29.11.2021

Junior Vs Senior freelancers

When pitching a new client, you'll almost always be up against other freelancers and consultants. They will be either more or less experienced than you. How you position yourself is crucial to whether or not you'll land the job. In this post we'll share some pointers for both juniors and seniors.

So who do you prefer to work with?

A very important question to ask any new client you engage with, is this: What's most important to you in a process like this?

For some clients, it's all about price - And for some of these, it's all about the hourly rate. Some clients prefer to pay 25$/hour for 500 hours, instead of 100$/hour for 100 hours. This is good news, because it means that everyone gets a shot.

For others it's about minimizing risk and in this light, the Seniors really shine. For every part of a project, they'll be able to reference something similar they've worked on before with good results.

In either case, it's a matter of first understanding the client's objectives, pains and concerns - And secondly you play to your strengths.

Juniors playbook

First, what is a Junior consultant? And when exactly do you cross over into the Senior ranks?

You'll find many different definitions on this, even contradicting definitions within companies so I'll share mine and we can work from that:

"A senior consultant is expected to take leadership and act proactively throughout the relationship"

And working from that, a Junior consultant is not a Senior consultant.

This is good news for all you who are just starting out as freelancers, because the level of expectation is much lower. As a Senior on a web project you can be hung for not pointing out security flaws in the existing platform, even if its not part of the scope you're working on, whereas a Junior wouldn't be expected to notice. You cross into Senior territory, when you've completed enough projects to start noticing potential obstacles that are out of your scope and present them along with recommended solutions to your clients. But more on that later.

FOMO

Fear of Missing Out. Young freelancers bring parts of the unknown into the business. A (very) Senior marketing consultant will advise on Google Ads & Facebook Ads naturally, but he probably won't think of TikTok. And if he does, he likely isn't part of that community. Juniors bring in that fresh breeze of everything that's sprouting in whatever field they're working on. They're in no way tied to legacy solutions or tools. This has big appeal for most companies.

In your initial discussions, make sure you feel out the company's attitude towards new trends and emphasize your knowledge in this space.

Low overhead

Senior consultants have a tendency to extend their reach. They engage various stakeholders and offer advice and sparring. While this is helpful it does take some resources on the part of the company. A Junior will be assigned a task or small project and run with it, likely giving only short status pings along the way.

As a Junior, emphasize that you have the utmost respect for the value of your clients time and that while you're happy to give a status as frequently as they would like, you are able to drive this project to completion independently.

Price

Lets revisit the previous example, where the choice was between:

25$/hour for 500 hours = 12.500 $

And

100$/hour for 100 hours = 10.000 $

Hindsight is always 20/20 but when starting up a new project the entire scope might not have been discovered, so the difference in hourly rate can go a lot longer than (1) the validity of estimates and (2) the confidence of the Senior freelancer who believes he can get it done in 1/4 of the time.

Seniors playbook

You will pitch as a Senior as soon as you feel you're ready for it, but be aware that taking on a Senior role comes with a lot of responsibility and unspoken expectations that you need to honor.

Seniors will (almost) always charge a higher price than Juniors and to justify that they highlight the added value that comes from experience.

Experience speaks volumes

Experience is initially a lot like name-dropping. "Yes I have worked on something like this before, where we....". Highlighting past success builds confidence in future success.

As a Senior freelancers, make sure you flag only relevant projects or jobs that you've worked on. It's often tempting to highlight your Greatest Hits, but if the client doesn't see the relation to the current project it might detract from their perception of you.

Safety & Security

For some clients, nothing matters more than minimizing risk. Perhaps the project is driven by the higher-ups and failure would result in pink slips being issued. Perhaps a delay on this particular project will be 1-too-many for the stakeholder you're dealing with.

If your client is driven by risk avoidance structure your conversation around these risks. It's crucial that you understand all potential pitfalls and make a note of how you plan to avoid those. If the discussion doesn't reveal anything of particular concern, you're probably not asking the right questions. I've met clients who've moved from house-fire to house-fire and still pitch new ideas as perfectly safe and predictable. Hint: The house-fires were because these guys were not very good at uncovering risk.

Precision

In my experience, the #1 thing that has improved over these past 2 decades of consulting is the precision I am able to achieve in both planning and estimation.

For all clients, predictability goes a long way. A big part of this is learning to ask the right questions for your particular customer. At ZimTik we try to help these questions along in a couple of different ways.

Firstly, when you're doing your estimates we ask you to consider 3 scenarios for each task:

The final estimate is a weighted average of the 3 scenarios, where Realistic is weighted 6x and Worst case 2x.

So how long does re-designing a frontpage take? If everything just clicks, all resources are easily available and customized, then its 12 hours of pure concentrated work.

But from experience we know, that a few icons will need to be changed and that requires a few bouts with the Icon designer. Including down-time between emails that adds 3 hours.

In the Worst case scenario, I anticipate multiple revisions on minute details, icons not readily available and a sick day for the content-writer.

Carefully considering the worst case is crucial to make robust estimates. For some tasks, the worst case is 400% higher than the realistic case and in those cases it's usually a good idea to discuss these pitfalls with the client.

The other part of adding precision is in the comments/documentation for each task, we recommend these defaults:

A general description that sums of the discussions about the task, especially including the customers stated requirements and wishes.

A list of deliverables, could be

• A CSV file containing: Name, Email, Number of Transactions, Total Revenue
• A PSD file containing the new frontpage design
• An API end-point which allows dated searches

This helps flush out any "hidden requirements". The customer might for instance, expect you to develop an API end-point and provide full documentation. This needs to be understood before striking a deal as it can change the estimate substantially.

If discussed up-front, the customer will make an informed decision, if revealed after the work is done it will likely create dissatisfaction.

Tasks in this case means sub-tasks, so for the API example these could be

• Create handler in web-app
• Create functions: Perform-search, Retrieve bookings, Filter by rights
• Write tests
• Deploy

This works like a disposition in an essay and helps keep you on track. It might also reveal some important details that were left out of the initial discussion.

Requirements is where you highlight the things your customer needs to have ready for you. If you're hosting a workshop, it would include

• A room
• A projector
• Wifi
• Attendees: Peter, Frank, John.....

These become very important if the customer can't produce Frank and John. That way the workshop will be cancelled or postponed but it will not be your responsibility and thus not affect your payment.

Timeline: Consider this completely optional at this stage. For some tasks/projects, highlighting a clear timeline can be beneficial, but not always. If you include one, make sure you have deadlines for both you and your customer.

Conclusion

Fortunately the marketplace is big enough that both those just getting into freelancing and their more experienced counterparts can find interesting projects to work on.

Juniors and Seniors have different value propositions and it's important that both sides play to their strengths. Ultimately the decision lies with the client and I've always found it helpful to respect their decision. I've heard colleagues make statements like "The client was a complete idiot, I was perfect for this job" - Maybe you were, maybe you weren't but why let it get you down? Assume the client made the right decision and stand ready to help them out if they change their mind, but beyond that, just move on.

Hope this post helped highlight a few strength that you can play to and help you land that next fantastic project.

Happy freelancing!