FlexiTimes  

An article called 'Seeing the bigger picture' in the Independent made an interesting case for using career coaches to assist with dealing with change in the 21st century. We all know that the 'job for life' is largely a thing of the past and that's not just to do with the recession but it's more to do with our generation's career promiscuity. We prefer to shop around and indeed move around - upsizing our career prospects with strategic moves every couple of years. However, we're now seeing a very definite move towards outsourcing which will have a profound impact on the traditional employee. Maybe the next opportunity will be contract or freelance - something that exploits your skill set but to a very tight and specific brief.  Anyway the article is about using a career coach to identify what you want, why you want it and how to manage your career - worth a read. Times are changing and chance favours the prepared.

An article caught my eye in Friday's Irish Times about the CEO Forum that takes place this week in Dublin. CEOs from some of Ireland's largest companies are meeting to discuss how to operate in challenging times ahead.

A comment by Brian Long, chief executive of venture capital firm Atlantic Bridge struck me as relevant to Flexitimers "during periods of recession, opportunities tend to open up in the outsourcing space as large corporations pare back, reduce their workforce and then realise that they don't have the "bandwidth" to carry out certain activities such as the development of non-core products. This creates opportunities for smaller players to step in and offer their services". This is also the case for freelancers, contractors and anyone offering themselves 'flexibly' to companies. Food for thought indeed.

Just read an interesting post by Alexia about The Green Party's hopeful recruitment of a Machiavellian web hero to address their webdev, design, web2 and social networking needs in one tidy, one person contract over 9 months. Alexia's suggestion to "divide up the work and don't go for a yellow pack solution" and to literally contract out the specific tasks is exactly why we launched Flexitimers. We agree with you Alexia and Damien in that one size does not fit all and indeed one person does not have a complete skill set to carry off something as large as the web presence of a political party in power. I wrote a blog post specifically about this divide and conquer approach a few weeks ago.
PS, Damian from the Green Party, I appreciate your prompt and honest response and if you plan to take Alexia's advice, maybe you'll post all those choice freelance and contract tasks on Flexitimers.

A company with a display name 'Usercentred' uploaded a position this morning for a web designer. I know their real name and we've worked with them and although I've no idea what they'd be like to work for, I do know they're really nice people, really professional and would assume their work environment is spot on. So if you're a web designer with excellent CSS and are up to speed on AXURE, I recommend you apply and see what happens. Nice people. That's always a good start.

Back to work this week after been off for mid-term but quick round up of our media exposure in past two weeks.
The Sunday Business Post ran and article about us on Sunday 26th October singing our praises for the massive take up of candidates joining the site since our launch 4 weeks ago so thanks a million for that. Then Business & Finance magazine earmarked us as 'One to Watch' the same week. Women Mean Business magazine are supposed to be profiling us in the current issue but I can't confirm that until I buy a copy tomorrow when I'm in Dublin as it's not in stock down here in the South East.
So happy enough with that coverage and we're seeing the results in our traffic stats. Cheers.

I read with interest about a new website that will promote working from home in the Sunday Business Post the other day. eWorkingIreland.com is the site and when I went into it on Sunday I met a static holding page without an email capture box, instead visitors were asked to email them to be notified of a live date. Well I went along a moment ago to see it is live (a redirect from Centrecom who are maintaining the site) and it's worth a visit. There are some basics like the benefits to eworkers and companies which most of us already know - no commute, less stress, more productivity and higher staff retention and so on. However, I did have a brief look at section on Studies, Report and White Papers and I have to say there's a lot of good content and case studies there. Definitely worth a look.

Just back from Wexford town where I attended and spoke at an event on social media (blogging, podcasting, social networking) hosted by Wexford County Enterprise Board and the Irish Internet Association. It featured a really good line up of speakers (of course I would say that) starting with an edu-taining piece from Philip Macartney, Head of Sales Ireland for Bebo, then a very funky presentation from Donald Douglas from Return2Sender showcasing all his highly creative mobile media campaigns. After the coffee break (my mint tea), Brain Greene of Doop treated us to history lesson on radio and IT and its convergence today to blog radio, podcasting and general audio recording as a tool for business. Then I spoke about Flexitimers' activities in the social media space and hopefully I imparted some titbits of knowledge for small businesses out there to get out and start their own conversations, communicate and engage with their customers, clients, staff and any other interested parties.
I met some very nice people - yes it is nice to log off every now and again and actually meet people face-to-face. Then had tea in the bar later with my two college buddies Chris and Ed - we all met on the SEEPP programme in WIT this time last year. Also met a few people from the home town including Dave (office neighbour) from Cada Media who was kind enough to email the photos below so thanks a million for that. Overall I had a good day and I hope the delegates did too. Feel free to comment below and they won't be moderated!

Labels: Flexitimers, small business, social media, social networking, web2.o, wexford web