Author: Thomas Delfort

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IT Careers: Towards a Freelancisation of Permanent Tech Roles?

IT Careers: Towards a Freelancisation of Permanent Tech Roles?
The freelancisation of tech roles: how teleworking and the war for talent in IT are pushing for more flexible working conditions for employees.

The ‘freelancisation’ of tech roles. How the spectacular democratisation of teleworking and the war for talent that is raging in the technology sector are pushing companies to offer ever more flexible working conditions to their employees.

Originally published on JDN.

Freelancisation of Tech Roles: Teleworking and flexible working hours as the new standard

Long before the global pandemic, remote work and flexible working hours were already major trends in the creation of the world of work of tomorrow. But the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of these ways of working. For a large majority of employees on permanent contracts, in all sectors. No more traditional working days at the office from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a break by the coffee machine, etc.

And this is obviously to accommodate their demands. According to a study conducted by Malakoff Humanis in June 2020, 84% of employees wanted to request telework after confinement.

On the business side, the flexibility of work also seems to convince. According to a recent study by Capgemini, employee productivity increased by 63% in the third quarter of 2020. Better still; 70% of companies seem convinced that the productivity gains generated by teleworking can be sustained once the pandemic over.

The employees of tomorrow will see their daily working lives marked by an increasingly flexible framework similar to that of freelancing.

The IT talent war and the “freelancisation” Tech Roles & of job vacancies

In the world of tech and IT, another phenomenon reinforces this tendency towards flexibility: the talent shortage.

Companies are struggling to recruit technical profiles and are engaged in a fierce battle to attract the best candidates. As a result, they are sometimes ready to bend over backwards to meet the requirements of the most popular professionals. And that includes offering more flexible conditions to candidates.

To recruit the best developers on a permanent contract; for example, some companies are ready to offer them full remote control and total flexibility in their working hours. This is attracting profiles who were already partial to freelancing.

“Freelancisation” or simple flexibilisation?

So yes, in the world of tech and IT, the trend is undoubtedly to make working conditions more flexible. But to speak of a “freelancisation” of tech roles would amount to reducing the status of freelance to remote work and flexible hours.

To work independently is to have an entrepreneurial mindset. It is to wear several hats including that of accountant and that of commercial, it is to alternate periods of mission and periods of inactivity… In short, a very different reality to that of a permanent position even with very flexible conditions.

It should be noted that the opposite phenomenon also occurs: freelance work sometimes takes some resemblance of a permanent gig. This is particularly the case of very long-term assignments under management. Working for example on large-scale SAP projects over several years.

Tech and IT: the classic permanent contract has not said its last word

But speaking of a widespread flexibilisation of jobs in the worlds of technology and IT would be wrong. The reality is in fact more nuanced.

Not all professions are suitable for teleworking, and flexibility generates many points of friction within organizations. The cohesion of the teams is weakened by the distance. Management methods are struggling to adapt.

Most IT departments are not ready to perpetuate the flexibility of working conditions across all workstations. And even less to abandon the traditional model of face-to-face work and fixed hours.

On the employee side, we find a bit of the same. Telework yes, but not too much. According to a survey conducted by Apec in mid-December, if the vast majority of private sector executives now want to telecommute. Nearly half want to use it only “two to three days a week”. In fact, not all employees enjoy teleworking, and some even dream of one thing: being able to return to the office.

Additionally, the freelancisation of tech roles is rather relative: salaried employment as we know it still has a bright future ahead, and the “traditional” permanent contract is not about to disappear. However, it is obvious that the worlds of classic salaried employment and the freelancing model are increasingly coming close to one another. Businesses and workers alike want the best of both worlds now more than ever.

In tech and IT more than in any other sector, we are now juggling the two statuses. The silos between freelance and permanent contract are gradually disappearing, offering ever greater flexibility and possibilities to both professionals and organisations.

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Calling on Freelancers: A Winning Strategy for IT Departments in Times of Crisis

IT Contractors: How to Manage Your Activity in This Unprecedented Period
The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. How to manage your activity?

While flexibility, responsiveness and speed are more necessary than ever, the use of independent consultants takes on a new dimension.

Manage emergencies

IT departments – and especially support services – were put to the test during the lockdown. Between the massive deployment of remote work, the explosion of security threats and the problems of VPN congestion or application availability, support teams have had to deal with a major increase in requests. And this, overnight and under a lot of pressure. The business continuity of the company – and therefore its survival – is at stake.

