Work finding and tenders for freelance trainers

Work finding and tenders for freelance trainers

Are you a freelance or independent trainer?

There are many freelance and independent trainers in the UK.

The aim of this page is to highlight the most effective way of positioning yourself and find work or tenders for work.

Find a trainer type databases

There are many of these find a trainer type databases on the internet including:

• Freelance-Trainers.co.uk
• FreelanceTrainers.net
• IFreelance.com
• Skillfair.co.uk
• TrainerBase.co.uk
• TrainingJournal.com
• TrainingPages.com
• TrainingZone.co.uk

So what do these sites offer?

Well that varies. Some like TrainingZone offer free listings of trainers names and contact details, others like TrainerBase offer a detailed search facility to look for trainers with a specific skill.

We would recommend that you check all of them out and see what they have to offer that fits with your business and marketing plan. One thing for sure though – none of them work unless you work at them. It is a little like placing an advert in your local shop, unless you do something on the advert to draw attention to it most people will over look it. The web equivalence is getting known in the community of people that use the site you are listing on, learning the ‘house rules’ and investing time and effort to make it work for you.

Go local

With changes to the environment, fuel price rises (over 40% in 12 months…) and other changes such as the impact of the credit crunch, many freelance trainers, coaches and developers are fishing far and wide for work. This is a mistake.

For many the focus needs to be local, this means less travel for your proposals and pitches, less time away from home and the opportunity to build better and stronger relationships with your customers.

To support this we are starting our own set of find a trainer type pages and in addition a Lone Trainer network for both freelance and in-house trainers to network.

We strongly believe the way forward is local relationships and local work.

Associate Organisations

Developing your business through being an associate trainer is a valid model. It works well provider the associate umbrella company both respects the trainer and pays a reasonable and livable day rate.

If choosing to work as an associate, ensure that you do on average no more than 25% of your work for one provider… or when things start to go wrong, they go very wrong.

Many associate organisations also use these web based trainer directories to find new associates. many will ask you to attend an interview and present a session – they need to understand the quality of the product they intend to sell. Some try and encourage you to ‘buy’ training in order to be on their list – please do not do this, or at the very least check out references of the company with existing associate trainers, ask how they got their training, what they paid, and the level of work obtained. Check the licence or other contractual agreement before signing.