We’ve enhanced our freelancer onboarding and profiles

Jam Pan, the global online learning marketplace announces platform updates to improve freelancer onboarding and to help freelancers and agencies quickly and easily update their profiles.

Onboarding

The platform, which connects expert freelancers and agencies with businesses looking for creative learning solutions, has responded to user feedback to make the sign-up process quicker and easier for freelancers.

At the heart of the update is an improved user experience which simplifies sign-up to the platform. To start pitching for work freelancers need to provide a range of information — from contact details to skills. Without this information they cannot start bidding for work. The new sign-up process enables freelancers to quickly input all the required information and start bidding on work within a matter of minutes.

Profiles

Freelancer profiles have also been enhanced. Skills now automatically populate against the types of services freelancers select. They can then manually add further skills or delete ones that are not relevant. Jam Pan is built on the concept of skills matching. When a new opportunity is posted on the site, all registered freelancers with skills matching those in the job post are automatically notified. This means clients can be sure they are reaching the widest possible pool of talent for their job post. The simplified profile building process ensures freelancers feature the right skills.

Freelancers are now asked for their level of expertise — expert, intermediate or entry level — and for an hourly and daily rate. The aim of this development is to ensure consistency over rates in the bidding process.

Jam Pan founder David Wood comments, “Jam Pan prides itself on delivering the highest quality user experience for freelancers and clients. These updates represent the small enhancements our users have asked for in order to make the platform easier to use. These incremental changes will make a real difference as the volume of freelancers and live jobs increases.

The updates to the platform are the latest in a series of ongoing enhancements which include fee-based targeting of freelancers and agencies and skill testing. Jam Pan has also announced partnerships with Elucidat and gomo learning to provide freelancers with the opportunity to develop new skills.

Ref Link: http://jam-pan.com/blog/weve-enhanced-our-freelancer-onboarding-and-profiles/

Hire a freelancer: they face far less obstacles to being productive

If ever there was an advert for using freelancers to support your corporate learning, then the State of Enterprise report is it.

The research, carried out by Workfront, asked 600 workers about how they manage work. It will come as no surprise that activities that block productivity take up more time than those that enable it.

Survey respondents were asked to give a best guess estimate for what percentage of the working week is taken up by the following tasks:

• Performing the primary duties of my job – 39% (down from 46% the previous year)
• Emails – 16%
• Useful and productive meetings – 11%
• Administrative tasks – 11%
• Wasteful meetings – 10%
• Interruptions for non-essential tasks – 8%
• Everything else – 5%

As you can see from the list, 45% of the working week is taken up managing email, administrative tasks, wasteful meetings and interruptions for non-essential tasks.

If you are in full-time employment, these productivity blockers will be all too familiar. And as we become more connected so employees will spend more time managing communication. The amount of the working week spent on email rose from 12% in 2015 to 16% this year.

Other obstacles to work include poor work prioritisation methods (28%), unexpected phone calls (21%) and lack of collaboration with team mates (20%).

Now let’s take a look at the work experience of a freelancer.

Many freelancers use platforms that help manage the process of finding jobs as well as the tasks and workflows required to complete the job. They also help manage payments and communication between them and the client.

Jam-Pan Freelance platforms, ours included, have been created to reduce the administration around finding and doing freelance work. This means that time is freed up for freelancers to get on with the work. This is the number one factor full-time employees said would help with their productivity – uninterrupted blocks of time to actually do the work.

Being outside of an environment that is blighted by so many interruptions also helps freelancers focus 100% on the task that is required. Again, the technology helps with what full time employees say is the second most important factor in  doing better work and that is more efficient work processes.

The technology platforms and project planning tools used by freelancers tend to be more advanced than those used by their employee counterparts, 11% of whom say their productivity would improve if they used more more advanced technology. And 70% either currently use or would like to use a project management tool.

What is common across employees and freelancers is that they want work that is rewarding. Maybe the environment matters and obstacles to productivity negatively affect how rewarding work feels. If that were the case, freelancers could well be the ones who find their work more rewarding.

Ref Link: http://jam-pan.com/blog/hire-a-freelancer-they-face-far-less-obstacles-to-being-productive/