client assignments well, word gets around. Clients will find you. Don’t underestimate the power of a strong referral. A website may not be as necessary for your long-term freelance success as you might believe.

The biggest benefits of being a freelancer are flexible schedule (84 percent), work-life balance (66 percent), freedom to work where they choose (61 percent) and no commuting (60 percent). The desire to be your own boss was cited the least (49 percent)

The biggest challenges for many freelancers are finding clients, cited by 65 percent, and having a steady income, cited by 64 percent. That’s nothing new. Despite the romanticized view of freelancing, often by traditional employees working 60-hour work weeks, freelancing is hard work. One critic of the Upwork survey and the rosy picture it painted of the freelance industry said this: “People who don’t have to freelance love to romanticize freelancing – the actual truth is that making a living as a freelancer is harder than hard and sucks a ton of the time.”

Bottom line: Not everyone is cut out to be a freelancer or entrepreneur.

Despite the challenges, two-thirds of freelancers in the Flexjobs survey reported a better overall quality of life. Sixty percent said freelancing helped them become healthier, 66 percent are less stressed than when they worked in a traditional job and 59 percent are less financially stressed.

Anyone considering freelancing needs to consider the good, bad and the ugly side of the business. For all its outward glamour, the freelancing lifestyle still requires a lot of hard work just to make half of what you earned in a steady gig. Upwork may boast 12 million freelancers using the site, but only 400,000 of them actually earned money in 2018, says Stephane Kasriel, Upwork’s founder.

“Like any business to be successful, specific competencies are required, and our most successful freelancers are painstakingly aware of what they need to do to remain successful. That means having and investing in the right technical skills. But it also means having the right entrepreneurial skills, the ability to sell, deliver, evolve your skills and keep improving over time,” says Kasriel in a Forbes interview.

Which might explain why so many freelancers and small businesses struggle within the first year. Freelancers don’t think about the extra time and work involved to evolve their skills or to sell their services when they set up shop. It’s important to think about these factors when considering joining the freelance movement.