It goes without saying that contracting is a highly competitive market chocked full of some of the best talent available, but as with anything there’s only a finite number of assignments available.
So, whether it’s you and 1 other, or you and 50 vying for that perfect projects, you have to make sure that in a sea of talent you’re the best option.
In a lot of cases the world-renowned clients you’ve worked for on ground-breaking contracts are excellent, and are a real pull for clients. The problem is, 6 other people who are applying have worked on similar, if not the same project. 15 years’ experience? Fantastic; John, 2 other applications have 16. Worked for HP & IBM? So have 4 other applicants. You get the point.
You need to be talking about and highlight the things that your competitors aren’t. All too often when I receive a contractor’s CV it’s a list of projects they’ve worked on with dates, and what looks like a job description for the job they found online. That might seem like it’s enough, but it’s exactly what everyone else is doing.
So, what are you supposed to be doing instead then? I’m glad you asked.
Talk about you, the influence you had on a project, and how the work you did made a difference
As opposed to just putting what you were tasked with as someone on the project, talk about the value you added to that project because of your specific skill set or experience. If you took the lead on anything or did something that made a huge impact on the project then make sure that’s in there too.
A few examples of this might be:
You get the gist.
Contract Extensions
Were you extended multiple times on an assignment? Make sure you mention it. Contract extensions are concrete evidence that the end client was so happy with your work that they kept you on longer than they originally planned, in some cases multiple times.
On your CV you can write it as:
Company
Job Title
April 2019 – April 2020 (3 renewals)
Highlight the skills you’ve used on each project
All too often it feels like people just throw up every technology they’ve even considered working with at the top of the page, and it makes it really difficult for the client to understand where your true commercial skills actually lie.
To mitigate this, for each project you’ve worked on it can be handy to outline the Tech tack you worked with underneath the details of the role, so that both the Recruiter and end-client can see how much commercial exposure you have to the skills that are relevant to their project. For example, if you’re going for a role that is going to be using Laravel quite heavily and you can easily demonstrate that you worked with the framework on your last 4 projects by putting it on there, then you’d be remiss not to do so.
Do you know anybody on the project who can put a good word in?
Before you submit that application, have a look to see if anyone you’ve worked with before might be on the project. It’s no guarantee, but on the off chance you already know someone working there then it’s a big green tick for you.
Referrals are by far the best way to ensure that you’re the preferred candidate in any situation. If a hiring manager can bring someone onboard that comes recommended by someone they trust, then it means that they can have a degree of confidence in them already. It also shortens the process as they won’t have to spend time sifting through CV’s or interviewing multiple candidates.
A long-term tip for this is to keep in touch with people you’ve worked on other contracts with, you might be able to help them out with a referral out at some point too.
You can start implementing and using all these tips today, and even if you are usually the first choice for most assignments there’s no harm in upping your game to the next level to keep the competition even further at bay.
If you have any questions feel free to contact us at [email protected] or call 0161 833 1044.
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