Freelance Hiring in New York City

Episode #7 Transcript

PUBLISHED ON JUNE 22, 2010

Peter Clayton: Welcome to an all-new Onward Search Career Cast. If you want to know what’s happening in New York City, you’ve come to the right podcast. Joining me is Director of Staffing Jennifer Walsh and Account Executive Mike Ondocin of Onward Search to discuss the freelance job market in New York City and what freelancers can expect regarding hiring trends and skill set demand.

Jen and Mike, welcome to Onward Search Career Cast.

Jennifer: Thank you.

Mike: Thanks Peter.

Peter: Mike, why don’t we start with you, give us a big picture if you would, what is the marketplace like for freelance professionals in New York City right now?

Mike: The market in New York City right now is strong for freelance professionals. It’s obviously a competitive market. It always has been, it always will be. It’s really the candidates that are staying on top of their skill sets, continuing to learn, continuing to advance; those are the folks that are landing the jobs. You know at this point, it seems as though companies are looking for resources that are available at the drop of a hat and that’s really where the freelance talent pool comes into play and has really been an asset, especially in the last year or so with all the changes in the economy.

Peter: Talk to me about money, how is compensation for freelance talent in New York City right now, especially compared to the last couple of years?

Mike: Well, you know I’d say it’s better than it was about a year ago but the fact of the matter is that the candidates who are flexible on their rates are the ones who are landing the jobs. You can’t be hoping for the dollar amount that you got three or four years ago but it is getting better and that’s a good thing.

Peter: Okay, so let’s get in to some of the trends you’ve seen in this area. Are you seeing an increase in demand for interim help and how about temp to perm?

Jennifer: We are, we’re seeing both actually. There is certainly an increased demand as far as interim is concerned and temporary help and with companies laying off for the last couple of years, I think a lot of our clients are still a little bit gun-shy to commit to hiring people on a permanent basis even though the market has significantly improved. They need somebody to come in to help them continue to grow but they’re not committing long-term just yet so that allows an increased demand for freelance to come in and be that extra set of hands and the temp to perm comes in because as these companies are growing and landing additional business and their sales are increasing, they’ve already got those freelancers on staff who have come in and proved themselves. They’ve already come through the kind of learn-to-work curve and now they have the opportunity to hire them on a permanent basis so we are certainly seeing an increased demand in that.

Peter: Is this mainly project based where they’re coming in to tackle a specific project or a specific need the client has?

Jennifer: I think it really depends on which companies we’re talking about. A lot of our business in New York City is with advertising agencies and much of that is strictly project work so they’re bringing in freelancers to help them pitch new business and once the pitch is won, the project is pretty much over and their internal staff takes over from there. If you’re talking about more of our client side business, like the traditional corporate organizations, those aren’t so much projects as much as it is they do need the increased head count but don’t have the budget to hire permanently just yet.

Peter: Okay, well let’s talk about some of the industries that present the most opportunities for freelancers in New York City right now. What are you seeing?

Mike: I think advertising has been and always will be the number one vertical for creative. We are placing online marketing professionals. We’re placing creative professionals constantly with advertising firms of all sizes. I think that there are a few verticals that are a little bit more difficult to get into, including the pharmaceutical world and the finance services world simply because you really have to have some specific skill sets in order to make an initial impact and that’s really what these companies are coming to us for when they’re sourcing freelance talent; the learning curve is incredibly short and I think Jen just touched on that briefly. You really have to know what you’re doing and know how these business processes work in order to be effective right off the bat.

Peter: Well, to that point Mike, when you speak about financial services and pharmaceutical and healthcare, you’re in to highly regulated industries so I’m sure they really want people who have those skill sets.

Mike: That’s absolutely true. That’s absolutely true, and I think also too as a freelancer, you have to be careful in that you’re not strictly working in either pharmaceutical or financial services. I mean if you have an opportunity to do expand your skill set to any other vertical, you’re diversifying yourself and you’re giving yourself more opportunity if at any point, you know, the pharma world seizes up or the financial world again goes through a difficult period.

Peter: Well, let’s expand a little bit on the skill sets that you’re looking for currently right now in New York.

Jennifer: Mike actually just said this in relation to expanding your skill set outside of financial services or pharmaceutical. It’s really expanding your skill set not only by industry but by strict skill experience. What we’re finding like the highest demand is for fully integrated professionals and by that, we mean people who have experienced on the creative side of the world designing for and writing for the web, writing for Facebook, writing for and designing for print. Whereas there used to be a very specific desired skill, we need somebody who is a print designer or we need somebody who is a web designer. Now, it’s we need somebody who is an integrated designer, whose portfolio reflects a variety of platforms where they’ve worked and that’s probably one of the highest skills we’re looking for right now and the skill set that we’re looking for right now, whether it’s for design or for writing on the creative side even when you get into more of the deeper positions that are user experience and information architecture and the like, they need very, very diverse experience.

Peter: When we’re talking about New York City, of course, we’re also talking about the New York Metro area which encompasses Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey, so from a location standpoint and from a project standpoint, is it easier to get a freelance gig up in Westchester or out on Long Island than it is in Manhattan?

