Employment Trends Office and Admin

Can You Earn a Living as an Administrative Freelancer?

Administrative freelancer
Written by Joanna Hughes

Many people have discovered that working as a freelancer on the Internet or in an office provides more flexibility in employment and allows workers to pick and choose the jobs they want to do. Administrative freelancers find that they can also apply their office skills to earn a living similar to an in-house employee. Since most individuals working as administrators have talents in multiple areas, they can choose whether to concentrate on one area, such as bookkeeping, or work in several different areas.

How to Start Out as an Administrative Freelancer

You can find work as an administrative freelancer by using your skills. Think about the skills you possess and make a list. Include what you enjoy doing the most and what you are best at doing. Do you enjoy customer service, support projects related to sales or management, accounting, scheduling or other facets of administrative work? Doing job searches in each area widens your potential work base and gives you the opportunity to pick and choose the jobs you like the best.

Finding Work

The first thing a freelance worker needs to know is where to find jobs. The Internet offers multiple job sites to search for freelance work, advertised by different companies. There are also sites that offer multiple listings from different companies that you can search. TheJobNetwork searches multiple sites for you and sends you the listings as alerts so you don’t have to do the job hunting yourself.

Write a New Resume

A freelance administrative assistant can target jobs related to his or her skills and experience. However, the jobs you apply for may want someone capable of doing specific types of administrative work. Using a professional template to write your resume can give you a boost by using different formats, layouts and content to apply for particular types of jobs. For instance, if you are applying for a position as a worker who sets up meetings and keeps the daily office schedule, you can write up a resume geared toward that position. A job opening for office accounting work can require a different approach.

What Information to Include in Your Resume

The type of information and style you use in a resume depends on your preference. An individual who has been searching for a job for a period of time or who has employment gaps in the work history may not want to include dates in a resume. In addition, a worker with little experience might prefer to leave the dates of employment off. A functional resume of this type can highlight your skills and experience without exposing gaps in the work history.

Making a Living as an Administrative Freelancer

When deciding to take a job, keep in mind that as a freelancer you will be paying your own self-employment taxes and other expenses that might have been taken care of by your boss in a regular job. One way to decide how much you should charge for your services is to look in your area at the salaries offered for that type of job. Include a profit margin, money to pay taxes and health care and other expenses that you will be paying yourself. However, you need to keep in mind that if you are working from home and can set aside space for an office, you may have tax deductions from your self-employment that will lower your net income.

Searching for jobs using TheJobNetwork platform makes it convenient to do. Put in your credentials and the type of job you are looking for and TheJobNetwork does the work. It searches multiple sites using your criteria and emails alerts to let you know a job has been located. TheJobNetwork ranks the job so you can tell how closely it meets your expectation.

About the author

Joanna Hughes

Joanna Hughes is a freelance writer who specializes in business, human resources and the job market. She lives with her family in the beautiful White Mountains region of New Hampshire.