As the holiday season approaches, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued partnership. It is business associates like you who make our jobs a pleasure and keep our company successful.
May your holiday season and the new year be filled with much joy, happiness and success. We look forward to working with you in the coming year and hope our business relationship continues for many years to come.
Happy holidays!
Posted by David / Category: freelance, general, market, trends
Portfolios trump resumes, more workers telecommute, social media continues its spread, and mobile marches over desktop: Online magazine CIO provides technology and business leaders with insight and analysis on information technology developments and gives an interesting forecast of some of the key trends for the next year.
According to CIO, the workplace has evolved in new and exciting ways and has become even more centered on the Web. In 2010, mobile applications gained on desktop apps as many companies focused on facilitating smartphones and tablet PCs. Traditional marketing techniques were edged out by web-based marketing via search engines and social media. However, one of the most important trends is the continuous growth of online work. According to the CEO of one of the leading marketplaces for online talent: “It’s a digital world, and the smart companies will hire more flexibly and get more work done online in 2011″. Read the full post on CIO.com.
Technology-centered work trends for 2011:
The austrian motivation-trainer Peter F. Kinauer found out how to make your professional life more relaxed. He wrote a whole book about it: “So macht Arbeit Spass! 60 Impulse für mehr Motivation im Job”. We put together 9 steps he figured out to ease your working life.
Our life’s get more stressful and a whole lot of general problems stress everybody out. Political problems, climate change and financial crisis all over the world put mental pressure on every person who reads the news. It makes especially the working life easier to remember the positive things in life. This kind of motivation is free and nearly everybody is able to realise it.
Step one: Make yourself smile! You can arrange your office new, e.g. with new decoration.
During the advent season, a lot of phone calls stay unanswered. The same is happening at a lot of freelancer offices every year. However, customer inquiries do not wait until Christmas is over and want to be answered at that particular moment.
Under special circumstances business relationships could suffer. Then, a postcard or an e-mail greeting with Christmas wishes will not make it up. Sure you can put on an answering machine or a voice mail to answer your calls. However, is this really a good way to deal with customers? But what other possibilities do I have?
Those who do not have a chance to recruit a personal assistant could engage a telephone secretary e.g. at emilie.biz. You can forward your calls to emilie as required and your customers will receive personal attention there. No matter when, even in the weeks before Christmas or the week between the 24th and the 31st of December, emilie is answering your phone calls. (More information on www.emilie.biz)
This is one way to go through the holidays without having a bad conscience. Like this, you can relax some days without thinking of phone calls. This service is not only interesting for those who are looking for free time but also for those who are under special stress during the advent season and must complete important things until the 31.12. So another way to use emilie.biz could be to allow you to use the time to work without being disturbed.
Tell us what other options you know and how you solve this problem! We are looking forward to receiving exciting tips.
projektwerk wishes you a beautiful advent season!
It was about time: Many of our users have been waiting for a feature to limit their matching results to a city or region.
Yesterday we finally released the location based matching, so that from now on you will be able to view only those matching results that are in a certain radius from your desired location.
It is as easy as this:
Simply add the location where you would preferably work to your expert profile – respectively add the city or region where your project is located.
Right above your matching results you will find not only the time slider – but also the new slider to regulate the distance to the location stated in your profile/project. Simply set this slider to the desired distance: e.g. should your next project be located right in the city you are living in or can it be about 100 km around this place?
Furthermore, we changed the daily matching notification: It now includes the location of the project or profile. Also we implemented direct links to your matching profiles or projects listed in the mail.
Why not try the location based matching right away?!
We wish you lots of success with projektwerk.
Working as a freelancer becomes more fashionable nowadays and therefore working at home as well. Especially the fact that one can set it’s own hours is a pleasing side effect. So setting up your working place effectively is an important part of working at home. A well organized and structured office makes the working hours at home easier and more enjoyable. Here are some helpful hints for freelancer to arrange their office conveniently:
basic needs for your home office
In general you shouldn’t fill up your office with stuff which is not necessary for your actual work.
