Know your place: Where do you fit in as a freelancer?

8th February 2010 Business, Clients, Freelancing

When you’re a freelancer working for other design agencies sometimes its hard to know where you fit into the job let alone the company, especially if you’re surrounded with a team of full time employees. For most freelancers most of the time its a lonely job, you either spend time working from your home or office all alone from 9 til 5+ with only Loose Women, Cash in the Attic and Countdown for company, or at the clients HQ, hugging your laptop, keep yourself to yourself and pitching in with the odd small-talk remark here and there.

On the one hand your an outsider and purely their to fill a skill gap. You turn up, get your head down, do the job you agreed to do and leave. You’re happy, the client is ‘happy’ (or as happy as they’ll let on), you get paid and you’re on to the next job. If they liked you enough they’ll call you a few months later because they know you can get the job done and you’re rate is reasonable or they won’t bother and you’ll never hear from them again.

On the other hand you’re an expert, the company came to you because your good at what you do, you’re charging a pretty penny and you’re keen to do the brief justice. More importantly you make sure the client is getting good value for money from your input and try your best to help them blow their end-client away. You spend a few extra hours here and their, you make your fair share of the teas and they even ask you to sign a card for the guy that’s leaving. A few days per week turns into a few weeks per month and before you know it you’re on a retainer and someone they can’t do without.

But before you can get into either of those positions you need to know what the client wants…

Do they even want your input? Do they want you to tell them where they’re going wrong, offer advice on how they can improve the end product or offer up suggestions on a different way to approach things? Or do they want you to sit in the corner, keep your mouth shut and get on with it? After all sometimes its good to just get the job done, not have to think too much and go home feeling you’ve achieved what you were asked.

I’ve been on both sides of the road and in my experience its best to know where you stand from the outset because at the end of your time you need to leave knowing the client is pleased with the service they received, either way.

So to avoid any clashes…

• Try and find out from the outset how much input the client actually wants. Speak to them about what they want, do they want an extension of their team or just a spare pair of hands to help out. Sometimes you’ll find giving too much can be as equally as annoying as not giving enough. You might even want to get something set in stone to avoid any problems later.
• Don’t step on any ones toes. Remember that you’re just the hired help no matter what your capacity is. If you’re hired as the UI designer, don’t go poking around in the CSS or Copywritting unless someone asks. For the most part the company will have brought you in the plug a gap, if they needed a front-end developer they would have asked for one.
• Know who your point of contacts are. Make sure that you know who you’re dealing with from the outset and sick to dealing with that person unless told otherwise. Certainly don’t go running to the MD’s office with a list of ’suggestions’ how you could improve things, especially if you wern’t asked.
• Never contact the end-client directly unless you’re asked to. No matter how valid your suggestions or comments are never go directly to the client’s client and tell them what you’re think. 9 times out of 10 this won’t be well received regardless if they think you have a good idea or not.
• If you’re not sure you’re doing it right then just ask. If you’re contracted for a large period of time and you’re not sure if you’re giving the right amount on input, then just ask. Find out if the client feels you’re digging in enough or even too much and then adjust as you go. Its better to know your doing something wrong and change than to keep just doing what you’re doing and annoy people.
• …then get feedback at the end of the job. That way you can prepare for next time.
• Make lots of tea and buy lots of biscuits. Regardless of what you’re there to do, make sure you make your fair share of the tea and bring plenty of biscuits, its guarantees win points!

If you’ve got experience of this or know of any other posts on the subject then let me know, I’d be interested to see how other freelancers deal with this. Leave a comment or hit me up on twitter.

Thanks.