What will you be optimizing on your next gig?
More and more people are finding themselves in the contingent economy these days, working project to project, or as temps, or on various contracts. Some claim that contingent labor will grow from 15% of the workforce today to 20% by 2020, with freelancers growing from 7% to 16% of the total workforce. Most of us can expect to be freelancers at some point in our career. (See Jeff Wald at Forbes on “What the rise of freelancers really means for business”). These people are constantly looking for their next gig, networking, self-promoting (one reason LinkedIn and its SlideShare service have become so important), and learning new skills. But what do people take into account when choosing a gig. It is about more than just short-term wages. Over the past month we have conducted informal interviews with people about what is most important to people when they choose their next project. And people with in-demand skills, especially in the technology sector, have a lot of choices these days. Based on these interviews (which are mostly with people in the technology sector) we found that people trying to balance six different benefits:
Income – How much does the job pay?
Wealth – How much equity is included? (And is the equity likely to increase in value?)
Learning – Will this job give me a chance to learn and apply new skills?
Network – Will this job give me a chance to build my network?
Team Quality – How good is the team and how well will I fit in?
Social Contribution – Will the job make a social contribution?
We have begun to dig into this with a series of more formal interviews and we are also launching a survey to learn more about how people go about choosing work.
Here are some of the patterns we are finding. In these interviews we gave people a total of fifteen points that they can distribute across the six axes.
A woman who has worked in the media industry and is now an independent consultant working on a number of projects in the arts world. She is very experienced and is looking for work satisfaction and the opportunity to continue learning.
A younger woman working in the apparel industry, trying to save up for a down payment on a house in Vancouver. Life goals interact with job preferences in important ways.
An executive in the technology industry. This man has been very successful and is at the peak of his career. Team quality, building his network and learning are all equally important to him.
Another executive in the technology industry, a bit younger than the man above, this guy is trying to optimize income and wealth creation. He works full-time as an executive in a mid-sized firm.
This person is a mother who works part-time project for a professional association. Team quality is key for her. We did not include the concept of ‘work-life balance in these interviews, and she may have been using ‘team quality’ as a proxy for this. People are becoming quite sophisticated in how they think about their careers. They see each job as a project, something that gives them an opportunity to build up their personal profile while satisfying their economic needs. Career management is becoming a basic skill, one needed to succeed in the on-demand world.
