The consultancy, Connecting Visions, has carried out a study to understand how these new ways of working are positioning themselves in the Spanish market. To do this, it has carried out a survey among more than 300 Spanish companies belonging to all sectors of activity and of all sizes, and the universe of 900 freelancers integrated into its platform.
From the study, entitled “Freelance work in Spain”, it follows that 41% of companies in Spain already work with freelancers and practically the other half, 45%, would be open to doing so. For the most part, these are companies with fewer than 9 employees (80% of freelancers declare that they work for this type of organization), but with great growth.
Precisely, one of the main obstacles that these independent professionals encounter when entering large clients are the current purchasing processes in large companies, considered “formal” or “very formal”. However, 67% of the companies state that they place a high value on the experience of the freelancers they work with and consider that in the future they will need the occasional reinforcement of senior profiles.
“What would explain this majority concentration of freelancers working for small and micro-businesses is, fundamentally, the strong demand for traditional consultancies by large corporations, including those belonging to the IBEX. Therefore, we see a barrier to market entry for freelancers that could be overcome by joining specialized platforms that provide brand image and trust to the market. (softlay.com) ”, explains Sofía Medem, co-founder and co-CEO of Connecting Visions and promoter of the study.
Difficulties when facing projects
In Spain there are already more than 750,000 independent professionals, 40% more than 12 years ago. Nevertheless, in United States, the number of freelancers already exceeds 53 million, representing 40% of the active population.
From the consultation of the more than 900 self-employed professionals that make up the Connecting Visions ecosystem, it can be deduced that the difficulties these professionals face when facing new projects are, mainly, the generation of new opportunities (61.63 %); advice on where the job opportunities are (34.88%) and access to talent to complement skills and create a team (24.42%).
Today, the main channels through which these independent professionals get opportunities to work they are, mainly, through references or recommendations (88.66%); renewals from their own clients (69.07%); own search through commercial actions or interactions through social networks (46.39%) and collaboration agreements with agencies and consultants (41.24%).
As for the type of projects carried out by freelancers in our country, most of them work on closed projects with a beginning and end (52.59%), followed by hourly support services within certain areas (23.71%) and one-off advisory services (21.65%).
