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Comment by EVdotIO | Hacker News Reader

How do you have multiple short term stints? Do you flat out say you are only looking to join for a short period of time? Are they looking for experts in a particular niche or is there a market for generalists?

I also really need to step my marketing game up.

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I work in a major city where there are many companies looking for short term contractors to work on specific projects. I've had contracts as short as a month, which have been for agencies that have a client project which is too much work for their in-house staff, or for startups working on a prototype. Some larger firms like banks tend to offer one year contracts as an alternative to hiring full-time employees which might have to be laid off in the event of future budget cuts.

I wouldn't say that they are ever looking for true experts, but having at least some experience relevant to the project is necessary. Any one of the following on your resume should be enough: front end web development with React or Angular, back end with Node.js or Java, devops, AWS, iOS, Android, etc.

I have no self-marketing skills at all, and a few of my first contract jobs came through a recruiting agency. Since then, I've gotten work through referrals from people I worked with before. The best thing about moving around between jobs is that you eventually get to know a lot of people who have seen your capabilities and are eager to bring you into their new team.

Re: the marketing side of things, if you don't already have a blog, start one today. Write about how to solve problems in your particular area of expertise (or the one you'd like to get hired for). Start a mailing list, and send your weekly articles out to the list. I've done basically this, and after 3 years running, built up quite a bit of traffic and email subscriber base, and some passive-ish side income (I wrote a book that I sell as well).

This is not a quick tactic, but it is a good longer-term strategy for building a following and a reputation.

Showing your work or projects if possible is another important aspect besides a blog

What about those that don't really have a completed side project. I've got a _ton_ of half completed things, and then something with libspotify, which gets DMCA'd in an instant.

Yeah, I need to actually get my domain name doing something. Looks like that's what I am doing today.

Just a quick bit of advice/warning about that too -- we programmer types love to obsess over the tiny details like picking the perfect blog theme, the best static site generator that will never need to change, debating minutiae like S3 vs self-hosted vs Wordpress, and on and on.

So my bit of advice is: none of that actually matters. Use the domain you have (sounds like you are!), pick the easiest platform to get started with, and write stuff. It's the writing stuff (and publishing it) that matters :)

Tell me about it. It used to be a home hosted plan 9 server. Then have been on a Vue kick recently.

Slapping something together quick and dirty.

There's two approaches:

1. 6-month contracts and the like, which you can via staffing companies like Randstad and Winter-Wyman ("contract staffing"). My impression this is rather like interviewing for a job twice a year.

2. Lots of short-term contracts (aka freelancer). This is very different, you're basically running your own business. You'll need to do a bunch of work to learn relevant business skills. E.g. lots of contents on http://doubleyourfreelancing.com

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