From left to right: Shaun Fensom (MDDA), Malcolm and Gavin from Band on the Wall, Ben and Jon from Cahoona and me

It was great feeling hearing Band on the Wall announced as the winner and a surreal experience getting up on the stage and shaking hands with the presenter Terry Christian. This website was the product of a lot of hard work not just on my part but also from the guys at Cahoona *, everyone involved at Band on the Wall and winning the award feels like recognition that that effort was well spent.

* Big thanks also to Tim Fletcher, the front-end freelancer who came to the rescue towards the end of the project to make sure it got finished!

Everyone on stage - with presenter Terry Christian

This was my second attendance at an awards ceremony (Big Chips 2009 was my first) and I had a great time: ate some truly wonderful food and drank some fabulously free wine (thanks Jon and Ben). If I’m completely honest, winning a Big Chip was something I’ve always coveted since before I was a professional; I saw the awards from afar as a student and always felt that the day I’d won one would be the day I’d finally become a proper web developer.

Cahoona

It’s been a very interesting journey watching Cahoona go from a small agency which very few people had heard of this time last year to one that everyone has heard of now. I think the work they’re producing is of a very high quality and I was glad to see them pick up another award, the Tasty Website award for their own website cahoona.co.uk.

My expectations for the course

I certainly was not expecting to become a master iPhone developer after three days but I was hoping to get a good insight into what it would take to build an app. Furthermore, I was looking forward to meeting a few other like-minded and self-motivated web developers and subsequently learning some things from them.

My last experience of being taught programming was eight years ago in a beginners Java course at university where I struggled – to put it mildly – to grasp what the teacher was trying to teach me. Therefore, I was a little apprehensive about going somewhere and being taught programming again:

• would I struggle to understand like I did 8 years ago?
• would the class be full of more advanced programmers?

The answers to both those questions were yes, but in reality it was still a much better experience than that Java class all those years ago. I didn’t feel pressured to prove my programming credentials amongst the other attendees and although I struggled to ‘get’ it all at first – so did a lot of people and I certainly didn’t feel isolated.

What we learnt

We were shown the very basics of how an iPhone app is constructed in Xcode using the programming language Objective-C.

• On day one we were walked through some very basic concepts of app develoment by the tutor
• On day two we were put into small teams and we attempted to see how far we could get bulding our own apps
• On day three we demoed what we had (or more truthfully, hadn’t) built so far then we proceeded to be shown how to use some more of the iPhone’s core API kits

It turns out that iPhone app development isn’t easy at all and day two allowed us to see what problems everyone was facing when trying to build an app with little experience of the Objective-C language and all the different iPhone API kits (like maps).

By mid-morning on day three I was finally starting to get some of the concepts and remember some the nuances of Objective-C.

Course details

The course, ran by Guerilla Training (and taught by Sam Easterby-Smith) spanned three days (9:30am-5pm each day) and was a mixture of hands-on learning and seminar-style teaching. It was based at madlab in Manchester’s trendy Northern Quarter.

The cost of the course was £489 (plus booking fee) which for this type of training is very inexpensive and in fact, Northwest Vision & Media, a government funded organisation was able to provide a substantial rebate for this course to North West freelancers/small company owners.

Would I recommend it?

Yes – definitely. I got exactly what I wanted from this course – it met my expectations and I’d certainly be interested in attending similar events in the future.

A good reputation takes a long time to build and during this process I do not advocate bypassing other marketing methods; in fact, blogging and twittering can actually be a big help in building your credibility.

Reputation through reliability

As a freelancer, the biggest thing I can offer the web agencies I work for is peace of mind. They’ll often contact a freelancer when they’re understaffed and need a piece of work doing quickly. People who are efficient, friendly and professional will keep getting the work because agencies are terrified of handing over a job and not getting the results back.

