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altaken
Community Member

Do you satisfy all the requirements of a project before you submit a proposal?

Although that seems unreasonable to me, do you have experience with all of the technologies listed in a project description before you put forth your own proposal, or are you also able - while also getting customers' approval - to learn a good chunk of material (specific features of a framework, libraries never used before, interdisciplinary material, software engineering practices, ...) while you are on the go?

 

Personally, I do not find anything wrong with possessing good fundamentals about a broad range of skills and learning the very specific ones while I am through a project but so far, while reading carefully through several project descriptions, I did not feel at ease with not having previous experience with a given framework or tool that was listed as a requirement.

 

What is your approach with gathering knowledge for a specific project? And how do customers react when (and if) you tell them that your skills do not cover 100% of all that is required for finishing their project?

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vdubeau
Community Member

@Oscar

 

I would guess it just depneds on what it is you need to feel is required to learn the specific requirement. I'm a Filemaker developer and have seen jobs posted in the past that required an area that I was unfamiliar with. If it was minor enough I didn't worry about it. If it was major, I might still apply for the opportunity to add something to my tool chest. There would be two caveats to that.

 

1) I would make sure that the client knew which area I was unfamiliar with and an estimate of the extra time involved

    to get comfortable with it.

2) Make sure that if it is an hourly project that I wasn't going to charge them for the time to learn the technology,

     just the time to implement it into their solution.

"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
Buckaroo Banzai

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10 REPLIES 10
allergywriter
Community Member

I work in another area, but I would NEVER apply for a job for which I am not qualified.

 

I don't think I should learn French while writing an article for a French blog. The client deserves a freelancer that already is a skilled Frency writer.

 

I would never take on a job as an eye surgeon and figure out if I can chop celery I can use a knife and I'll learn the rest while I work.

 

I absolutely meet or exceed the job requirements or I do not waste my time or the client's time on a proposal.

Yes, what you say is well justified, but in the world of IT and computer programming arguably no one ever knows everything. That is not to say that people working in the field are unqualified, but rather that they don't know all of the contingent specifics of a given tool.

 

If I had to attempt to bring a comparison to some other field, I would say that no freelance writer is ever required to know all of the words from a dictionary. In their case, having a "broad knowledge about a different range of topics" would equal to possessing an ability for choosing the right word, giving shape to a given piece of text, possessing a good general culture and so on.

 

I asked in the Programmers & Developers section right because this is a very specific kind of question. I would hope to get responses from freelancers working in the field as I think the type of answer depends heavily on the chosen profession.

Hello, Oscar.

 

Great question.

 

Most of the jobs I apply to (or, more likely, the invitations I respond to) are fairly specialized. Because I'm a specialist.

 

Many job postings which have too many skills requirements are simply poorly-crafted job postings or represent inexperienced project management. Serious, professional projects routinely use a number of highly qualified people with special expertise, rather than trying to find somebody who claims to do everthing.

 

If I see a job posting for which I'm interested in doing part of what needs to be done, I'll apply to it and briefly tell the client which part I would like to work on.

 

This has never been a problem. Many clients are appreciative of my expertise and will be happy to split the work among multiple freelancers.

 

The worst case scenario is they don't reply or they say they appreciate my application but they're going to go a different direction. Not a big deal.

macollinsone
Community Member

if it's an API/framework that I haven't used, then I tell them that I just need to review the reference, and i'll be good to go...but that usually only works for very obscure technologies, because most people want to see sample work or code...so I just try to keep adding new things to my portfolio daily, incase something pops up...

 

altaken
Community Member

Interestingly there is at least one person (in this community forum) who shares similar views with me. The user Arthur M replied time ago in a discussion targeting a different topic by saying:

 

«[...]

I have more than 15 years in general software development. [...]

 

[...] almost every new project gives me "oh, what a hell is that thing?" for technologies mentioned in description. I guess, approach "I will learn this and that and then I will have bunch of jobs for me" is wrong. My bet: "I will carefully read job decription, then will have a short glance on documentation of needed technologies and then decide If i want to apply for this job".

 

Need to mention: it is important to be always honest with your client. I'm always saying for such cases something like "I have big general experience (take a look on my portfolio), but have never touched needed technology. It looks quite simple for me, I can handle it, but I cannot guarantee quickest terms." [...]

»

 

Naturally I'm using this quote not as a way to obtain confirmation for my initial argument, but rather to show that there is (at least) someone who employed my approach outlined in the beginning of this discussion. I do not even say this is the only way to follow or that it alone can solve the "freelance dilemma" (at best, it can make a few things easier) since I am of the idea that there are many other details and abilities to keep track of.

shefen
Community Member

Oscar, 

 

I'm a programmer too. With formal training in C and related languages. I have mostly done web programming with PHP and JavaScript. I have occasionally taken on work that involved debugging code in some other language, namely Ruby and Python. Debugging is one thing. I would not be comfortable writing new programs in either language. If I did I would expect it take me longer to complete the tasks and would plan to do a lot of the work off-the-clock.

 

My advice to you would be to work on some demo projects in whatever technology you want to highlight and post them as portfolio pieces. Look for work maintaining some existing code. I see you list WordPress as a skill, so be warned that a lot of existing PHP code is truely horrible. Don't expect it to be easy to work with something created by another programmer. And you have to be careful to not pick up any bad habits from it. I have shifted to PHP MVC frameworks in order to avoid the worst of the PHP code.

 

Good luck,

 

Sheila

 

altaken
Community Member

Hi Sheila,

 

thank you for answering. I think this discussion of mine is more about subtopics of a more general area than whole areas of expertise. A tool, a library or any other small- or medium-sized technology would fall in the first category, while a programming language or even a large framework in the second one.

 

Even to me, a job about a foreign language, framework or large technology is hardly a good recommendation to make. On the other hand, what would you do when seeing a job posting that involves knowledge about minor technologies that you aren't at least - I'll use a simple heuristics - 60% comfortable with?

shefen
Community Member

Oscar,

 

Over the years I have touched a lot of different web technologies. I've spent a lot of time learning things on my own. Most of my experience has been with PHP so there are lots of potential projects here. I'm not an expert in all the requirements for a given project but if the primary requirements are PHP/MySQL on Linux then I might apply.

 

That's why I mentioned Ruby and Python, and frameworks other than Zend. That's the closest I've gotten to projects where I lacked much experience with the primary skill requested. As I said, for those projects I was not required to write much original code, just make changes to existing code. (The Ruby and Python projects were not on Upwork.)

 

Sheila

 

vdubeau
Community Member

@Oscar

 

I would guess it just depneds on what it is you need to feel is required to learn the specific requirement. I'm a Filemaker developer and have seen jobs posted in the past that required an area that I was unfamiliar with. If it was minor enough I didn't worry about it. If it was major, I might still apply for the opportunity to add something to my tool chest. There would be two caveats to that.

 

1) I would make sure that the client knew which area I was unfamiliar with and an estimate of the extra time involved

    to get comfortable with it.

2) Make sure that if it is an hourly project that I wasn't going to charge them for the time to learn the technology,

     just the time to implement it into their solution.

"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
Buckaroo Banzai
dyumnin
Community Member

No, I have ~20 years of work experience. But even in the projects that I have worked in, I will never be able to tick all the boxes for a similar project.
So I check whether my skills are transferable, and if they are, I apply.