I finished last week by saying that we really need to start to think about how the contractor recruitment market needs to change if we are to get away from the commoditised, one-size-fits-all, dystopian model we are currently stuck with. That model works quite well for the recruiters but it’s not helping a lot of contractors and perhaps also isn’t really helping the end clients. Time for Utopia perhaps?

First though we have to accept that the contractor market – or at least the IT/Telecoms market where I work – is increasingly split into two discrete areas. One grouping – probably the largest by far – contains all the bulk, generalised but still important skills. The other grouping is rather more varied, and contains people who have either specialised or senior skills (or both!).

For the former group the current market does actually work. Well, it does if you ignore the increasing pressure to offshore such roles. The only real problem is the old one of persuading the agents that these skills are actually transferable across industry verticals, but let’s not get too optimistic. Generally speaking these guys don’t have that much of a problem assuming there’s work for them to do.

However the other group present a different challenge, the one I was talking about last week. Too often these are the guys who get stuck because the agents don’t know who they are and what they can do. The ones where keyword matching has little effect and who have to pray the agent has enough wit to read and understand their CV.

So how do we persuade the agents that these guys need a different approach and need to be sold proactively rather than hit and hope?

How about they pay the agent rather than the client? Just like actors do already? “Ah hah!” I hear you cry, “You can’t charge work seekers for finding them work”. Well no, you can’t, that’s enshrined in the Agency Regulations. But what if the Agency Regulations don’t apply? Say, for example, by the worker (and their company) opting out of the provisions of the Agency Regulations altogether? Then the agent stops being a work-finder and becomes an outsourced marketing operation

So how does that help?

For one thing, the better the agent knows the contractor, the more likely he is to be able to sell them when an opening appears. When filing a new role, rather than waiting for the right CV to appear through Jobserve – along with two hundred useless ones – he will have a stable of good people and will be able to suggest one (or two) to the client right away. Also he can go to the client with a zero margin offer. Also he has to look after his contractors for a reasonable cut of the gross and keep them fed with work or they’ll simply go elsewhere. The more high-value contractors you have in work, the more money you make – but without the tedious rework and box-ticking that goes on at the moment. You might even specialise in a given discipline so clients look to you first when they need someone special.

Of course there are agents out there who work that way at the moment (albeit charging the client rather than the contractor) but they are rare beasts. The increasing use of sites like LinkedIn to bypass the agency by a lot of senior contractors says to me that the agency model as is does not offer them the right support and marketing. This kind of change is desperately needed.

Snag is, the average agency is too risk averse to try it. Utopia may have to wait a while. Heigh ho…

Alan Watts can found at LinkedIn.
© 2010 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

Image: San Miguel Strong Ice Beer by Roro Fernandez

Another frustrating week in the hunt for the next contract. It’s clear that there is still a fair bit of work out there for the taking. Sadly it’s also clear that there are an awful lot of people out there trying to take it and competition is very strong. But it seems to have had at least one side-effect; you must only apply for a job if that’s the job you’re already doing.

You can accept that if the role is in say Finance, then clearly you do save a lot of issues taking on someone who already works in Finance, since they would know the regulatory and business environment. Actually it turns out an awful lot of openings are in Finance since the only people with the money to spend are the banks. Wonder where they got it all…

Anyway, I digress. Taking someone already in an industry vertical, while frustrating to the outsiders looking in, is quite understandable. However, the market now sees to be taking this to a whole new level which is what causes the frustration: no matter how good you are at what you do, if someone doesn’t want you to do exactly the same thing for them that you’re doing now, then you have a problem.

I’ve talked before about the whole agency candidate-finding process being reduced to a box-ticking exercise in an attempt to get the flood of applications down to manageable levels. This also saves them a lot of money themselves of course, since the bulk of the work can be delegated to fairly junior researchers who don’t actually need to understand the role or the candidates.

So getting a role is now totally dependent on what it says on the CV. And that is where it all starts to go a bit wrong.

