Business Marketing 101

Most of the people who I work with on a regular basis get work from job boards and networking. The conversations we usually go something like this:

Job provider: “We’re looking for a INSERT LANGUAGE HERE developer to work with us on a revolutionary new product.”

Job seeker: “I/We are skilled in INSERT LANGUAGE HERE how much time are you in need of?”

… and so forth and so on.

I think that there are some problems with this approach to job hunting. First, it doesn’t really provide the job hunter with what they REALLY want. Second, it doesn’t allow the developer to support a specific group of customers – this means that the developer can never really graduate from developer to business person. Last, it requires a very sophisticated empolyeer.

So what do I mean?

As far as what an employeer REALLY really wants, 90% of the time it’s the same thing (especially in the web world). That is – more sales, users, awareness, eyeballs and occasionally customer satisfaction. Most web work I do is supposed to generate this. But when an employeer hires on language skills, they’re sending the wrong message to the developer – don’t think, I’ll do that – what matters is that a project get done, not that an EFFECTIVE project get done.

It’s bad for the developer because the developer is constantly jumping from industry to industry. A developers’ passions usually center around a narrow set of problems + they love languages, so why don’t developers search for work solving the problems they truly care about? I think it’s because developers usually hunt for jobs off of job boards and that means they more or less take whatever comes along.

Pitching as a developer with a specific skill set requires a sophisticated employer. This is why, in most cases employers hire based on past clients and references – because they can’t tell if you’re going to be able to solve their problem based on the claims you put forward. Charging for value delivered is obviously a stronger way to market oneself since in the end employers are trying to get their problems solved and you’re positioning in relation to the employers problems. If a developer picks a specific specialty (say web marketing) and then records successes – like the traffic drawn through a web marketing campaign, then it seems to me that the developer sets himself up to be able to talk to employers with less sophistication and solve their problems better than a developer who sells on a specific technology.

So I say all this… and I pitch myself as a Flash/Flex/AIR developer. But I think there is a better way.