Imagine that your organization is facing a massive ransomware attack. If you are not able to mobilize the right skills in-house very quickly, you expose yourself to serious consequences in terms of data loss and potential suspension of your activity.

Using freelancers such as cyber security consultants makes it possible to respond very quickly to the overload of work and to absorb the peaks in demand. Whether these are basic requests or tasks requiring specialized skills, calling on additional reinforcements on an ad hoc basis allows the company to have all the responsiveness necessary to respond to these exceptional and urgent situations.

Dealing with uncertainty

While the lockdown has plunged companies into paralysis or at least a slowdown in their activity, the looming economic crisis will be a long-lasting problem. Uncertainty and doubt set in, challenging businesses to continue to grow when they are virtually forced to navigate on sight.

In this context, agility and the ability to adapt are crucial. IT departments have long been used to working in project mode, but this ability to mobilize the best skills very quickly for success will become absolutely essential moving forward.

Ambient instability greatly increases the risk, especially in terms of recruitment. Caught between the need to restart as quickly as possible and the threat of economic crisis, companies must nevertheless act. In the IT field, using freelancers makes it possible to reinforce existing teams in an efficient and less risky manner.

Did you plan to recruit a Data Scientist or a Product Manager on a permanent contract before the economic and health crisis broke out? Opt for a freelance profile while things stabilize internally and externally. Companies can find the talented and experienced consultants they need, while still maintaining the budgetary and organizational flexibility needed if the situation worsens or if the prioritization of certain projects needs to be changed.

Without forgetting that freelancers have, in essence, a great capacity for autonomy and adaptation and are also more used to teleworking. They are therefore a particularly suitable response to the crisis.

Accelerate development

Despite the difficulties and complexity of the current context, there is no reason for companies to get stuck. On the contrary, they must find the tools to continue to develop and grow. This crisis is a test: companies must not only prepare for a quick recovery, but also think beyond the crisis and build solid and innovative models for tomorrow.

For these reasons, structuring technological projects and IT architectures that enable business transformation is at the heart of the game. It is essential, even vital, to continue to implement them, and even to accelerate them. However, the success of these strategic projects largely depends on the teams in charge. So how do you make sure you have the most competent people possible?

Using one or more experienced freelancers on specific IT subjects, such as cloud or machine learning, can save a lot of time and significantly speed up these major projects. In addition, the contractual relationship between freelancers and the company often requires them to make a higher commitment in terms of performance and quality of service.

In conclusion, the use of freelancers is not a one-size-fits-all solution and must be part of a more comprehensive strategy. But it represents a flexible, responsive and efficient solution for IT departments, which must more than ever learn to juggle between internal and external employees to emerge winners from this period of instability. One thing is clear: the success of companies in these times of crisis depends in large part on the skills and talent it can mobilize.

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IT Contractors: How to Manage Your Activity in This Unprecedented Period

IT Contractors: How to Manage Your Activity in This Unprecedented Period
The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. How to manage your activity?

The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. And it will probably last for a while. How to manage your activity?

In this unprecedented context, independent consultants may fear a drop in the number of new assignments and income. Here are a few thoughts to help you better understand the situation and come up with a strategy to maintain and develop his activity.

Also discover our special guide: IT Job Hunting Done Well: A Step-by-Step Guide

The state of the market

In this period of relative normality, many wonder what the next few months will look like in terms of economic activity. And it is true: the outlook is worrying. All predictions point at GDPs falling across the world’s biggest economies.

While not the hardest hit, the IT industry will nonetheless feel the impact of the Covid-19 crisis. Gartner recently published a new report in which it estimates that global CIO spending will fall by 8% in 2020.

Before the crisis; during the Gartner IT Symposium, October 20, 2019; the same analyst predicted an increase of 3.7% in 2020. Entering now a period of resource management and reassessment, CIOs will suddenly be forced to prioritize critical services.

IT Pros: How to Work On Remote in the Post-Pandemic World

As a result, many projects are and will be postponed. This isn’t a complete market shutdown or outright cancellation of projects, but the impact is going to be heavy nonetheless. And there’s no denying the fact that freelancers are often one of the first to be scratched of the budget.

However, and this is the first reason to remain positive, IT freelancers are also the ones who are called on first when projects restart. (We are already seeing this with the confirmation of many migration projects to SAP S/4HANA). Freelancers offer companies a flexibility that is an obvious advantage in a context where business is unstable and where uncertainty remains.

We should also take a closer look at the IT sector, since its different sub-segments are not impacted uniformly. In some areas, the role of the IT department has even been reinforced by the crisis and certain skills are in greater demand.