If your CV is to stand a chance it has to be a very close match to the original requirement. Sadly, however, with the laziness of the average agent, a lot of the job specification doesn’t make it to the advert; probably takes too long to cut-and-paste it in to Broadbean or whatever they use to set the adverts up. Given a career history like mine that is pretty wide ranging, I then have to work out which bits to highlight in the first page summary on my CV – no agent bothers to read the detailed job history any more – to stand even a vague chance of getting past the first filtering process at the agency, never mind getting passed on to the client. And if the advert misses a key bit of information, then you fail at the first hurdle.

As an example, I put an application in yesterday evening and around midday today I finally got to talk to the agent about the role. Too late! It seems the role was largely about recovering a programme of work that was not delivering and needed a total shake up. “But you didn’t ask for that, and as it happens that’s what three of my last four roles were mostly all about, fixing and successfully delivering broken projects” I pointed out. One of which, incidentally, was worth around £250 million.

“Ah but”, was the reply, “You didn’t state that explicitly so I didn’t pick it up. Sorry, but I’ve already sent in all the CVs I’m allowed to”. End of conversation.

So there in a nutshell is why good people are sat on the bench. This whole market needs a different approach. And that’s something I will talk about next week.

Meanwhile, anyone need an expert is anything?

Alan Watts can found at LinkedIn.
© 2010 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

Image: Experts Only by Ross Mayfield

It’s been a fairly quiet week this week. There’s been nothing to get me throwing things at the TV or harrumphing over my breakfast newspaper. This is good in a way, of course, especially for the sake of the TV set, unless you have to try and find something interesting to write about…

There has been some good news, of course. The economy is still shaky but from my reading of the runes, it looks like it is slowly heading in the right direction. Although it won’t take too much to throw it all off course again.

One good thing was the PCG winning not one but two prestigious awards from the Trade Association Forum. One was for the revamped website, which has gone from being something of a logistical and visual nightmare to something really very slick. The other was to PCG’s Managing Director, John Brazier, who won the Leadership Award. This was in recognition for the work he has done in getting the PCG to where it is today (and which John sees as a reward to the whole team). Organising an association that is 99% independently-minded freelance contractors – you think I’m bad, you should meet some of my fellow members – was once described as being like herding cats. Clearly John and his team are now fully qualified cat herders.

Also, running on the back of the Coalition’s aim to reduce net immigration, a new consultation has been kicked off. This one is looking at Intra Company Transfers, and should they be in the scope of the overall cap on immigration figures.

This is actually something of a tricky one. Clearly the influx of comparatively low-skilled IT workers, brought in under ICT Visas in preparation for moving swathes of UK-based work out of the EU, is not something we want to perpetuate. On the other hand, you have to accept that companies do need to be able to move skilled specialists around the world. Plus, of course, it’s not all about IT and engineering; the reach is far wider, from medical staff to trained Thai chefs.

So an interesting challenge to come up with an fair solution. The survey can be found at the rather snappy website, surveymonkey.com (I guess they won’t be in contention at next year’s awards…). Please take a look if you want to contribute to the debate.

Meanwhile I’m still on the hunt for the next contract. I’m actually getting calls back from people and there are certainly more jobs out there than there have been, but it’s a slow old process. And a frustrating one; too many agents seem to have lost the ability to read a CV and relate it to a real job these days. If I have to answer seriously inane questions like “How many years as a Project Manager have you done?” one more time I’ll not be responsible for my actions.

Then I was promised two call backs from people promising to take a more proactive approach to selling me to the clients, rather than waiting for the right job to come along. You know, a bit like agencies used to do 15 years ago. Needless to say, neither has been in touch.

Actually the agencies themselves understand the current system is rather sub-optimal (to say the least). They are increasingly turning to networking sites like LinkedIn to find people. This, if you’re a bit of a dinosaur like me, leads to a degree of a culture shock. I’m really not too sure I can mix it wiv da kids in da cyberhood, man, innit.

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Looks like I have some work to do!

Alan Watts can found found at LinkedIn.
© 2010 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

Image: 3 Cat Cupcakes by clevercupcakes

Been some rather contradictory stories in the press this week. Nothing new in that I guess, but it does make guessing what the job market is going to do a bit tricky.

