Any contractors and freelancers here?

londonTiger

Hi

I'm a freelancer who provides online marketing services, most of my clients are small business owners. B&B owners, web design companies etc.

Up til now I've never had corporate client work. But I just got contacted by a corporate customer who wants to go down to his office outside of London.

I don't mind doing it, but part of me thinks it will be a waste of time. They're offering to pay for my expense which is great. It's just an hours drive out. But I hated corporate environment. They have 3-4 people sending my NDAs and I'm in an email loop with 4-5 different people to get some basic stuff done. Which is a bit unusal for me because ususally I have one point of contact.

Dealing directly with small business owners I can also just do business informally and I don't have to produce endless reports detailing what I've done. A small business owner will know what I've done based on the email comms and work in progress that they've overseen. So corporate work has all the extra boring paper pushing stuff that I have to do.

having said that - corporate clients pay well. Which is the major push.


So I'm going to go down there to their office next week. I was told it's just a half day meet and greet. I guess they'll do some presentation for me and help me understand their business a little bettter.

I'm not sure if this should be treated like a job interview or whether I should pop along there and not dwelve too much into it. It's a technoogy company - they have a small UK office of 15 people. So I dont know if I should dress formally or go in there with my smart casuals.

help and guidance would be appreciated.

p.s. never worked in a corporate environement before. Always ran my own business and right now freelancing because business went tits up.

gb12345

I do both freelancing and contracting (on the IT side rather than marketing), so I work for both small firms and blue chip companies.

It is always nice to have a single point of contact as it cuts down on the possibilities of different people wanting different things done.

When I contract, I normally deal through an agency, and there are formal interviews involved, whereas with the freelance stuff you put a proposal together and if the client likes it your in.

You've also got the problem that there is a lot of difference between different types of corporate tech companies (think difference between a small software house and IBM), so it's difficult to know what to expect. I would say though that as they are outsourcing things to freelancers directly, without going through an agency that they are probably a smallish firm.

I normally wear a suit for contracting interviews (and on the first day of work to see how the land lays), but I am normally working with major banks and insurance companies. If it is a small tech company then I would probably go for a jacket and tie rather than a suit. You might find that the people interviewing you are wearing jeans, but to my mind that is better than it being the other way round.

londonTiger

gb12345 wrote: »

I do both freelancing and contracting (on the IT side rather than marketing), so I work for both small firms and blue chip companies.

It is always nice to have a single point of contact as it cuts down on the possibilities of different people wanting different things done.

When I contract, I normally deal through an agency, and there are formal interviews involved, whereas with the freelance stuff you put a proposal together and if the client likes it your in.

You've also got the problem that there is a lot of difference between different types of corporate tech companies (think difference between a small software house and IBM), so it's difficult to know what to expect. I would say though that as they are outsourcing things to freelancers directly, without going through an agency that they are probably a smallish firm.

I normally wear a suit for contracting interviews (and on the first day of work to see how the land lays), but I am normally working with major banks and insurance companies. If it is a small tech company then I would probably go for a jacket and tie rather than a suit. You might find that the people interviewing you are wearing jeans, but to my mind that is better than it being the other way round.

Hi Thanks for the response. It's a tough one to call so I'll just go in with a suit.

It's a 500 person tech company worldwide. But their entire Europe & ME division is just 15 people. Without giving too much away and breaking my NDA. The company is a bit like cisco systems where much of it is very corporate and there may be other parts full of engineers and techs who dress very casual (a guess). So it's best to play it safe and get the cobweb covered suit out for a one off interview.

CrazyLatvian

I am Latvian located in UK, I am self employed IT technician and doing my job mostly from my home. My costumers are Latvians and other east Europeans who can speak Russian as second language, I am working as freelancer, because my English level not good enough to work in company and also I am studying in local college. I am about 3 years in UK and after master degree I am planing to go back to my country.