Finding my feet after a long stint with work

[northernladyuk]

I very much appreciate all inputs into this and it's quite refreshing to discuss work with others.

An underlying theme seems to be that specialisation and experience are important and, clearly, I can't deny that they are paying more than one bill/mortagage/holiday for most of the professionals on this forum.

However, for what I have seen breadth of experience can be just as beneficial. The dynamics I have been working with very often entailed that the client shared their in-depth knowledge of their business and I shared my breadth of knowledge about operations, while offering my analytical skills too.

Ladymuck's LinkedIn profile (which I took the liberty to have a look at) seems to reflect this as well: her clients went from universities to airports, from banks to shipping companies.

All in all, data is data, Excel is Excel, any process can be put into a SIPOC breakdown, and if you are talking about operations, every business is different enough to require a minimal learning period (industry specific strategy work would be a different thing, for instance). Financial services can get very specific very quickly (unluckily for me), but the rest?

Or do I have to think myself very lucky that I was allowed to transition from financial services into automotive and manufacturing and then into public sector (DWP) and then a pathology lab of a hospital?

Again, not denying you guys' perspective, but rather understanding how unique and maybe bound to be short-lived (or not?!) my different one is.


And yes, I'm thinking of going back to management consulting, but I wouldn't be caught dead being an employee in the UK/London. The memory of my appraisal manager (senior consultant pushing manager at a Big4) working in excess of 70 hours a week and being on cloud number nine for a minimal raise that allowed him to afford a mortgage for a one bedroom flat in Hackney is still a bit too vivid in me...

Plenty of work in hospital laboratory IT if you have experience, not all of it PS inside IR35.

[Lavarella]

I very much appreciate all inputs into this and it's quite refreshing to discuss work with others.

An underlying theme seems to be that specialisation and experience are important and, clearly, I can't deny that they are paying more than one bill/mortagage/holiday for most of the professionals on this forum.

However, for what I have seen breadth of experience can be just as beneficial. The dynamics I have been working with very often entailed that the client shared their in-depth knowledge of their business and I shared my breadth of knowledge about operations, while offering my analytical skills too.

Ladymuck's LinkedIn profile (which I took the liberty to have a look at) seems to reflect this as well: her clients went from universities to airports, from banks to shipping companies.

All in all, data is data, Excel is Excel, any process can be put into a SIPOC breakdown, and if you are talking about operations, every business is different enough to require a minimal learning period (industry specific strategy work would be a different thing, for instance). Financial services can get very specific very quickly (unluckily for me), but the rest?

Or do I have to think myself very lucky that I was allowed to transition from financial services into automotive and manufacturing and then into public sector (DWP) and then a pathology lab of a hospital?

Again, not denying you guys' perspective, but rather understanding how unique and maybe bound to be short-lived (or not?!) my different one is.


And yes, I'm thinking of going back to management consulting, but I wouldn't be caught dead being an employee in the UK/London. The memory of my appraisal manager (senior consultant pushing manager at a Big4) working in excess of 70 hours a week and being on cloud number nine for a minimal raise that allowed him to afford a mortgage for a one bedroom flat in Hackney is still a bit too vivid in me...

[MrMarkyMark]

Ahaha, yes, that's pretty ridiculous.

Ladymuck, anything you can share about sites or agencies offering the type of projects you are experienced in (MI, business analysis, process re-engineering?)

I have seen ex Accenture and other consultants go the contracting route, all of who I used to "lead" with what they should be doing .

They have managed to carry on, but both of their 1st contracts were with the client co where they were consulting.
A little iffy with regards to IR35, IMO.

And that's my point really, in that sort of space and in Finance you are going to be up against people like me.

In addition to the skills you describe, I can also architect / develop a popular enterprise reporting suite, from server build and config to building and delivering the business reports.
That's the main skill I sell in, the other stuff is supplementary.

[northernladyuk]

How did this work out. I only know a few people who have contracted through other people's LTD and they got a pretty raw deal in every case.



Thing that strikes me is you just sound like an all rounder. I can't see what you specialise in and what would make me pick you over anyone else that has 3-4 years/contracts doing more or less the same. It appears you 'could' do a whole host of things but don't bring skills to the role I need. PMO, software testing and the rest. People make long contracting careers out of each of them, not have a bit of knowledge of each. I think you are really going to struggle here. Clients aren't paying top dollar for Jack of all trades.

If you are keeping an eye on jobserve you've pretty much got it covered. How many roles are you finding on there that you can nail and bring a raft of skills and experience to. Not ones you 'could' do. Ones you've done and can do again.

An all-rounder across different disciplines may be fine if the OP has expertise in an industry /sector: life science, public sector is too broad so is it healthcare or something else? Some of these sectors are happy to take on contractors in project roles, and in smaller projects where you have to muck in with a bit of PM, BA, business change / engagement, data migration, the industry expertise could swing it for you. For example, healthcare is a difficult sector to transition into from other sectors.

The OP is likely to find these roles through contacts, I think, but don;t discount the jobs board / LinkedIn roles.

I think the idea of going into Finance is unlikely to work without discipline OR sector expertise. Management consultancy for 3 to 5 years isn't a bad idea if you can stomach the idea of it.

[Lavarella]

Ahaha, yes, that's pretty ridiculous.

Ladymuck, anything you can share about sites or agencies offering the type of projects you are experienced in (MI, business analysis, process re-engineering?)

