Does your Contractor CV Stand Out?
Everyone has an expectation of what a classic CV looks like.
It's a great starting point when you're early on in your career and you’re keen to highlight all of your skills in the broadest possible way. But as the years of experience stack up, the projects become more complex and your CV becomes longer and longer, perhaps we should be asking;
Does the traditional CV suit the contract market?
First of all, perhaps we should stop using the term CV for a contractor. A curriculum vitae translates to the ‘course of one's life’ and let's face it no one needs to know that in its entirety to know if you're a great contractor. If we reframe this into a ‘Contractor Profile’, we might feel a bit less inclined to include detailed roles from 1997, which often have little relevance for the role that you may be applying for today.
It's good to keep a traditional CV on file that you add to each time you finish a contract, it’s a useful tool for pulling together examples for interviews and is a great reference point to refer back to in the future. The challenge with a contractor CV is that it is usually very long and not a compelling read. To make your experience more interesting, a Contractor Profile is essentially your career highlights reel.
So whereas the traditional CV would outline where, when and what you’ve done throughout your entire career, your Contractor Profile would simply pick out the best bits. Rather than being repetitive and long it can be concise and engaging, really giving you the opportunity to share the complexity and variety of your experience in an interesting way.
Another benefit of creating a Contractor Profile is that it can represent you as a supplier, rather than an individual. It’s a professional way to highlight your capability to deliver, your professional track record and to highlight the most relevant projects and programmes you've worked on. It works well if you're looking to present yourself as a consultancy delivering projects and programmes to third parties, and can help differentiate you from being an individual contractor.
How do I create an engaging Contractor Profile?
The good news is you should already have all the information that you need on your traditional CV and it's simply a case of reformatting and streamlining it.
A Contractor Profile would include the following subheadings;
Personal Profile
An overview of what you (or your company) can bring to the role and the style and approach that you take.
Companies or Industries you’ve worked with
There’s no need to list everyone you’ve worked with but pick out the most relatable for the business you’re targeting.
Professional Qualifications & Accreditations
This could also include technologies for a more technical profile but try to avoid listing absolutely everything, stick to the most relevant.
Key Career Highlights
Review your existing CV and choose the projects and achievements you really want to talk about. This would be a great opportunity to pick out relevant projects that will really highlight your depth of experience and knowledge in a specific area.
By collating your experience this way, you can avoid the duplication of a chronological CV and highlight the most relevant examples, rather than just the most recent ones. Meaning you can effectively tailor your Contractor Profile to stand out in a challenging market.