Reply to: Career change expert for advices

[fidot]

Yes, please! Do you know anyone you want to recommend?

PM sent

[fahbb]

If you want to enhance your career and get new skills, but also have to endure irritating "performance reviews", the promises of yearly pay rises followed by the disappointment when they don't arrive, the carrot of a bonus dangled in front of your nose to only yet again be disappointed, go perm. If you want to be in proper control of your rate and not have to put up with the aforementioned, stay contracting.

In terms of being "on the right path" no-one can really tell you that. Not even a career coach. The main question you have to ask yourself is are you happy doing what you're doing and where do YOU want to be in a few years time? If you don't know the answer to the second question, keep calm and carry on invoicing until you do. When you know what you want to do, then start to make moves toward it. Until then, stick to the status quo, keep building your warchest and gaining valuable project experience in your current and or future contracting gigs.

I will re-iterate; only YOU can know what YOU want to do. Don't pay for someone to tell you, anyone on here can do that and you'll be just as unhappy once you've poured your heart and soul into it for a worthless return at the end. I spent my early career following my Dad's advice over what I should and shouldn't be doing in IT and it got me a bag full of unhappiness. Just do whats best for you at the moment and you'll work the rest out.

Definitely agree with everything.
The only point for me is that contracting will let me stay for next couple of years in the same job basically, doing the same thing.
This is cool in terms of what you said before, but I am still struggling understanding how my career progression could look like if in 2 years I am not in the UK anymore. Will I be still a "technical person"? There are countries where contractors don't exist and there are only permanent jobs, that means for me that if for some reasons I need to move to those countries then I will be a technical person with a permanent job.
So basically would like to stay contracting but making sure that I could progress in my career if I need to move elsewhere. Otherwise after 2 years contracting the bottom line for the recruiters could be something like this is a technical person, can't be our PM for example, which is not true as I was PM in the past. So, need to understand what could be the best for me to do it. If I move to permanent jobs, potentially I will not be stuck in the same role and that could be more appreciated and valuable later on if I will move elsewhere.

[fahbb]

If the OP wants career advice, he could do worse than reading

Creating You and Co

It shows you how to see yourself as a company in your own right.

It certainly helped me before I became a contractor, by helping me to think like a business.

Thanks a lot, not so sure if it can really help me but I will check that out.

[fahbb]

I have always wondered why anyone would trust a career coach anyway.

Unless they always wanted to be one (jeez), how have they ended up being one and still be qualified to advise others on how to get where they want to be.

A bit like the book on 'How to get rich' where the only conclusion is that writing a book on how to get rich is probably the easiest way to get rich.


I always remember career advice at school. I was good at Maths and Physics and computers.
The advice I got was to be a scientist, accountant or bank manager ("a job in computers? Don't be silly there aren't any"). Which was bloody useless advice and only shows the idiocy of people who's career is other people's careers.

I partially agree. If you have chosen the right career coach, he can give wider view of what you could next and of things you might not be thinking about, based on their experience of course. I agree this is not an easy task and not straightforward, but it can help having a different perspective. If you have got a top professional, you definitely can't compare with teachers at school or parents advices.

[cojak]

If the OP wants career advice, he could do worse than reading

Creating You and Co

It shows you how to see yourself as a company in your own right.

It certainly helped me before I became a contractor, by helping me to think like a business.

[billybiro]

Would you hire a builder to do an extension for you just because he's read a book and got a City & Guilds qualification?

No, but you might hire a builder who read a book, got a city & guilds qualification and then lied about his extensive building experience.

[Lance]

In terms of being "on the right path" no-one can really tell you that. Not even a career coach.

I have always wondered why anyone would trust a career coach anyway.

Unless they always wanted to be one (jeez), how have they ended up being one and still be qualified to advise others on how to get where they want to be.

A bit like the book on 'How to get rich' where the only conclusion is that writing a book on how to get rich is probably the easiest way to get rich.