On Friday, November 19, 2010, the first European coworking conference takes place in Brussels.
Coworking Europe wants to bring together all kinds of people who are interested in coworking, thus staying true to the original idea – thinkers, activists, policy makers and everyone who is generally interested in “uncovering the real potential of coworking in Europe”.
On its first day, the conference will offer an overview of European coworking with speakers from coworking spaces from all over Europe as well as the opportunity to get together with policy makers and potential partners.
Saturday is the day to “co-create solutions for the challenges of coworking today” – using the community´s collective intelligence.
Find out about the speakers here.
Find general information here.
Coworking has become increasingly popular in the last years, since it offers freelancers the benefits of an office life without limiting their freedom or restricting their creativity with that 9 to 5 feeling.
But is Coworking a business model or life style that suits you and meets your needs?
mashable.com has put together 5 signs that you should consider becoming a member of the ever-growing Coworking community.
Here they are:
1. You Don´t think Showering During the Work Week is necessary?
Or: You feel the need to be around people in order not to get isolated. Being a coworker gives you the opportunity to take a coffee break with colleagues and, of course, the incentive to actually start (or maintain) a somewhat well-ordered lifestyle.
2. You Want a Network but Hate Networking Events?
Trade sipping on cocktails and exchanging business cards with working alongside other professionals. Actually seeing the work and getting to see each other on a regular basis means a different and often much more valuable connection. Which translates into a good and productive network.
3. There Are Things You Can´t Do?
Having good contacts in your own field of expertise is a great thing – but what if you need advice or a cooperation partner? In a Coworking space, you are more likely to find what you need, since you already know each other and (maybe even) your work.
4. Sure You Like Coffee Shops – But Work in One?
Of course, you can work in a café. Looking around, it seems to be a very hip thing to do. If you do not care enough about appearing hip and trendy to ignore the downsides of working in a coffee shop like the noise, the necessity to take your laptop and other equipment to the bathroom each and every time or the lack of space – you might feel better in a Coworking space.
5. Your Kitchen Is Your Meeting Room?
Meeting clients in your private surrounding not only puts pressure on you to clear up your surroundings constantly (come to think of it, maybe that is not a bad idea overall…). It also means that your client will possibly doubt your professionalism.
Why you should refrain from becoming a coworker
As many benefits as there are, Coworking is not for everyone. These signs may tell you that is it not for you:
1. You are a company with more than 10 people – the internal communication could shut out the other coworkers – and with that, the Coworking benefits
2. You need your privacy – be it the work content that calls for privacy or that you just do not like being overheard on the phone.
3. You don´t like people – this one is obvious. But then again – if you are not a person that likes to socialize, you would not honestly consider becoming a coworker, right?
Human resources usually describes the individuals who comprise the workforce of an organization; often its most valuable asset. Therefore, the strategies and policies relating to the management of individuals are very important factors for most businesses.
Apparently, human resource professionals are still hesitant and critical when it comes to anything technology related, including applicant recruitment and employee selection through social media. However, social medias’ popularity and possibilities have forced H&R professionals to give the medium a second thought.
This post on mashable discusses the issue and looks at how social media is affecting the human resources field.
What are your experiences?
Over the last weeks we received a lot of feedback regarding the projektwerk relaunch and put effort in implementing most of it:
We have been releasing a couple of adjusted versions in which minor bugs were solved, the matching technology was further refined and – since monday – the transparency was improved.
Further information about all our releases can be found in our changelog.
Mondays’ release aimed at making the matching more transparent and understandable for you: keywords responsible for the match will be highlighted and you can see all congruencies between your and the others profile or project at a glance.
Also the navigation bar was redesigned: In the top right corner you will find your name. From there you can access your personal information, your bills and your account settings. You can also log out here.
Furthermore new RSS feeds are available: One for all new projects and a separate one for all new profiles. You will find these RSS feeds in the footer.
Thank you for your feedback!
We wish you lots of success with these alterations,
your projektwerk team
