Month: September 2009

That’s how long it is since I had a serious, paying contract. Time, I think, to reflect on what I’m doing wrong…

Firstly, I’m not a specialist. I’ve worked in many industries and central government. I’ve delivered complete solutions, rescued £17m contracts, finished programmes that were stalled and implemented a range of smaller solutions. I’ve done line management, programme management and straight consultancy.

So clearly, I’m not qualified to deliver a simple application roll out then.

I got bounced for a PM role recently: the agent wouldn’t put me forward since I didn’t have the necessary skills for the role – in his opinion. I looked him up on LinkedIn. His career since leaving Uni was six months selling health foods and nine months in recruitment. Ho hum…

I’m not “qualified”. I learned PRINCE in 1985 and have been using it ever since,and I’ve been around ITIL since it was first launched.  But the CV isn’t littered with the relevant certificates. Fair enough, I should have wasted some time getting the exams (except I hate exams with a passion and always have done). Hasn’t stopped me delivering things to standard of course, but in this market no qualifications equals no experience. Funny that nobody has yet twigged that the reverse is not actually true though.

Biggest problem though is that 365 days. Clearly I’m either useless or lazy (in fact I spent a lot of that year looking after a terminally ill mother, but you can’t put that on a CV) and obviously I’ve now forgotten everything I ever learned about everything.

So, new year, new challenge. No idea what, as yet. All ideas (and job offers!) gratefully received!

Why do I get the impression that 90% of them work approximately 30 feet away from their desk at all times? Seriously, when was the last time you spoke to one who knew about the role in question? Usually you get a researcher, who knows nothing beyond what’s on their tick list, or a receptionist who fails to pass on any kind of message, or a voicemail that presumably has an auto-delete feature since it clearly never goes anywhere near a human’s ear..

I can understand why they might be a little bit busy. Any non-specialist role these days (and quite a few specialist ones, come to that, if it looks like a good payer) is going to get upward of 300 applications, some of whom might actuallybe able to do the job. So clearly they need time to read all the submitted CVs and pick three. And then tomorrow, they can start again.

So why don’t they look at the CVs they’ve already got? Out of all the thousands they get every week – quite a few of them from the same people – there must be a couple that actually offer the required skills and experience. Ah, of course. That means they would have to pick up the phone and talk to contractors…

Not sure if this is a really good idea, to be honest, but since some people think my comments on certain Internet Forums are worth listening to, I thought I might try and widen the audience.

It’s important to remember that I am a grumpy old git, but one with vast experience in freelancing in the UK market place and a pretty good understanding of the rules and regulations thaty govern it. I freely admit to being opinionated, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And I’m always willing to be proved wrong…. honest!

There will be a consistent underlying theme though. If you want to be a UK freelancer then I will expect you to behave professionally at all times, understand the rules (at least, understand those that can be understood; thanks to our glorious governement, many aren’t all that clear any more) and treat clients with respect.

Agents and governements, though, are fair game….