With the advent of teleworking in particular, IT departments are under heavy pressure to implement dedicated technologies. While overcoming the cybersecurity challenges that go hand in hand with this trend.

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Manage you activity: Tips for adapting in times of crisis

Several best practices can be recommended to manage your activity in times like these. The choice of industry is the first element that deserves the attention of IT freelancers looking for a job. If this choice was already important before the crisis; now it is even more so as all the sectors of activity do not suffer the same impact.

It is, therefore, advisable to sectors that are experiencing a strong peak in activity due to the Covid-19 crisis. Such as mass distribution, health or even online entertainment and education.

The second tip is flexibility. More than ever, the independent consultant needs to adapt to changing situations and be more flexible on certain criteria for choosing an assignment, such as the location or the context of the assignment. It is not about accepting just anything or being underpaid, but simply about punctually and opportunely expanding your usual criteria. For example, it may be wise to position yourself more in the area of TMA (third-party application maintenance) and carry out small assignments rather than embarking on full-fledged projects.

It is also important to pay special attention to your “self-marketing.” As always, you must know how to sell yourself. This can start by taking stock of your skills and aspirations to properly orient the way of presenting yourself before employers. Being active on social and professional online networks is also something that will help you stand out from the crowd and develop new connections.

Finally, you have to continue to train and learn, all while cultivating your softer skills. Keep in mind that the ability to adapt in times of crisis and other interpersonal skills can often make the difference between two similar candidate profiles.

Stay positive

Focus on the positive. We know that we have entered a difficult and complicated period from an economic point of view. However, as we have seen, there are several things that should keep IT freelancers positive. First of all, the IT sector is largely spared compared to other sectors (tourism, catering, hotel industry, etc.).

Secondly, the pandemic has strengthened the role of IT departments (setting up teleworking, cybersecurity, etc.), and the current circumstances can encourage companies to resort to hiring more freelancers.

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AI for recruitment: How AI will allow recruiters to focus on people

IT Contractors: How to Manage Your Activity in This Unprecedented Period
The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. How to manage your activity?

AI for recruitment. AI penetrates all areas and promises tremendous gains in efficiency, speed and performance. There has been a lot of media buzz lately around its recruitment applications. What long-term impact will AI have on the staffing industry? Used well, these new technological tools will allow recruiters to focus on their added value and; paradoxically; make the recruitment of the future more human.

AI promises in automation

For the past twenty years, we have witnessed an ever more extensive and efficient automation of the recruitment processes. These developments are built upon extremely complex analytical models. Defining and anticipating the skills that the company needs, identifying the most suitable talent and ranking candidates based on precise job criteria are processes that require taking into account many variables.

Moreover, through its ability to consider contextual elements as rich as they are varied, artificial intelligence promises to make this level of automation a reality. In a field like IT recruitment, where time is of the essence, being able to quickly match candidate profile with company requirements is a decisive advantage.

Artificial intelligence in IT recruitment

In the recruitment of IT freelancers, for example, AI makes it possible to process very quickly huge volumes of data linked to the profiles of candidates. Previous gigs, areas of expertise and preferred sectors, years of experience… But also exogenous data such as the candidate’s place of residence and travel times. AI also makes it possible to analyze the quality and interest of the positions offered. Helping identify the types of projects that are most promising in terms of career development.

Furthermore, considering elements linked to quality of life or to the characteristics of the offer maximises the chances of success of an investment; by making it possible to identify profiles with high potential and that are likely to be interested in the mission.

AI for IT recruitment: Towards an uberisation of recruitment?

AI’s capabilities are making great strides in matching supply and demand. Hence the emergence of fully automated solutions, of players who “platformise” recruitment. Which bring about a vision of recruitment as an almost exact science.

This vision would like technology to replace human appreciation entirely; thus putting an end to the recruitment profession and replacing it with ever more sophisticated and intelligent algorithms.

But this vision is implausible. Recruiting is not just a science, it is also an art.

IT recruitment: the human touch

In recruitment more than in any other field, the human being occupies by definition a central role. Soft skills, matching the values ​​and culture of the company, and compatibility with other team members… They are all key factors for a successful placement. As much as the level of education, years of experience, references or results obtained in a technical test. And yet, these are all parameters that an artificial intelligence can never assess as well as a human.

Even more so when we talk about recruiting for high-level positions. It is hard to imagine choosing a CIO or an Innovation Director via a fully automated process. Neither the candidate nor the company would subscribe to it.

