Do you work from home? How did you arrange to work from home and do you enjoy it?
Recommendation request: I have a friend and colleague who, due to disability, must now work from home. She was a physician in private practice for a number of years. She is very talented in computer graphic arts, but is not degreed in this area (post secondary education has been pure science: medical school + pharmacy school).
With the recommendation of a family member, she has secured piece meal work as an independent contractor doing graphics work for a large corporation (they also employ full time degreed graphic artists). The projects that she has delivered have mostly been in video DVD format and have been used by the company for such things as seminars, trade shows and the like. (She has also done some web design, product design and advertising for a start-up company that has since sold out). They are always impressed with her work, they promise future work and she is well compensated for the projects that she has delivered. The only problem is that the projects are few and far between.
Programs that she is quite proficient in include (but are not limited to): Adobe Photoshop/Premiere/After Effects/Encore/Illustrator; Sound Forge, Macromedia Dreamweaver /Fireworks/Flash. She has some talent with a variety of 3-D graphics programs and CAD.
She would love to find more work doing exactly the same thing for other companies, but is afraid that her lack of a graphics art degree may make this a pipe dream. It would be nice if she could incorporate her extensive medical background with her talents in computer graphics, but neither of us can think of a practical way to do this. Barring graphic arts, can you think of any other part or full time jobs that a physician/pharmacist could pursue from home? Any input is appreciated.
I think lack of a degree in graphics is pretty irrelevant. If she has good work samples, that’s all that matters. I majored in journalism and minored in visual communication technology and worked as a graphic artist for 12 years, so it’s all in the work you have to show your prospective employers.
As far as working from home in the medical field, I have heard of people who do medical transcription and insurance billing from home, though she might find that tedious.
I run a Web design company and I could care less if our graphics people have degrees. My partner and I (who do all of the coding and technical work) do not have degrees and never attended one class in our “fields.” A person’s portfolio, proficiency, speed and availability are all that matter to us.
She should not be afraid of her lack of degree at all. She’s got a good portfolio and a good reference, she should be set.
No degree here and I can WFH. I do network support and have to be available to my clients 24×7 so it really doesn’t matter where I am physically as long as I’m available. I would think that graphics design is something that would work well with telecommuting. But this all depends on whether or not the employer is forward-thinking enough to allow telecommuting in the first place.
With so many people spending 3 hours or more in daily commute, I don’t know why more employers aren’t thinking of remote work locations and/or TC.
Seconded. I’m a freelance copyeditor, and my degree is in graphic art. Slight connection to what I do (when I’m proofreading), but not much. She’s already got her foot in the door with one client; now she can use that experience to get more.
I’ve just recently mounted a campaign to drum up some new clients, and in my searches I saw lots of freelance graphics opportunities. I’ve been Googling various phrases related to the type of work I want to do, and finding juicy worms under all kinds of rocks. Have her start with Literary Market Place (available on line as well as in hard copy at the library reference desk. I think Bookbuilders of Boston also has quite a few graphics listings. Once she finds the Web sites or listings of potential clients, she can glom search phrases from their text to find more. It’s viral, really.
Clients are going to care about what she can do, not what pieces of paper are hanging on her wall. When you’re building a freelance business, the contracts do start out few and far between. It takes time. But one project begets another, and one client begets another, and pretty soon you’re swamped. Have patience, grasshopper.