LinkedIn, a social career platform, released “2015 China Freelancing Report” by using their big data. The report shows that the current freelancers in China are mainly young adults with a few years of working experience. They usually distributed in 2nd or 3rd tier cities, looking for consumer services. Interestingly, they often have more skills and connections compared with those with regular positions.
Characterized by young age, half of them work less than 5 years
According to Linkedin’s report, majority of freelancers in China are young adults, with 70% of them aged below 30. On the other hand, Chinese freelancer population diminished with age. 24%, 13%, and 2% of Freelancers aged from 31-40, 41-50, and above 50, respectively. Also, most freelancers do not bear long regular job history, 60% of them are below 5 years of working experience with one-third within them worked less than 3 years.
Distributed in 2nd to 3rd tier cities with preference in consumer service jobs
Geographically, the top 5 Chinese cities that have largest population to freelancer ratio are Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu. However, these cities only contribute 26% of total freelancers in China. This shows that more freelancers are based in 2nd to 3rd tier cities. By means of business, Linkedin data shows that, consumer services are most preferred by freelancers. There are 17% of workers in this field are freelancers. In China, freelancers can be divided into three categories, including professional, sales agent/ promotors with no basic salary, and self-employment. Professional freelancers refer to those require specific skills like photographers, designers, independent translators. On the other hand, being affected by the trend of “internet+”，self-employed freelancers are not limited to traditional “offline” stores, many of them are inclined to operate online stores.
With more skills and connections
The report shows that freelancers in China are multiskilled. Their core skill can be categorized into language skills, design skills, and marketing skills. Language skills refer to language literacy and translation skills. Design skills refers to the mastery of designing software like Photoshop. Marketing skills refer to copywriting and social media marketing skills.
Compared to regular workers, freelancers in China have more business connections. Data on Linkin shows that freelancers have 2.5 time more connections than average user. In the days of mobile social networking, connection is crucial to personal career development.
Programmers earns more at home
Programmers can independently finish their work simply by skills, experiences, and a bit of IM chats. In others word, face-to-face communication is not a must when job specification is clear. As a result, many programmers quit their job and become freelancers. So that they can can enjoy freedom on both working environment and financial status, or even work during tours. Data reveals that the average income of freelance developers is 40% higher than regular office developers. These freelance developers can seek suitable work, complete the task and even complete transaction on reliable IT platforms. As the platform guarantee the benefits of both parties, the whole process can go completely online. Once freelancer complete the task, they get paid though the online platform.
How IT platform ensure safety cloud-working environment for programmers?
It can be illustrated using Cloudworker platform as an example. Releasing split projects; application from developers, developer selection, submission of completed projects, validation and payment.
For ensuring fast and safe transaction process, Clouderwork provides the following features:
Finance handling (enterprise have to deposit payment on to Clouderwork platform before contact starts).As payment is involved, the deposit mechanism is crucial. It can ensure the payment once developer complete the task.
IM real-time communication tools (3rd party online communication tool)
Professional 3rd party communication tool can record all chat history, enable fair dispute mediation.
3rd party service (professional support throughout the whole development cycle)
The advantage of 3rd party service is to save time and manpower by, simplifying complex project into numerous small blocks. The blocks can be handled by different people simultaneously. The early stage support like project splitting, MRD optimisation, prototype design can small-scaled enterprise to overcome manpower and experience problem.
Building connections (a common place for demand side and service side)
The platform facilitates long term partnership by letting developer bid projects directly, and demand side invite developers to the projects actively. The payroll records and comments become your unique resume, helping users to extend their connections.
Project management function (professional project management tool)
Demand side and developers can manage and work simultaneously in JIRA- like project management module
Service can save over 65% of wages and human resources management cost, so that enterprise can be more focus on the business development. The 3rd party IT development service market blooms rapidly in China. This can be shown by the growth of market scale is much higher than the hardware market, and there are no signs of slowing down. In US, freelancer population already reach 53million. In 2014-15 remote work vacancy increased by 27%, which means there are 2 freelancers in every 5 Americans. The US is a highly matured software development market, one unicorn enterprise worth to mention is Upwork, programmers from all over the world can registrar and bid projects online. By means of software development, China does not have large difference compare to other countries. It is a great chance for Chinese programmer to become a freelancer now.
