The world of work is forever changing. It has been argued that there is a continuing trend away from the traditional employee-employer relationship, towards a system of ‘pay per task’. In a system of ‘pay per task’ payment is made for individual tasks. Indeed for years freelancing has been an option but now there are ways that you can sell very small chunks of your labour.

Earlier this week I was employing a freelancer who happened to be based in India. One of the issues that you get faced with whenever you decided to employ a freelancer is: how do you ensure that you get the most out of them?

Reputation is a powerful thing and is like gold dust to most freelancers. It can make all the difference between success and failure. Traditionally a freelancer might get work through word of mouth and as such they would have a great incentive to provide a good service. This is still the case. What we need to understand is how reputation works in the modern world.

There are many benefits to hiring workers using the online freelance services. Examples include hiring workers at very short notice (in a matter of hours) and reduced costs of 30-80% are widespread (For more details on these benefits please consult the rest of this site.)

There are however problems.

Unemployed? Why not consider joining the worlds growing on-demand labour force

I have spent the last year working with the Job centre Plus with the aim of helping unemployed professionals find their way back to work. While it is a common saying that job hunting is a full time job in its self, the reality seems to be that for most people it is at best part time (In my experience it is rare for people to spend more than 20 hours a week job hunting).

What then should a job seeking professional do with the rest of their time?