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Looking for suggestions

  • February 4, 2015 at 12:06 pm

    #297456

    I have a full time day job but am very interested in branching out with some side work but not sure how best to look for it. I have tried the job boards and such but no luck and the sites like Guru and FreeLance seems iffy at best. I would like to work some evening and weekends doing whatever someone needs (not real picky) via telecommuting. Mostly experienced in MSSQL but have done some MySQL and Oracle in the past.

    Any suggestions?

    If this breaks any TOS I apologize in advanced. I looked but it seems like this kind of post is acceptable in this forum.

    Jim

  • February 5, 2015 at 4:49 am

    #1775640

    One option is to hang your shingle as it were on a blog. I know a lot of people who get work that way.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

  • February 5, 2015 at 5:34 am

    #1775652

    I'd go for local reachouts first. put together a letter of introduction/highlights of exactly what your skillset can contribute. this would not be a resume, but direct experience someone can read and say "hey, that's almost exactly what we need", lets call him. don't oversell yourself, either...state what you can do and hit the ground running, the more detail the better.

    If you work in an office park or something similar is nearby, paper all the businesses with that letter.

    if anyone had a side project they wanted help with, or want a review of their maintenance/tuning problems, that might get the ball rolling.

    then expand that idea to email nearby businesses you think might be worthy; that might take a bit of research, but it widens your scope a bit.

    concentrate on smaller businesses first.... places like AutoNation and TDBank probably already have a decent DBA staff, but little law offices, doctors offices and CPA's don't have dedicated professionals, and are more prone to pull in a consultant for a short spell of assistance, i'd think.

    Lowell

    --help us help you! If you post a question, make sure you include a CREATE TABLE... statement and INSERT INTO... statement into that table to give the volunteers here representative data. with your description of the problem, we can provide a tested, verifiable solution to your question! asking the question the right way gets you a tested answer the fastest way possible!

  • February 5, 2015 at 7:57 am

    #1775701

    I'm not sure how much 'contracting' work you will get for just telecommuting. Think of it this way, if you owned a company, would you hire someone you don't know and allow them to immediately connect to your network and work from home or somewhere else?

    For the company, how do they know your connection is secure? How do they know you aren't working from the public library with lot of people looking over your shoulder? How do they know you aren't copying their data to your computer?

    Yes...even full-time employees that work from home could have those issues also, but normally they have worked from the office and the company has made a decision to trust them and allow them to work from home.

    I think you'll get more work if you don't require it to be 'telecommuting'.

    -SQLBill

  • February 5, 2015 at 9:34 am

    #1775755

    Jim Youmans-439383 (2/4/2015)

    I have a full time day job but am very interested in branching out with some side work but not sure how best to look for it. I have tried the job boards and such but no luck and the sites like Guru and FreeLance seems iffy at best. I would like to work some evening and weekends doing whatever someone needs (not real picky) via telecommuting. Mostly experienced in MSSQL but have done some MySQL and Oracle in the past.

    Any suggestions?

    If this breaks any TOS I apologize in advanced. I looked but it seems like this kind of post is acceptable in this forum.

    Jim

    My best hits have actually come from recruiters. There are some real bad ones out there but I've learned who the good ones are, locally. I've actually had to turn work down and they understand.

    --Jeff Moden

    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • February 5, 2015 at 10:16 am

    #1775779

    I have also had luck with recruiters. I have a couple that I have worked with for years and they periodically send me a 20 hour-project where someone needs some queries written or optimized, create some SSRS reports, stuff like that.

    I get a lot of calls from recruiters; though I am not looking the market is pretty tight in Chicago and they keep calling. When I used to speak with a recruiter I would just say that I was happy and was not interested. Now I let them know (the ones that I know and know me) that I can do a tech screen for them (either at an hourly or fixed rate)... I have had some luck with that. I also let them know that I would be willing to consider some night/weekend work. I would say that 20% of the recruiters I work with have opportunities like that.

    Even my company (a very large consulting company whose policy is not to use 1099/S-Corp workers) uses 1099/S-Corp workers periodically. I have some clients that I have left on good terms with that will let me do a few hours of work for here and there. You just have to ask them.

    "I cant stress enough the importance of switching from a sequential files mindset to set-based thinking. After you make the switch, you can spend your time tuning and optimizing your queries instead of maintaining lengthy, poor-performing code."

    -- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001

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