The best way you can offer that peace of mind is to:

• Quote realistic timeframes and deliver on time
• Communicate your progress effectively
• Alert them to any issues you’ve found

That last one is important. You have to make sure if you run into anything e.g. an unsecure application, an inaccessible interface or a HTML email that looks pants in Outlook 2007, that you let your client know. They may be aware and not care but if they are not aware you may save them hassle later (whilst covering your own behind). If your client hands you a design featuring 9px red on black Comic Sans for the body copy — it’s your duty to let them know why in your professional opinion that it’s a bad idea.

The more reliable you are to perceived to be, the more your reputation swells; supplement your engorged rep that with a dash of networking and you’ll soon find not just more work but you’ll actually start to see the work come to you instead of you seeking it out.

Reputation via your client list/portfolio

Another way to build your reputation is to work for big name clients. If you find yourself freelancing at one of London’s most well known agencies don’t be surprised to find the other big agencies becoming a lot more interested in your services. The same is true for the actual pieces of work you do — if you find yourself working on a project for a large commercial client that will always stand out far more than doing work for a local ecommerce business.

Let’s put it this way, if you were interviewing candidates for a new web developer role and one of the applicants had a 2 year stint at digg or facebook on their CV I would think the vast majority of employers would be very impressed by that. Does it mean the applicant is any better as a programmer? Yes, it’s possible but it’s not a given.

Damage limitation

It’s very important to be seen not to be making a mess. If you work for a company who are continually delivering poor quality to clients you need to get out of there. This is not the same as abandoning ship on the way down — far from it. In fact, if you’re building your reputation up it’d be a good idea to stick around for a bit and gets yourself a reputation as a web firefighter rescuing cursed projects.

In my career to date I’ve worked for a couple of companies who were consistently botching projects and I left. Imagine how all those banking executives from banks like RBS are now fairing in the jobs market. Even if they did sterling work I wonder whether the mistakes of their superiors are now counting against them in interviews.

It’s a strange scenario having a day or two off in the middle of the week but it very often happens. Usually I spend this down–time worrying that I’m being lazy or that I don’t have enough work on in spite of the fact that I do. The very fact of the matter is that with freelancing you have to set your prices to cater for the fact that half the time you aren’t doing billable work therefore I’ve catered for slow periods financially but my brain can’t quite appreciate that.

This month I’ve been working two days a week on site for a client and supplementing that time with a further day of work for other clients and probably a few hours of business housekeeping (blogging, client contact, accounting, etc). This workload is more than enough to ensure that I have decent month financially yet I haven’t managed to stop fidgeting on those days where I’m not had work in.

But from now on if I find myself with a day off, like today — I’m going to enjoy it. I’m going to take a walk or watch a DVD — of course, I won’t be able to switch off completely but I won’t feel guilty if I only spend one–two hours doing web related work. Frankly, I think the time spent not working will actually make me feel a bit better when I actually do work and give my brain the freedom to think up new ideas.

Are you a freelancer? What do you do in the days you’ve not got work booked-in? How do you stave off the guilt that you should always be doing something productive with your time?

As icky as I feel writing such self-indulgent posts, the whole point of me entering these awards was the hope that I’d get nominated and be able to use said nomination as a way to get noticed (and taken seriously) by more potential clients so if I were to put on a cloak of false modesty I’d be depriving myself of some much needed marketing (and potential revenue.)

I’ve followed the Big Chip Awards for a few years with great interest but I’ve never attended the ceremony nor worked for an agency that has been nominated (whilst I worked there).

In fact, it wasn’t until meeting last year’s ‘Best Freelancer’ Matt Booth that I found out I could nominate myself. Prior to that I had presumed that the judging committee simply picked whomever they’d wanted/heard of hence why the same agencies kept winning year in year out.

My entry

Preparations for my entry began about a month ago, when I attended a Big Chip evening in Manchester at which the award ceremony’s organisers told us exactly how to enter and they detailed pitfalls of some entries and told everyone what we needed to have successful entries. They also provided a free buffet which was surprising good.

