College related question?

Freelancing right from  the University/College Level(in INDIA). Is it already there ? or Is it possible ?

• As daily I get a couple of hours of "Me-Time", I tend to do  something productive and wanted to do some freelancing. Its fun, productive, money. So I turned to  popular freelancing websites like http://Freelancer.com, http://GetACoder.com etc...  They are good, but what struck me was something different. Why there isn't a simple website/platform ? where any person who want to get work done (or  Project submitter) in his/her own area of interest, can connect to any developer/programmer/designer "whose  qualification could range  from a 1st Year University/College student to a Project Architect". I  want to stress on the qualification part a bit. Because thats the key thing! I am from a local college ("galli college" as we call in INDIA) and  didn't quite get the hang of my Computer Science Degree until I passed  out of my college. I was not sure of What are Booming Technologies and on which I can start my career What is a version control system or say, A bug-tracking system ? What is open-source ? What language makes you creative, productive What is designing and how websites are built Whats the real use of learning algorithms. Their applications in real world all the rest College Education wont really teach you the Industry/Market required things. I  have nearly 5 years of experience in programming, developing,  designing(to some extent), deploying web applications. This is about me  after 5 years of passing out of college. Which means I went through  rigorous training process over the years to learn things, knowing my  interests. But even now I haven't contributed to a single open source  project! (I have written one,  but it didn't give me enough kick). Like me many people out there also don't get time to attend  the monthly developer meetups. So like  this, any developer (particularly in INDIA) lacks many required skills. "Lack of Exposure" Why not target this problem ? Assume a website is there where in  you can sign in with your university/college/personal/office email  address and can search & work on projects which are matching to  interests/passion and can get meaning & money out of your valuable  time. This concept may sound pretty simple and may even sound that it is  no way different from any freelancing website. No! You are wrong. Hold  on, let me speak a little more. One fine day, a HR/Techlead of a big company sees a resume which has got sections like: Real world experience, while at college: 1)Contributed to an open source project ( Say Django ? Tickets/Commit revisions go here) 2)Worked with a 5 person team (ofcourse offline, I am in college  remember ?) in building a web application for a, say, some Fruit Company  (Apple ?) 3)Had fun in trying Google App Engine and Firefox extension  development and built this Smilometer (Whats this ? a simple firefox  extension which will record your state of mind over a given day and  makes a video out of it. Click smiley at any point of day and thats the  state of your mind then.). Imagine one day, a company measures employee  satisfaction just by watching a few videos. 4)etcetra etcetra..... Wont this stand out from, say "Library Management System for my  college" project ? or a "paper presentation on Bluetooth technology" ? Keep in mind, I am talking  about 10 million students from normal colleges ("galli colleges"). Thats  the key. There is a "Meaning" to this idea, Because: Imagine a student gets 1000 rupees a month as his pocket money, just  by his own hard work(in his free time ofcourse, I don't mean he should  skip classes in college). He knows the value of money at a very young age and by the time he  joins a company he would literally match the talent of a TechLead in a  company. Fresher from this website vs Techlead of a company, You make  the pick! No crying that there aren't enough jobs in INDIA No crying that I got a score of 55% and I cant apply for Companies. No crying that "Google Interviewer asks all sorts of weird questions  on Algorithms and I always thought algorithms are for mentally  challenged" There is a "Money" angle to this idea too: This is the same first point as the "Meaning" one mentioned above. Sometimes, "Money" by itself is "Meaning" A tie up can be established between the company and our website, so  that company people can have a "practical watch" on student's academic  record. A company person can ask for an assignment to students and get done.  This sounds very similar to a written exam a fresher faces after 4  years of college. And now he gets to crack that right in his 1st or 2nd  year. And many more. Enough talk, I have two big questions: Is there a website which already does this and I am not aware of  this ? I arose from a typical fresher background. If I don't know that  site, I am sure, many of the students don't know that too. May be that  site, needs more popularity! If there isn't site like this, why not somebody start this ? I would like to see good Product Development companies in INDIA. There is Meaning + Money to this idea Should I build this ? Update: I have got a lot of questions, which I am thinking for  answers and want to get feedback from the open web also. This could be  interesting discussion..... Here are the questions Money related: Assuming the initial (first 100) signups wont generate money, if you  want to scale this to 1000 signups and is expecting money, how do you  go about that ? Or in short, How/When do you generate your first rupee ? Revenue from Companies ? How does it go ? If the candidate is hired,  we can expect some commission. But its gonna take time. Its not a  immediate one. But you can only attract students by showing company   logos in our website, which means, we need to have tie-ups with them   already. How do we solve this cyclic problem ? Site Popularity - Activity related: Assume the  site is ready, how do you seed activity ? Meaning, How  do you get the  first 100 students/developers signups ? (Empty  Restaurant Syndrome ?)  and how do you attract the engagement among them  ? Answer: To engage a college student, you could go about telling that he/she could: Document all his works in that site Even build a website for his college (if there isn't one already) and that project by itself actually becomes a seeding activity How do you attract the management of the college/university ? For atleast giving a presentation about our website. Answer: First question's answer would do I guess. How  do you make sure the student/developer enagage more and not  stop his  engagement after submitting his stupid "library management  system"  project. And to get students from colleges I need to do things manually.  Meaning, Going to each college (scaling is an issue here!), or even  going to each company to get the word out. I want to cut that. Can this  be taken as a challenge to get work done in fully an online way ? One answer could be, build a configurable product so that it exactly fits the needs of a typical college and later if it clicks, it can always be scaled.

• Answer:

  I am assuming that you were not talking about a freelancing site exclusively for students, because that isn't such a good idea .... how would such a site be able to compete with existing freelancing sites that have professional programmers, designers etc.? So assuming you meant a freelancing site like odesk, where students from different colleges and univesities are also encouraged to compete for projects along with professional providers, I see a lot of disadvantages in your idea: Most students at this stage (at least in India) will not be very capable from a technical point of view. They will be useful mostly for basic web-development related stuff, minor bug-fixes etc., at least during their first few months. This means that, during this initial learning period, they will need a mentor who can guide them and assign them small bite-sized tasks. How would you convince companies to assign projects to inexperienced students? Here again, one solution is to have at least one experienced mentor/manager with every team of 'freshers', who will guide the students and make sure the projects are finished on time. Students do not need too much money ... so they will probably attempt to lowball while bidding for projects. This is already a big problem in existing online freelance sites such as odesk and elance. Also, another problem with the existing freelance sites is that there are too many providers, so each posted job gets around 50 bids, many of which are from low quality Indian providers who cannot complete their projects satisfactorily and cannot even communicate well in English. Hence, even if you are very good at what you do but you are an Indian, you will have a hard time getting noticed because of the rather poor view most clients there have of Indian programmers. If now you introduce a large number of inexperienced university students to such sites, this 'stereotyping' problem will only get worse. How will you compete with existing freelance sites? They are already very well established. What can your site offer that will differentiate you from them and make companies choose your site over others for outsourcing their work?