Discover 5 Online Courses to Get You Up-To-Speed with AI

From artificial intelligence to augmented intelligence

It is really a question of going beyond the dialectic “all digital vs. all human”. Recruitment professions must integrate AI and make the most of it as a tool for human decision-making. And thus allow the business to refocus on its true added value.

AI involves a real qualitative leap, reducing the risk of error and saving unprecedented amounts of time. AI will certainly replace humans on certain tasks, but mainly in repetitive and boring tasks. It increases the performance of the recruiter by allowing faster and more targeted searches. And thus optimizes time and communication with the candidate. Far from dehumanizing the relationship, AI, on the contrary, allows us to focus even more on humans.

Artificial intelligence for recruiter: the next level

This is good news for recruiters. These new tools will allow the profession to gain new levels of recognition, with richer and more interesting daily tasks. Also, it will give us the ability to understand the needs of the company in terms of skills. To create a stronger connection with the candidates. As well as to understand the aspirations and constraints of each party involved.

It is also and above all good news for candidates. Because recruiters will be able to devote more time to them and offer them a better experience. Firms will be able to enrich their service offer with more support. Especially in the key stages of onboarding and taking of office of the selected candidate.

It is, therefore, the human-machine association, the combination of artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence. That will revolutionise recruitment and put people back at the heart of the processes. We may no longer be talking about Artificial Intelligence, but augmented Intelligence.

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On digital IT sourcing and meeting its human half

IT Contractors: How to Manage Your Activity in This Unprecedented Period
The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. How to manage your activity?

At Club Freelance, we have a priority: to constantly improve our services and processes to keep bringing more and more value to the community of IT decision-makers and consultants that we support on a daily basis. This commitment requires today more than ever greater investment in digital, something which is deeply ingrained in our vision and approach to the digital IT sourcing and placement of consultants.

Digital IT sourcing: Our business maintains and will always maintain a human-to-human approach

Our goal is not to “platformise” our activity. We believe that a successful recruitment strategy does not rest solely on a good match between the needs of the company and the skills of the candidate, but also on thoughtful interactions, strong attention to soft skills and a well-designed onboarding process. 

And that is whether we are talking about recruiting for a permanent or for a freelance position.

Our real added value, therefore, lies in the expertise of our teams. It is what allows us to build relationships of trust with both clients and candidates and to nurture those relationships through long-term support and guidance.

Human expertise can be enhanced and further developed with the help of technology and digital tools

That is why Club Freelance has been based since its inception on a hybrid model. We combine the very best that humans and digital tools have to offer to deliver high-quality, efficient sourcing solutions that can keep up with the complex and evolving needs of today’s businesses.

Digital allows us to target with ever greater precision the profiles sought, to gain in efficiency and speed in all our processes, to better communicate with all parties involved, and even to improve our own knowledge of the market. All to the benefit of our clients and candidates.

In short, digital tools offers us the opportunity to provide a richer and more personalized service. It is with this objective in mind that we designed our web interface.

What does our site offer?

A wide array of useful resources – for you, not just for SEO

Support and guidance are at the heart of our value proposition, both for our candidate consultants and our recruiting clients. We are committed to providing you with the best resources, information and practical advice that our expertise and our own resources can produce.

Our goal: to increase the value we bring to the table with a unique take on content that is both relevant and useful to you and your goals.    

Accordingly, our new site puts much of its focus on content. Mission Control Center (MCC) is a one-stop-shop for IT career and talent acquisition advice, tech news, and in-depth analysis of industry trends – a guide for professional and business success.

And we do not intend to stop there. Stay tuned — New content types and formats are just around the corner.

Website features and digital IT sourcing

Last but not least, our web interface comes with a host of new features to make life easier for our clients and candidates:

For our community of IT consultants in search of their next gig:

A personalised dashboard with integrated application management capabilities, allowing for the monitoring of the application process in real-time, the online management of invoicing and all other paperwork. Oh, and it also features useful statistics and a personalized calendar.

Discover the dashboard by logging into your personal site or by setting up your account.

For our community of IT decision-makers and recruiters

Our community of IT decision-makers and recruiters looking for top talent will have to wait just a little bit longer. This will be the next step in our digital development and the enrichment of our service. We cannot tell you more for the moment, but rest assured – It is coming really soon, and will be packed with tons of features dedicated to businesses.

We hope you enjoy our new. Please do not hesitate to send us your feedback by responding to this blog article or reaching out to a member of our team. Thank you for your continued trust, and we look forward to presenting you with the next news.

Thomas Delfort, CEO of Club Freelance, and the whole team.