My entry consisted of the following:

1. a quote from a client
2. a string of hyperbole and sales pitch from me
3. a list of the clients I’ve worked for

I do believe the first and last items where the most important elements: the quote I received was from a very well respected person from a very well respected agency, in the region, who have won their fair share of Big Chip Awards and I have no doubt this swayed the judges’ decision in my favour.

The client list is something that I always trot out when approaching other new media agencies for work as the mere mention of the en vogue creative agency is often enough to win you a job on the spot in an industry where everyone is looking over their shoulder at the competition and constantly checking out who is working for who and which agency has won which account.

Of course this is all very political and truth be told I am firmly playing the game. I am very careful about the agencies I approach for work as picking the right ones not only pays the bills but helps out my career too.

Finally, I also think this website may have had something to do with my entry being successful. Every now and again I’ll strike it lucky with an article and get ten or more comments and I can’t help but hope this gives the impression that I have a strong voice in the industry; whether or not this is actually the case.

The competition

In the category of ‘Best Freelancer/Micro-Enterprise‘ there are two other nominees: last year’s Winner Matt Booth aka Flash Temple and Vanilla Storm… make no mistake the competition is fierce.

Here is the job posting in question.

In the past, I’ve written about the low wages people can realistically be expected to earn during their first foray into web professionalism, but I can’t help but believe £6.25 to be an insulting figure which will ultimately harm the employer as much as the employee. Whilst, I do appreciate that there is a recession going on I also think that copywriting/editing is worth more than that amount. UK minimum wage is currently set at £5.73 an hour so this job pays a mere 52p more than manual labour.

Ultimately, I think the employer is operating under a false economy. It looks as though they have presumed they cannot afford more than this wage but I think this low wage will cost them more in the long term because they will have to:

• Use the below par work of a £6.25 per hour member of staff, or
• Go through this recruitment process again in three months time when the person they’ve hired turns out to be brilliant but leaves for a better paid job

There’s also the likelihood that they’ll miss out on good quality applicants who are put off by the low wage or they may sift through a multitude of applications from people who think the low wage means that their low skill quota will be sufficient for them to get the job.

In defence of the employer

At least this company are actually advertising their rates of pay for this they can be commended – for one, it has allowed for this debate to start. Sadly, many companies in web world neglect to put a salary on their job adverts and this invariably means the salary is low.

Whoever gets this job may make little money but, potentially, could gain a raft of experience which could effectively kickstart their writing career.

Summary

So what do you think? Is this wage too low or does the opportunity it represents more than make up for the low wage?

1: Keeping out of date records

If you sit in amongst a group of web developers, in a web agency for a day, you’ll undoubtedly bear witness to at least one phone call from a recruitment consultant. The majority of the time the consultant will have got their name/details from a CV several years old. I get calls/emails like this at least once a fortnight and often the person calling me has a CV that is from my graduate days – e.g. three to four years old and horrifically out of date.

So what’s the problem? Their data’s a little out of date; so what? The problem is that these people are contacting me because they have a job and are panicking and they can’t find a suitable candidate. In reality, they should be contacting prospective candidates every three to six months to check up on them regardless of whether there is a job just to get their latest CV, skills, wants/needs etc.

2: Selling candidates the world then never getting back in touch

The amount of times, I’ve been told I’m perfect for a role by the recruitment consultant only to never hear anything back. Honestly, I’m convinced these guys edit my CV and put buzzwords in there to make it sound better and in doing so remove the bits that appeal to employers. They must either butcher my CV or never send it off in the first place. That sounds very arrogant, like ‘how could someone not offer me an interview if they’ve seen my CV‘ sort of attitude but as long as the job is targeted at my skills, that is often the case.

Having spoken to recruitment consultants a lot in the past three and half years, you’d think I might have scored at least an interview via one of them? I’ve come close only once when a recruitment consultant passed my name on to a client after I’d already taken a job. They must’ve mistakenly sent on my CV without editing it first.

