Wednesday 23 February 2011

Contracting – The Importance of your CV

I guess if you are reading this blog you are contemplating or considering the move from permanent employment to working for yourself and starting your contracting business. I made the move four years ago and I have not looked back since.

So what is the first thing you need? Before a telephone call, before an interview, before a contract offer, that’s right you will need a killer CV.

Why?

Contracting and Permanent employment are not the same thing in the slightest. In contracting terms a CV is your sales document, it needs to qualify you to be able to undertake the task/project that the client needs you to fulfil. It needs to demonstrate your skills and experience that sell you to the client as someone capable of delivering results in the area that they are hiring you for. It needs to show that you can solve their problem. It is the document that will get you the phone call from the agent and the meeting/interview with the client. Which is crucial if you are going to be a successful contractor.

What should be in it?

The readers of your CV  don’t want your life story, they want to know you have the skills and experience necessary to complete the task at hand. Your CV should demonstrate:

  • You understand the clients problem and have the knowledge to overcome that problem.
  • You have the necessary skills to complete the task and solve the problem your being hired for.
  • You have experience in using those skills successfully.
  • You have provided benefit and value to other clients or employers.

The crux of a good sales person is be to able to identify the potential client’s problems and overcome those problems using the products they are selling. As you can see from my points above in order to be  a success at contracting you need to have a good sales technique. Your CV is your sales document and it should let the client know that you understand their problem and also that you have the skills and experience (The product) to help them overcome it. You can use the interview/client meeting to overcome any objections that the client may have about your product. That though is another post entirely.

Other Useful Links

Don’t take my word for it, there’s a whole bunch of sites out there that offer advice in this area,  contractorcalulator.co.uk is one of my favourites. You can find a whole bunch of good advice on CV’s here http://www.contractorcalculator.co.uk/Contractor_CV_Writing.aspx

Future Posts

  • Contracting – A Sales based approach
  • Contracting – The Importance of targeted CV
  • Contracting – The Interview

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Contracting – An Introduction

This is an introductory post just to let you know some of the topics I’ll be covering in the coming weeks. If there is a topic not listed that you would like to see here then please drop me an email at me@gethynellis.com:

Contracting - An Introduction
Contracting - IR35 and how it can affect you.
Contracting – The Importance of your CV
Contracting - Finding the Roles
Contracting - Building Your Network
Contracting - Building Your Brand
Contracting - Staying at the Top
Contracting - Dealing with Agencies

I’ll add the links to these posts as they are published and if you have any thoughts or views please drop me an email or leave a comment on the posts.

Monday 21 February 2011

LinkedIN Group

I started a group on linkedin a while ago for both SQL Server contractors and Agents. Agents can use the group to post SQL Server contract opportunities and contractors can use the group to track down agents with opportunities that they are interested in…The group has over 100 members and is growing all the time. You can find that group here please feel free to join the group if it is of interest to you.

Saturday 19 February 2011

Contracting in the UK

I made the very daunting but very exciting decision about 4 years ago to give up my permanent job and try my hand at contracting and consulting. This is something that I had wanted to do since I was youngster, running my own company, making my own decisions and  building a successful business. It took me until my mid-late twenties to finally realise my ambition. Over the course of the last four years through a combination of hard work and good luck  I have had a very enjoyable and very rewarding experience that has been both financially and professionally rewarding. Contracting and Business


About 3 months after I made my decision to become a contractor and start my business the world and UK economy suffered the worst financial crisis since the 1930's and that was followed by a pretty deep recession, the like of which has been not seen for sixty years. During that time I have been very fortunate, I was able to maintain paying clients and keep my small company going and we have even experienced some small growth and hopefully as the economy makes a slow and pain staking recovery my business will be in a stronger position than when it started out.


It hasn't been without its challenges and some set backups though, a recent bad experience led me to start up this contracting section of my blog where I will try my best to share my experiences with you, If anyone out there has any advice to offer then I’m are always open to comments. Either leave a comment in the post in question or feel free to contact me me[@]gethynellis.com and I’ll be more than happy to add a post for you.

You can follow this blog on twitter @GREITContracts, you can connect with me on Linkedin my profile is here.

By the way, my main specialism is SQL Server and I blog and write extensive on that on my main blog at www.gethynellis.com