I always remember career advice at school. I was good at Maths and Physics and computers.
The advice I got was to be a scientist, accountant or bank manager ("a job in computers? Don't be silly there aren't any"). Which was bloody useless advice and only shows the idiocy of people who's career is other people's careers.

[mattfx]

Now I am a contractor, but would like to understand where this path will take me for example in 2 years.
I know that in 2 years I will probably move to a perm job, so I wanna make sure I am following the right path.
So, basically is contracting the right thing to do, now? If I want to enhance my career in IT, what could I do?
Rather than receiving answers here, I would appreciate if you know a great career coach that could help with this.

Thank you all

If you want to enhance your career and get new skills, but also have to endure irritating "performance reviews", the promises of yearly pay rises followed by the disappointment when they don't arrive, the carrot of a bonus dangled in front of your nose to only yet again be disappointed, go perm. If you want to be in proper control of your rate and not have to put up with the aforementioned, stay contracting.

In terms of being "on the right path" no-one can really tell you that. Not even a career coach. The main question you have to ask yourself is are you happy doing what you're doing and where do YOU want to be in a few years time? If you don't know the answer to the second question, keep calm and carry on invoicing until you do. When you know what you want to do, then start to make moves toward it. Until then, stick to the status quo, keep building your warchest and gaining valuable project experience in your current and or future contracting gigs.

I will re-iterate; only YOU can know what YOU want to do. Don't pay for someone to tell you, anyone on here can do that and you'll be just as unhappy once you've poured your heart and soul into it for a worthless return at the end. I spent my early career following my Dad's advice over what I should and shouldn't be doing in IT and it got me a bag full of unhappiness. Just do whats best for you at the moment and you'll work the rest out.

[l35kee]

In terms of Business Analysis, communication is extremely important. It's hard to enough to get a common understanding when English is everyone's first language. When you start to consider that in a lot of cases, documentation is the main means of communication between teams (sadly), poor English can lead to lots of issues.

Any BA needs to have a proper appreciation of this imo.

[Lance]

I am not a native english speaker and my english level is good enough to work everywhere. That was so far. And if you didn't discover yet, communication is important, but it's not the only part. With this in mind, you probably need to review your way of communicating either, as you have got no rights to insult people. Regards.

He wasn’t being insulting. In fact the first sentence tried to prevent an insult being taken.
You have taken it anyway.
The point being made was valid.

I’d suggest, if you feel a need for some training, English grammar would be an improvement to your skills.

This is not intended as an offensive post, but you have the right to be offended if you desire.

[kaiser78]

I started in March 2017, progressively higher day rates is my assumption.

Contracting doesn't always work like this unfortunately.

[cojak]

We don’t use career coaches, that’s for permanent employees.

Contractors research what will earn them the most money in the medium to long term, and then put a plan together to get the qualifications/skills/experience to get there.

That’s it really.

[fahbb]

Are you looking to change career path altogether? Go perm? Enhance your career in IT? We need a little more to go on than that.

Now I am a contractor, but would like to understand where this path will take me for example in 2 years.
I know that in 2 years I will probably move to a perm job, so I wanna make sure I am following the right path.
So, basically is contracting the right thing to do, now? If I want to enhance my career in IT, what could I do?
Rather than receiving answers here, I would appreciate if you know a great career coach that could help with this.

Thank you all

[fahbb]

I don't want to be rude but if your career change is in to anything that needs you to create documentation and reports you might want to brush up on your, er, communication skills.

To be an expert in something to the point someone will pay £400+ a day for you you need to be good and have a raft of experience to back it up. You cannot just change careers contracting by doing some courses over Skype. You might have the theory but have no expertise or demonstrable experience. Would you hire a builder to do an extension for you just because he's read a book and got a City & Guilds qualification.

Career changing as a contractor is very difficult to do.

I am not a native english speaker and my english level is good enough to work everywhere. That was so far. And if you didn't discover yet, communication is important, but it's not the only part. With this in mind, you probably need to review your way of communicating either, as you have got no rights to insult people. Regards.

[fahbb]

If I understand correctly, you are looking for a careers coach?

Yes, please! Do you know anyone you want to recommend?