3: Trying to get candidates to interviews at too short notice

When I was working full-time, and looking for a change, I needed at least a couple of days notice before an interview. It isn’t always easy lying to your boss (and getting away with it) to get time off for interviews, so if I’m told I have to be there tomorrow morning then I often can’t make that and if there’s no leeway then that’s probably not the right job for me.

4: Offering unrelated jobs

The other issue, is a clear lack of understanding of what is involved in web development. My CV does not mention .NET, C++ or anything other than PHP so I don’t want to be bombarded with emails and phonecalls for jobs outside of my skillset and/or on the other side of the country. A quick read of this blog will show you what my skills are and what kind of work I’m looking for. How hard would it be to read this blog (and others) and click on the names of some of the commenters. If they did that they’d find some very good people.

5: Asking me to do your job for you

I will happily pass on details of friends or colleagues if I can’t do a job, but not to a recruitment consultant because I know I won’t be getting any of their commission if I do. When I get emails through from these guys there always seems to be ‘let us know if any of your friends are interested’ but there’s never a statement that says we’ll pay £xxx for each recommendation. Therefore, there is no incentive whatsoever for me to refer people. To be honest, I can probably guess who the company is via the job profile and apply directly anyway.

Summary

There are undoubtedly good people out there working as IT headhunters who are good at their job. Perhaps they’re all in London, New York or California and not working in Manchester. I’ve definitely heard of recruiters getting involved in events like PHPNW conference in an unobstrusive way thus building up contacts and making friends. That’s definitely the way forward.

Even in this financial climate, there are still jobs going and people looking for work and we need go-betweens because there aren’t enough hours in the day to do your job and find a new one at the same time. Recruitment consultants need to step up their game and get involved with the community, otherwise job boards will completely replace them and no-one will mourn the loss.

Parents, and friends tell you that your lack of employment is down to the credit crunch and there’s no doubt that it is harder than usual to score that first job, but here’s the real truth; the truth that your lecturers and parents don’t know: for the vast majority of educational courses, everything you’re taught is damn near useless in a commercial environment and regardless of the credit crunch, that first job can be bloody difficult to land.

Web agencies want, no, demand junior developers to come in and to be able to start work immediately and most graduates can’t do that. Of course, a junior developer will learn on the job and constantly improve and with the help of a good middleweight or senior developer above them, they’ll improve significantly more but they need to have the basics down first.

The basics

The basic skills of a junior web developer will consist of:

• buying domain names and updating/setting-up DNS on those domains
• setting up a local web server with xampp or mamp
• building HTML/CSS templates from a Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks design
• backing up files in SVN
• installing/setting up a new website with the agency’s in-house CMS or open source varieties like WordPress/Drupal/etc
• keeping track of time and learning how long it takes to do key tasks

When I went to university to study Computer Science, I certainly didn’t learn any of those basic skills in lectures or in projects. Some, I picked up in a placement year, where I worked as web designer for the local council, but for the most part I picked those skills up on my own in my spare time and so did everyone else in this field – we’re all self taught by blogs, books and podcasts.

How I got my first job

In my first year at uni (2001-02), the lecturer in charge of industrial placements told us that there were ‘no jobs in web design/development‘, this made my heart sink. However, a year later when the work placements started to be advertised on the university notice boards at least half were for web based jobs. I decided then and there that I wanted to be a web developer and that such a thing was actually possible. Sadly, every placement I applied for wanted me to have experience which I didn’t have.

After six months of trying to get a placement which involved lots of (failed) interviews, I realised I needed some hands-on experience to get any sort of credibility with interviewers, so I started to maintain the website (for free) of the charity that my girlfriend’s mother worked for. My CV now had some experience and a URL on it. In interviews I talked about it to prove I had relevant experience, not to mention initiative and eventually with only one week before term was due to restart I got that work placement.

