Freelancer in Germany: breaking the stereotypes of consulting

A personalised first contact

Unfortunately, your inbox is often bombarded by offers from recruiters, offers that do not have much to do with what you are doing most of the time. There is either a lack of technical understanding from recruiters, or your profile has not been screened properly before contacting.

One of the biggest pain points for freelancers is the lack of corresponding and fitting project requests from consultancy companies. And you’re right to highly value personalised message requests with more information on technical details of the project. 

Although we are internationally spread, we count with the great support of a dedicated team, which is specialised in the German freelance processes. 🇩🇪

That’s why at Ekkiden, we provide trainings to our recruiters, and in case a recruiter is working on a new technology stack, we are being transparent about it.

The interpersonal touch is very important to us, therefore we avoid automatised campaigns with buzzwords, but try to be as authentic as possible with you in the process.

Candidates? More like partners!

The second most important aspect for us is the value of our relationship with independent contractors. 

We are perfectly aware that if freelancers could change one key aspect, it would be the consultancies’ conception of freelancers considered as partners and not just as a means to please their client. 

The focus should really shift from matching freelancers to project descriptions, to finding matching projects for the freelancers. The key element here is the relationship that we try to build with freelancers, with a more long-term perspective rather than a short-term placement. 

In this sense, we try to lay our focus on building a stronger freelance community, where we can provide follow-projects to our freelancers, and to proactively guide them through other processes at our clients in Germany.

During our recruitment process, we try to understand what you’re looking for in the first place, in terms of basic requirements and of non-technical aspects, to be able to provide everything you may need during projects. 

This can vary between your preference in company or team size, industries or even what you want to achieve during your projects. For us, the project fit is not just for the clients, but first and foremost for you. 

Smooth processes

Lastly, we remarked that freelancers are striving for consultancies that offer smooth processes, meaning transparency within the project acquisition process and the payment transaction. 

When it comes to the last stages of the acquisition process, consultancy companies often fail to be transparent about the status of the freelancers within the client process, and sometimes also about the fair payment rates offered.

Sometimes, some big consultancy companies even tend to take advantage of independent contracts as they have projects with bigger clients in the industry.

One of Ekkiden’s values is transparency and integrity. Therefore, we base all our processes on proper communication with our clients as well as freelancers.

That’s one of the key elements that allows us to build a deeper and trustworthy relationship with you. It also has the advantage of accelerating our processes, because we share more information during each step.

That is why most of projects are for startups or SMEs, avoiding having slow recruiting processes that spread over multiple weeks. When closing a project, we also are transparent of our clients’ budget, so you can adjust the hourly rates offered. 

We closed a project, now what?

Your signature of a contract is not the last time you hear from us. As already mentioned, freelancers strive for longer-term relationships with consultancies.

That is one of our biggest goals at Ekkiden. Either specifically build through the interactive and proactive communication with our recruiters in the according perimeters, or through our community on TogetherByTech we aim to be closely connected with you over the passing time.