Mike: It’s always going to be easier to find a freelancer opportunity in New York City. We find that people who live in the tri-state area are always willing to commute into the city to make that one hour, one and a half hour commute, whatever it might be to gain an opportunity with a top company, especially a top advertising company.

It’s difficult to find talent in those areas of Long Island, New Jersey, Westchester; everybody wants the New York City skill set but very few New York City freelancers who actually live in Manhattan or Brooklyn will travel out to these companies. One of the things that we found is having candidates freelancers work remotely has been a solution. You know, maybe they’ll be onsite with the client in Long Island or Westchester one day a week or two days a week but we can kind of talk them into taking that opportunity if they can work from home within New York.

Peter: As the companies in New York take measures to rebound from the economic downturn, how will this affect their hiring strategies?

Jennifer: We were actually talking about this quite extensively this morning, especially as we mentioned earlier the financial services industry, it’s really taken a public relations’ hit, we’ll say, for the last couple of years so these rebound factors that they’re taking in now are very, very focused on their advertising and their marketing strategies. Many companies have really struggled in the last couple of years to maintain their customer base and their consumer confidence base and they need to be able to change their face to their clients and that means changing their advertising strategies and changing their marketing strategies not only to kind of reel back in their customers but, frankly, also to soften their image and from a marketing perspective, reach a broader audience. So we’re seeing a lot of different measures being taken as far as the creative is concerned and as far as their marketing efforts are concerned for these companies to really rebound, and it really opens up an enormous amount of opportunity for creative and marketing talent.

Peter: Mike and Jen, I know that last week, you both went to this Boulder Event. Can you explain what this is and what some of your takeaways were?

Mike: We attended an event and it was in support of Boulder Digital Works, which is actually a school that’s been created in Boulder, Colorado. The University of Colorado and several large organizations throughout the US have come together to basically create an organization or a school that generates the talent that they’re looking for and the talent that’s lacking in the marketplace right now.

The big push for talents through this folks is to create what they call a T-shaped person, and the definition of T-shaped person is somebody that’s not only great at one particular task, maybe that’s web design, but they also are collaborative and know how to interact with the folks that are designing the Facebook page, the folks that are designing the iPhone application or the iPad application, so the days of being I guess a one trick pony, for lack of a better term, are over. You need to be able to work across multiple business lines. You need to understand how the entire agency functions and you need to be ultra-creative.

It’s really a very interesting concepts and it went through, I guess, its first year of beta testing as they call it last year and it’s been incredibly successful and companies are contacting Boulder Digital Works constantly looking for people that are coming out of that school with those skill sets. It’s really kind of an exciting and new way of creating a talent base.

Peter: Yeah, that is really exciting and Jen, what were some of your takeaways from this event?

Jennifer: You know it’s really interesting because everything that we have been talking about throughout this podcast of really having an integrated portfolio and be diverse in your experience, these are things that we’ve been talking about for months internally and to go to an event and listen to the folks at Boulder Digital Works talk, it reinforced what we’re seeing in our marketplace and they’re located in Colorado so it’s not just in as much as we’re talking about New York City right now and where the freelance marketplace is today, this is not just a New York City thing; this is an overall marketing and advertising industry challenge where identifying really great people who have really diverse experience is so challenging that this group of people has decided well, we’re just going to make our own by creating this educational institution that is going to help these people really diversify their portfolio. It really is super exciting because it’s always great to hear what you’re seeing in your marketplace be reinforced by some of the top advertising agencies of the world.

Peter: That’s great. One last question for guys and this is the way we always wrap up the Onward Search Career Cast, what are some hot jobs? What’s sizzling on the front burner there in New York City?

Mike: Well, right now we’re really seeing a push towards the development front and a need for front-end developers. A lot of the positions are with advertising agencies but we’re also seeing them from the client side as well. There is a strong push for search professionals as we started to see over the course of the last several years, so that market is still staying strong and we’re a major player in that market, happily. Those are really the focuses that we’re seeing right now in terms of skill sets and it’s always changing too. It’s a wave and it goes up and down and we’re just trying to stay ahead of it.

Jennifer: To Mike’s point, the jobs that we’re working on today will be completely different tomorrow, so I would encourage anybody interested in kind of signing on with Onward and doing some really great freelance gigs with us to continue to go to our website and check it on a regular basis. If you don’t see something there today, it could very well be there tomorrow.

Peter: Jen and Mike, thank you so much for taking time to speak with us today on the Onward Search Career Cast.

Jennifer: Thank you so much Peter.

Mike: Thanks Peter.

Peter: Thank you. Jennifer Walsh is Director of Staffing and Mike Ondicin is Account Executive with Onward Search in New York City.

Thank you for tuning in to Onward Search Career Cast. For more information on the career opportunities available through Onward Search, you should visit us online at onwardsearch.com or call 1-800-829-0072 and speak with an experienced recruiter, and you should also follow Onward Search on Twitter at Twitter.com/onwardsearch.