Dear seasoned contractors,
I am at the moment trying to pick up my first contract. For a host of reasons, I decided to quit my permanent job and spend all my time and energy on finding that first contract which well get me started in this (as someone else said in another post) "wibbly wobbly world". I have been looking for a month now, had an face to face interview where I did not the contract.
Contracting is not, quite clearly, for the faint of heart. I do understand that, and am fine with it. Forums like this one are a like a lifeline, so thanks to everyone who contributes and helps out.
I do have a few issues about which any feedback / comments would be most welcome.
(a) CVs: Some of the advice on CUK seems self-contradictory. One article says Your CV should be no more than two pages long, and another one is titled Job-hopefuls warned against the 2-page CV. Also, has anyone tried the professional CV writing/reviewing companies, and found of them of any real use? Can someone who has never met you and has no knowledge of you as a person, and is unlikely of a technical background do an effective review and/or redesign your CV for you? I would imagine feedback from recruiters / end clients would be really useful, but of course I don't expect to get such feedback any time soon (or ever).
(b) Matching specs and skills: I understand that as a contractor you would be expected to be productive right from the beginning, but then my experience is that for any non-trivial problem to be solved, there is always a bit of learning involved. So does it make sense to apply and pursue contracts (specially when there is a long list of skills specified) where you have a significant but not an exact overlap between your profile and the spec?
(c) Adding new skills: Sort of related to be (b). If it is imperative that you have all the skills that a contract may require, and you are essentially reusing only existing skills, how you would pick up new skills? You could obviously self train, but then we go back to the familiar debate about skills learned in a commercial environment vs those of a (let's say, a dedicated and disciplined) amateur. A related question would be about skills not new but not requested very often (and proportionally a small number of professionals offering that skill). Let's say, as an example, programming in Erlang. Let's say, I learn Erlang out of interest, but would this knowledge be useful, if I applied for jobs where one of the (or the only) skill asked was Erlang?
Am sorry if the questions sound too theoretical.
Thanks,
QN
PS: I finally figured out what/who NLUK is !
I am at the moment trying to pick up my first contract. For a host of reasons, I decided to quit my permanent job and spend all my time and energy on finding that first contract which well get me started in this (as someone else said in another post) "wibbly wobbly world". I have been looking for a month now, had an face to face interview where I did not the contract.
Contracting is not, quite clearly, for the faint of heart. I do understand that, and am fine with it. Forums like this one are a like a lifeline, so thanks to everyone who contributes and helps out.
I do have a few issues about which any feedback / comments would be most welcome.
(a) CVs: Some of the advice on CUK seems self-contradictory. One article says Your CV should be no more than two pages long, and another one is titled Job-hopefuls warned against the 2-page CV. Also, has anyone tried the professional CV writing/reviewing companies, and found of them of any real use? Can someone who has never met you and has no knowledge of you as a person, and is unlikely of a technical background do an effective review and/or redesign your CV for you? I would imagine feedback from recruiters / end clients would be really useful, but of course I don't expect to get such feedback any time soon (or ever).
(b) Matching specs and skills: I understand that as a contractor you would be expected to be productive right from the beginning, but then my experience is that for any non-trivial problem to be solved, there is always a bit of learning involved. So does it make sense to apply and pursue contracts (specially when there is a long list of skills specified) where you have a significant but not an exact overlap between your profile and the spec?
(c) Adding new skills: Sort of related to be (b). If it is imperative that you have all the skills that a contract may require, and you are essentially reusing only existing skills, how you would pick up new skills? You could obviously self train, but then we go back to the familiar debate about skills learned in a commercial environment vs those of a (let's say, a dedicated and disciplined) amateur. A related question would be about skills not new but not requested very often (and proportionally a small number of professionals offering that skill). Let's say, as an example, programming in Erlang. Let's say, I learn Erlang out of interest, but would this knowledge be useful, if I applied for jobs where one of the (or the only) skill asked was Erlang?
Am sorry if the questions sound too theoretical.
Thanks,
QN
PS: I finally figured out what/who NLUK is !
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