Fast forward to my final year (2004-05), and in January/March, I sent out a mail merge to around 30 different Manchester, Cheshire and nearby web agencies informing them of who I was and that I was graduating in six months. Nothing much happened; I might have got three emails all of which saying thanks but they weren’t interested just now.

Closer to graduation, I put my CV online with websites like reed.co.uk, cwjobs.co.uk, etc and starting applying for jobs – still nothing. With one month to graduation, I put my CV on Manchester Digital, and then I got an email which eventually lead to my first job at JJB Sports. By spreading myself out and trying different techniques I found one that actually worked!

How you can get your first job

I wouldn’t hire someone who:

• has a hotmail/yahoo email address (tip: gmail, your own domain, mac.com, or anything else looks better)
• doesn’t have a website/blog/online portfolio or a twitter account
• has no experience whatsoever
• I’ve never heard of

The last two points are the biggies. Experience is everything in this industry. You can get very far very quickly with no qualifications if you’re good as a web developer. A good education is brilliant but if the guy next to you has three year’s experience on his CV and you only have a degree then experienced guy looks better (in most cases).

The last point – means you have to get your name out there, so apply for jobs, talk on twitter, try to network, try to learn some important people’s names. Everyone in this industry knows everyone else therefore, if you apply to agency X and don’t get the job but you impress someone then a guy/girl working at agency X might tell his friend working at agency Y about you. Of course, it helps to be memorable, like this guy.

Getting the experience

If you have no experience and therefore no commercial references, you desperately need to get some. If I were in that situation (again) I’d be looking to:

• set up my own website/blog
• set up a website for a relative’s small business
• work for free (or low pay) in a local web agency – making tea if I had to
• take a lower paid (than expected) job as web developer
• read books/blogs and practice web development as much as possible
• make some money while waiting for that dream web development job

If you apply for a job with no commercial experience, but you have built your own website then you’ll instantly look much better than your competitor who has no experience and no website.

Summary

All web agencies are looking for people, and whilst it may be true that some are putting a hold on hiring right now due to the current financial situation, a lot more agencies are crying out for good junior web developers but they just can’t find them. Your mission is to seek out these people and let them know you exist and how good you are. You’ve save them time and money on advertising for people and you’ll save them from have to deal with recruitment agencies because they loathe that exercise.

By no means, am I an expert on this employment. These are just my experiences and advice. You may be a student on a fantastic university/college course teaching you everything you need to know – not all courses are crap but sadly, a lot of them are.

If you’ve got an experience or some advice on getting that first job that you’d like to share; I’d love to hear it.

Since becoming freelance full-time, I’ve probably worked about the same amount of time as I did before. I suppose I’m writing and chasing invoices as well as finding time to market myself but in the grand scheme of things I’ve not seen a tremendous increase in the number of hours I’m putting in.

Making those connections

Reading the comments on Elliot’s post, you’d think freelancing was the hardest thing in the world to do and he’s only making a success of it because of his high profile. The truth is that, Stocks’ high profile and freelance success undoubtedly owe more to his strength of character than a string of good luck and coincidences.

However, making good connections in the industry, is certainly the way to go if you wish to stay employed, but until you actually start freelancing, getting out there and meeting people – those connections will only trickle through slowly.

Talking yourself out of it

People will always find enough reasons not to go freelance:

• I won’t be able to find the work
• I’m not good enough
• I don’t have the connections

Those concerns are all valid and I’ve felt them too but there comes a time when you have to take the plunge. I decided to make the switch after getting my first on-site freelancing gig and realising that there wasn’t a magical trick involved – I met the agency convinced them I could do the job, then a week later I turned up and did a job I knew I was good at. Once I had that confidence, it was easy to start marketing to other agencies that I was a freelancer and was available for hire. It’s not easy but it certainly isn’t hard either.

Are you a freelancer? What made you decide to take the plunge and how have you found it?

