Freelancing on the Internet

CEBU, Philippines – We have over 100,000 messages a week now on Monster.com in our chats and messages boards, and we’re seeing a whole marketplace forming of people saying, “I live in Boston and I’m a marketing person; does anybody know abut opportunities?” What that tells me is, there is a business opportunity, there’s a marketplace forming that I’m not controlling, and that was a big part of why we decided to launch talent auctions online (allowing freelancers to announce and auction their services) because people are auctioning themselves without even knowing that’s what they’re doing.

With the popularity of online chat, companies have to be aware of the impact it can have on their reputations. For example, one of the things you can do online is go to your favorite stock listed on Yahoo! and then go to the message board area for that stock, where you are likely to find people talking about this company. Companies are very uncomfortable with this because people are saying, “This stock stinks. It’s going to tank.” And somebody else is saying, “No, this is a really good stock.” And somebody else is saying, “I know somebody at this company and he’s a real jerk.” But this is a whole different kind of networking, and you can’t control it.

I can’t control what happens in our chat rooms either. There’s a lot of quality career talk going on, but there’s also a certain amount of dating that’s trying to happen. That’s just the way it is. Whenever you put people together it’s going to happen. Someone is going to say, “What is your career? Can we meet?”

— from Fast Forward, By Alfred C. Sikes with Ellen Pearlman (Morrow)