[ladymuck]

I had a shifty at Freshminds, as I hadn't heard of them.

Turns out in order to join their network you have to have super duper A-Levels and a fancy pants degree. Their clients don't like anything less and they couldn't possibly put a person forward for such a salubrious gig as this.

[Lavarella]

That, or agencies keen to sell anybody and client-side staff not being able to tell a good consultant from a bad one (which in turn is probably the reason why they needed some help iin the first place)

[northernladuk]

They could be good at blagging and passing interviews don't forget

[Lavarella]

It'd be 4 years as employee (3 in the UK, 1 all over Europe) and the last 4 as a freelancer. Of these freelancing years, 2 and a half were outside the UK and in the secondary sector whereas I'd like to keep in line with my most recent experience (tertiary sector, in the UK).

When you say:

"How many roles are you finding on there that you can nail and bring a raft of skills and experience to. Not ones you 'could' do. Ones you've done and can do again."

I really understand, as I'm the first to say that a contractor should be hired for what he has done already. The guy is too expensive for the employer to provide him with a learning experience, too (oh wait, still cheap compared to a Big4 consultant!).

But I'd counter saying that, in my not-so-technical field, I've seen so many appalling contractors it's not even funny. The average level is probably what gave me the confidence I could do well as a freelancer. So, the question would be "how and from where did they get the roles they were getting, despite being so bad". That's what I'm set to find out...

[northernladuk]

I dunno much about all that. Looks better than before but only 4 years? And again not so sure about things being 'closer'. It is or not when it comes to fitting a role profile. I thought a management consultant would be be very experienced as well. But I don't really know.

Guess the thing to do is hit the jobs boards and see what's going and what they want. You could also try itjobswatch which scrapes the jobs boards for historical stats. It's not very accurate due to the roles not being defined very well, spam/fake jobs etc but might give you an idea of titles to search for and how often those roles come up.

[Lavarella]

Thanks for a non-sugar coated answer!

You make a good point about all-roundedness, but what I have been doing the most in the last 4 years has been operational improvement.
I'd be called into businesses to assess their operations by both looking at data (scary how many engineers capable of calculating by hand the vector forces on a steel ball bearing freeze in front of a pivot table!), gathering anectodal evidence and observing the actual reality.

I'd baseline current performance on a few key aspects and measure the gap from the expected level of performance.

I'd see whether the gap is mostly due to substandard processes, incorrect "human habits", lack of insight due to poor or absent analytical resources, poor or badly utilised reporting/scheduling tools. With the help of client staff I'd keep what's good, implement what's needed, improve what's not good enough.

Coach the client in all this, see performance improve, handover as I phase out my presence.

I know this might sound a bit theoretical but in practical terms it's given me good
- Excel/VBA analytical skills for anything needed to provide insight/intelligence or automate business processes
- Experience in understanding operational performance
- Experience in motivating and leading staff towards better operations
- Experience in project management as I've always worked in project situations

You do have a point that many jobs on jobserve cater for a technical specialism which I don't have, but I do see roles for LSS, operational excellence and the like.

Maybe my profile is closer to that of a management consultant for operations (which I imagine is not as in demand as a technical specialism, definitely not on a contracting basis) and there might be channels more suited to looking for those jobs?

Thanks for your time : )

[northernladuk]

After almost 2 years contracting through the LTD of a senior colleague who was trying to focus on sales and business development and needed somebody (in the case, me) to actually deliver the work, I need to find something by myself.

How did this work out. I only know a few people who have contracted through other people's LTD and they got a pretty raw deal in every case.

My most recent experience has been with the public sector and life sciences, I'd like to realign myself to financial services but I'll gladly take anything, as my experience is quite broad. I've done MI, data migrations, operational excellence, pretty much anything that can be done in Excel, PMO, software testing...

Thing that strikes me is you just sound like an all rounder. I can't see what you specialise in and what would make me pick you over anyone else that has 3-4 years/contracts doing more or less the same. It appears you 'could' do a whole host of things but don't bring skills to the role I need. PMO, software testing and the rest. People make long contracting careers out of each of them, not have a bit of knowledge of each. I think you are really going to struggle here. Clients aren't paying top dollar for Jack of all trades.

If you are keeping an eye on jobserve you've pretty much got it covered. How many roles are you finding on there that you can nail and bring a raft of skills and experience to. Not ones you 'could' do. Ones you've done and can do again.

[Lavarella]

Hello all,

I'm a contracting consultant/business analyst with past Big4 consulting experience in operations/project/change management.

After almost 2 years contracting through the LTD of a senior colleague who was trying to focus on sales and business development and needed somebody (in the case, me) to actually deliver the work, I need to find something by myself.

My most recent experience has been with the public sector and life sciences, I'd like to realign myself to financial services but I'll gladly take anything, as my experience is quite broad. I've done MI, data migrations, operational excellence, pretty much anything that can be done in Excel, PMO, software testing...

At the moment my approach is to keep an eye on

- big sites (jobserve, cityjobs, efinancialcareers, reed, movemeon)
- smaller strategy&ops agencies (freshminds, mindbench)
- contracting pools of consultancies which have "vetted" and interviewed me
- personal contacts
- the usual Taleo websites of some banks

Am I missing something along the lines of job agencies with a physical presence on the territory? Places you can just walk into and talk to somebody? Or is it something too old fashioned given the sheer volumes of today's market place?



Thanks