“Create your own company culture and work as you like even though it might me tough at the beginning!” Our today’s interviewee Julien Spagner definitely can look back on a very eventful life. After working for different companies in Paris, Julien Spagner decided to pack his bags and leave his comfortable life in France for a more fulfilling one in Sri Lanka. After working transitional in the tourism and marketing branches, he nowadays serves clients worldwide as a freelance IT-specialist with competitive rates…
1) First off, can you tell us bit about yourself?
My name is Julien Spagner, I am an IT Specialist with over 15 years of working experience. My professional life started near to Paris and most of my career happened in Paris itself. I am now living in Sri Lanka as an expatriate.
I started my career as an IT Technician, close to the final users. Slowly I reached higher positions with more responsibilities and management aspects. Then, I restarted my studies on evening classes in one of the most famous university in Paris (CNAM). I became an IT Consultant for several famous companies in Paris in the last part of my France-based career.
I have now been freelance for 6 months.
2) If you would search for your profile on Google, which are the three keywords you would type in the search bar?
IT Management, Service Desk, IT Consulting
3) What was your inspiration and when did you actually decide to become a freelancer?
This was in my mind since several years but in France, the tax system make it difficult as you cannot survive without a really good clientele as you must pay a large amount of your income to the government. I always thought that to be on your own let you decide how you work, follow your professional conscience, your way of dealing with people, as in a company, as an employee, you need to follow the way the management want it to be, and most of the time I was not satisfied…
As an expatriate and after having worked for several companies here, I could not find a place that matches my expectations: it was the right time to be on my own, create my own work environment and culture! I am a full time independent. As mentioned above, I started my career as an IT Technician, and then I became an IT Manager and was handling some IT Projects at the same time. Further I became an IT Consultant in a pure IT consulting firm. After leaving France, I worked as an Business Consultant in tourism as it was tough to find a job here, despite my CV. This position developed my sales & marketing skills which are necessary to start on your own. I finally worked as an International Business Development Manager in a software development company, just before deciding to start as an independent.
4) What kind of services have your clients asked you to provide?
I am doing various thing related to IT, main aspects are related to the Service Desk and the Monitoring, leveraging on the time difference and the low cost as being in an Offshore location.
But I’d like to expand the consulting part and to advise company on how to use IT better to benefit their organization. I’d say my best fit is to be a gateway between the Businesses and the IT.
5) Do you use other freelancers or companies to provide skills that you don’t possess?
Yes, if necessary, this is mainly related to software development itself as I am not a developer. I work only with people I know well and with whom I have been working with previously, so I can guarantee their delivery capability.
6) Now tell us, how do you find new clients that are interested in your services?
Internet, marketplaces, cold calling and mainly networking. I have my own website and I believe it is compulsory as it’s like a visiting card today. Any clients that are interested in your service want to see your website, mainly as we work in the IT Field!
7) What about freelancermap.com? Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with our IT-network?
I have been using the site for a while and there are lots of available missions but most of them are related to software development. My area of competencies is a bit special and users generally do not seek for Freelancer / independent to accomplish those tasks, so it’s up to me to find clients and missions.
The categorization should be sharpened / guided as most of the development missions appears when you are looking for IT Consulting missions. People who published those missions do not use the proper categories and it sometimes makes the research difficult.
8) How do you set yourself apart from your competitors? What makes you special?
I am an individual that like the things to be done to their best level, I look for precision and perfectness in everything (that’s a reason for me for having found difficulties to find the right team to work with…)
On top of that, I can offer really interesting rates as my cost of life here is much less than in Europe, so it’s automatically reflected on my rates. Plus the time difference offers a real advantage as I am available for people in the early morning for services such as monitoring and/or service desk. Still half a day is common with Europe.
9) What are the top three books, blogs or magazines you read to stay up to date in the IT-market?
Several groups on LinkedIn + Research on particular topics on a daily basis.
10) Freestyle! Is there anything you would like to tell our readers?
It might be tough but it’s good to work as you like and define your own ‘company culture’!
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Where to find Julien Spagner?
- Freelancer profile: Julian Spagner at freelancermap.com
- Link to website: http://euroasia-consulting.info/en
- Skype: euroasia-consulting
The interview was conducted by Doreen Schollmeier – freelancermap.com team.
Pic: © Julien Spagner
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