Posts Tagged ‘freelance’

Australia tops countries that hire online freelancers

Monday, May 5th, 2014
Photo credit; Alisa on Flickr

Photo credit; Alisa on Flickr

Research by Elance-oDesk has found that Australian businesses are increasingly hiring freelancers online for technical skills, such as PHP, CSS, and HTML.

Australia leads the way in hiring online IT freelancers on Elance-oDesk when adjusted per capita, according to new data released by the online work marketplace firm.

The Online Work in Australia study showed 161,000 Australian companies are registered on the Elance-oDesk platforms, representing 8% of all businesses in the country. This has grown over the last three years with Australian businesses increasing their online hiring on Elance-oDesk by 235%.

The research indicated the job skills Australian businesses were after the most in the last 12 months was in IT and programming (40%), where they hired people with skills such as PHP, CSS, and HTML.

This was followed by 26% of job posts being related to design and multimedia projects, including: logo design, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.

Newly appointed Elance-oDesk Australia country manager Kyri Theos said Australian businesses are turning to online for the skills they need.

“We’re seeing a shortage of IT professionals in Australia; 40% of all jobs by Australian businesses on Elance-oDesk were for IT and programming, so that’s really telling us that they have gaps they want to fill,” he said.

To read more on this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, online business | No Comments »

Australian businesses continue to outsource online services

Thursday, August 29th, 2013

Australian businesses, much like the rest of the world, have found that outsourcing many activities that can be done online is turning out to be quite lucrative for business.

Global freelancing company oDesk says Australian enterprises are increasingly outsourcing tasks online as the company passes $US1 billion worth of projects.

Matt Cooper, vice president of enterprise and international at oDesk, told StartupSmart blog that passing the project work milestone is a sign that outsourcing work online has entered the mainstream.

“It’s a big thing for us to break that one billion barrier milestone, but the bigger story is that online work is officially out of beta,” Cooper says. “It’s very early still, but it’s a nice recognition that this is really starting to break into the mainstream.”

The figures released by oDesk show Australians have been outsourcing both technical and non-technical tasks over the last two years.

“This is driven by the huge demand for technical talent. I’m in San Francisco but everywhere you go you see articles about the Australian tech talent shortage,” Cooper says.

Outsourcing growth by the numbers:

  • Game development – outsourcing has grown by 437%
  • Engineering and technical design – outsourcing has grown by 276%
  • Mobile app development – outsourcing has grown by 258%
  • Human resources – outsourcing has grown by 227%
  • Payroll and recruiting – outsourcing has grown by 227%
  • legal – outsourcing has grown by 267%.

“The growth in Australians outsourcing legal was an interesting one for us,” Cooper says. “As more and more companies look to grow internationally, they need legal support and talent in a range of countries.”

Cooper says the growth across non-technical tasks in Australia is part of a worldwide trend.

“It’s indicative of a broader trend that online work is no longer tech. When you look at our business in 2008 and 2009, it was almost entirely technical work, but we’ve seen rapid expansion into legal, finance, writing and translations,” Cooper says.

To read more on this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, online business, technology | No Comments »