There has been an unexpected drop in the numbers claiming Job Seeker’s Allowance, which is welcome news. Except that someone immediately countered that by pointing out a lot of people are taking on temporary or part time jobs. OK, but they’re still back in work, even if it is at a reduced level.

Then we get someone else pointing out that there are increasing numbers of economically inactive people out there. These are the ones who haven’t got a job and are not claiming benefits. And if you look at all the figures and not just bits of them, the actual shift in new people in work is tiny – around 7,500.

All in all, not a reliable way of seeing what’s going on…

What does seem to be clear is that work for freelancers is likely to increase as more and more companies realise the recession is bottoming out and get back to work. The PCG think the same if you read their latest press releases, that companies are turning to us freelances to get things going again. The general thinking seems to be that companies will still be nervous about the future so use temporary people that can be dropped if the economy goes back into reverse. Which it may, according to some (presumably) competent observers, who think we may still have the promised double-dip recession.

It’s a bit like climate change really. Two sets of experts taking the same data and coming to contrary opinions about what it means.

So let’s use a rather more empirical method. If I run a search for contracts available for my skill set, I see considerably more than I did before Christmas. Which sounds like good news. Or is it – a lot of them are in finance or public sector, which didn’t really suffer too badly anyway. And there still aren’t too many development roles, most are concerned with business as usual stuff. So how many of these “new” jobs are actually from agencies trawling for CVs in case the job market really does pick up? Which means there might not be as many jobs as at first appears: they may even be less.

All in all, I think I will simply wait and see what happens. That way, I can’t be accused of getting the forecast wrong!

© 2009 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

Image: ( B ) positive by place light – flying not physically

The first thing is to think about why you want to go freelance. While permanent jobs are increasingly unreliable, the one certainty of freelancing is that you will be out of work at some point and you won’t have a formal support structure around you to help out.

Although, of course, that is exactly the way many freelancers prefer it. So having decided to go freelance, here are the steps you take.

Understand the Freelance Business: There are many good guides to freelancing out there, such as the one on the PCG’s website. Read as many as you can find so you understand what it is you’re getting into. You will be amazed at how much you don’t know, from expenses to the Opt Out.

Prepare a CV: A freelance CV is different to an employee’s one. You are only selling skills and achievements.  Career progression is now of minor interest, and details of education, hobbies and interests are largely irrelevant. Keep it focused and concise; it is your primary sales tool so spend time getting it right.

Resign your current job: Unless you are very lucky, it is difficult to get a contract if you have to serve out a notice period. Bear in mind you have no history as a freelance, and are in competition with people who can start tomorrow. You should build up as big a war chest as you can then take the plunge. You will have to survive a while with no income; even if you get a contract straight away, there will still be a delay before some money comes in so make sure the mortgage is covered.

Get a Contract: This is the really tricky bit. If you have a network of contacts, you may be able to find something by yourself, but mostly you will be using agencies through websites such as Jobserve and the like (there are around 1200 on them on the web these days). The basic process is find a job you genuinely can do, send in a tailored CV emphasising the key points for this job, then follow it up with a phone call. Be prepared to repeat that process many times

Decide how you will get paid: In reality there are two choices. You can use an Umbrella company, where you become their employee and they look after all the payments and taxes for you for a fee., or you can set up your own limited company If you’re using agencies, you almost certainly can’t work as a sole trader. Umbrellas are safe but expensive, Limited Companies are not that difficult to run but do require more work and decision making from you.

Get an accountant: If you are not using an umbrella, get a good accountant that understands the freelance business properly. They will be an invaluable source of guidance until you have enough experience to do it yourself; and even then you should still consider using one.

Get your contract reviewed: You should do this anyway, but if you are using your own company you have to pay attention to your IR35 status. This is discussed in another article.

Do the job: Sounds trite, but you are as good as your last contract. Do it well, don’t abandon it half way for something “better” and remember that you are the expert or they wouldn’t have hired you.

Image: Baby by gabi menashe