The Great Resignation offered employees across all sectors the chance to re-think their career trajectory, work/life balance, and how they want to be treated by an employer. Now, the Great Resignation has given way to a slowdown in hiring across tech and IT, with many experts seeing the trend continuing for the second half of 2022.
As hiring has slowed for many of tech’s largest companies, there are still many opportunities for employees to flex their own independence and make the most out of the skills they have. So, if you’re finding it challenging to land the full-time role you really want, read on to explore how to win in a soft hiring market in tech while staying true to where, when, and how you actually want to work. Whether you’re looking to switch up your career or just looking for a side gig for some additional income, there are plenty of open doors for professional techies.
3 Alternative Income Opportunities for Techsperts
#1 Consulting
One of the most common paths outside of a full-time, corporate gig is to work as a consultant. Becoming a consultant means being able to successfully sell your knowledge and skills to the companies that need them. Consultants are found in a variety of fields, and it can entail a months-long contract or might be just a temporary contract job.
Some of the pros and cons of working as a consultant include:
Pros:
- Wide variety in who you work for and the people you work with
- Improved work/life balance
- Remote work is often permitted
Cons:
- Responsible for your own medical benefits
- Potential for quick and unexpected termination of a job
- Finding new clients can be challenging
What you need to succeed:
- Ability to learn and understand innovative technology quickly and pick up skills “on the fly”
- Figure out how to motivate regular employees to respond to your requests
- Obtaining the appropriate tech certifications and licenses
- Top-notch networking skills- you never know where your next client will come from!
Many consultants will confess that the easiest part of being a consultant is actually simply performing the work! The rest is learning how to successfully navigate through company culture and politics while making sure your needs as the consultant are still being met.
#2 Freelance Programmer (App Development)
While programmers certainly make the tech world go ‘round, it doesn’t mean they need to be limited to a single role within a company. If you’re already comfortable with common programming languages, why not try to sell your application development skills online for your own benefit? Considering how in-demand apps are for games, businesses, and healthcare, it’s not surprising why so many programmers have struck out on their own to develop apps.
Some of the pros and cons of working as a freelance programmer include:
Pros:
- Allows your creativity to flow
- Improved work/life balance
- Feeling of accomplishment and pride from seeing your app in use
Cons:
- Responsible for your own medical benefits
- You “wear all the hats” (product development and support, testing/QA, finance, marketing, and legal, to name a few)
- Marketing and advertising can be very costly
What you need to succeed:
- Start by showing off those skills, perhaps developing some open source software to build a good reputation for quality work and a loyal customer base
- Be able to multitask like an expert and understand what the priorities are
- Creative thinking and critical thinking skills to help understand what the needs are for the next great app
Working as a freelance programmer can be challenging and overwhelming at times but there’s still nothing like being your own boss. And thankfully, there’s plenty of guidance out there for selling apps to the Apple Store, Google Play, and the Windows Store to assist freelance programmers through the final stages of development and testing.
Freelance programmers gain so much insight and experience from dealing with all levels of the creative app development process. They are making decisions to shape not only their app, but their clients’ companies as well.
#3 Freelance Educator/Trainer
As technology continues to evolve at an extremely rapid pace, companies are looking for help teaching their workforces new skills, programs, and systems. And often, instead of having dedicated trainers and educators on staff, it’s more likely they’ll turn to freelancers or consultants to help get the job done. These educators/trainers can fill tremendous knowledge gaps for companies who can’t afford to have a full-time person on board. Plus, with so many other employees looking to update their skill sets, platforms like Coursera and other online degree and certification programs routinely look for freelance educators and trainers to teach courses.
Some of the pros and cons of working as a freelance educator/trainer include:
Pros:
- Keeps you learning along with your audience- you’re always knowledgeable about the latest tech and developments
- Becoming your own boss allows for more creativity and less red tape
- Sense of accomplishment from seeing others learn
Cons:
- Responsible for your own medical benefits
- Requires you to keep up with updates or changes in the curriculum
- Can be tricky to break into this field without building up a reputation
- Topics may become tedious if training are repeated many times in a brief period of time
What you need to succeed:
- Willingness to be extremely flexible and adaptable to change
- Knowing your topic inside and out is crucial
- Ability to communicate, entertain, and inform people
- Be able to clearly define goals for the training to set the expectations in advance
- Collect feedback from your audience (surveys or evaluations) so you can adjust your teaching style accordingly
The life of a freelance educator/writer usually involves teaching groups from twenty to several hundred people at a time, either onsite at a company or virtually. The tools involved are usually a mixture of traditional slideshows and a live demo to illustrate the look and feel of the material, followed up with a live Q&A session for additional clarification.
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About the Company:
Peterson Technology Partners (PTP) has partnered with some of the biggest Fortune brands to offer excellence of service and best-in-class team building for the last 25 years.
PTP’s diverse and global team of recruiting, consulting, and project development experts specialize in a variety of IT competencies which include:
- Cybersecurity
- DevOps
- Cloud Computing
- Data Science
- AI/ML
- Salesforce Optimization
- VR/AR
Peterson Technology Partners is an equal opportunities employer. As an industry leader in IT consulting and recruitment, specializing in diversity hiring, we aim to help our clients build equitable workplaces.