1. Getting paid (on time)

The first fulltime freelance gig I did started towards the end of July 2008: my first freelance payment came two weeks ago (late September 2008). The job was two weeks long, so I started the job, invoiced after two weeks and patiently waited thirty days for payment like a good freelancer. Thirty days came and went with no payment so I got in touch with the accounts department and was greeted with a lie about about how one of my other invoices had the same reference number on it so my invoice would be paid only be paid that week.

Companies pay people to prevent people getting paid. Sound strange? A good accountant keeps as much money in the company as possible because they have to make sure wages and utility bills get paid first. For a relatively insignificant freelancer, getting paid can be an arduous task.

Solution: Make sure you contact the payment department before those thirty days are up and keep the relevant people on their toes.

2. Remembering people’s names / brew requirements

I work onsite (most of the time) and I really like getting to know other people, but it can be really hard remembering the names of the 30 people in each office of 10 clients – let alone trying to remember how they all like their tea/coffee.

Solution: Draw a little desk plan and write people’s name on it and where they sit. Yes, I am a nerd but this really does work.

3. Music (or a lack thereof)

The only thing worse than a musicless office is an office with awful music. I once listened to the soundtrack to karate kid at one place and I’ve spent the last three weeks near constantly listening to the Kings of Leon’s new album – not in itself awful but very tiresome after 3 plays a day.

Solution: This isn’t the 6th form common room so you can’t just commandeer the communal stereo and headphones make you look rude. This is something you have to live with until you feel more comfortable to suggest some musical rotation.

4. Different coding practices

I have a set way of doing things that has made me good at what I do so when you go to a different agency and find they want to you to completely change the way you code it can be a nightmare unless those coding practices make sense and are equally good if not an improvement on your own.

Solution: If their coding is better than yours, soak it up but, if they’re code is awful and they force you to lower your standards – you need to educate them on best practice. If they won’t listen to reason, they can’t be helped.

5. A lack of trust

I’ve been refused FTP passwords before and had a Lead Web Developer stand over my shoulders and type in the password onto my machine. My accent may have a Liverpudlian lilt, but your web server is not a Ford Escort and it will be perfectly safe in my hands.

Solution: Don’t work there again.

6. Not being allowed to use my own equipment

If you have good equipment, then I don’t mind if I have to use it – actually I’ll probably enjoy using it, but when you force me to use a 5 year old PC or worse a new PC running Vista with no applications installed then my work may suffer. I have a macbook, please let me use it – I’ve spent a lot of money setting it up so I know it gets the job done.

Solution: Make friends with the IT department and let them play on your macbook once they see you’re not a virus peddling fiend they may let you use your mac.

7. Isolation

Working from home (when I do) can be quite lonely. There’s no idle chit-chat between colleagues and the only way to get help on a coding problem is to Google for answers and no-one makes you brews.

Solution: Try to work onsite where possible

8. Trying to appear busy but not too busy

Here’s the big catch22 of freelancing – if you’re too busy (or appear too busy) no new clients can book you but if you don’t appear busy enough then no-one will want to book you either. Often clients want you to drop everything and work for them at a moment’s notice but if you already have bookings that can be really bad for your reputation to simply drop one client or another.

Solution: I haven’t found it yet.

9. A lack of instructions

Sometimes, it’s obvious what you’re supposed to be doing and othe times you’ll be asked to get on with X with no clear instruction fo what it is you’re actually suppsoed to be doing or how long it is supposed to take. I’ve finished jobs meant for a full week in under 2 days and I’ve laboured over for a few days that the client thought would only take a few.

Solution: Ask client what they want exactly and when they want it by. You can potentially sound like broken record if you keep asking the same question but needs really must.

10. You don’t get sick pay

Last Friday, I was sick as a dog but I had to go to work. If I get sick in the middle of a freelance gig I’m f**k’d because I won’t get paid. Luckily, I don’t get ill that often. Although, in the past, I’ve had fulltime jobs that didn’t pay sick pay.

Solution: Don’t get sick

Do you freelance? What do you find are the worst things about it?