5 inside tips for crafting your contractor CV

The contracting world moves quickly, and with little time to spend on long interview processes, clients and agencies will often short-list candidates based on their CV alone. This means that you can have the right skills, experience and recommendations, but unless your CV makes an impact, chances are you won't get an interview. At Umbrella Exchange, we have years of experience working with professionals throughout the contracting industry, which means that we know exactly what agencies and clients are looking for when it comes to the ideal contractor CV.

Target your CV

This is the number one rule for your contractor CV and involves tailoring the content to target the specific requirements of each assignment you are seeking. Remember, contracting involves matching your skills to the client’s specific requirements, so your CV should clearly demonstrate that you have the following:

• The required skills for the work
• Experience of applying the required skills
• Previous positive experiences with using those skills effectively

Cut down on personal information

One of the main differences between contracting and full-time employment is the importance placed on individual personality. While it’s not uncommon for full-time employers to search for a candidate who fits their specific company ‘culture’, this is less important when hiring a contractor, who will usually be hired for a fixed-term project on the basis of their key skills and experience.

Clients and agencies hiring contractors will be less interested in personal information such as hobbies, interests and career aspirations; cutting out this information from your contractor CV will also help the client or agency to find the key content they’re looking for.

Keep to the point with keywords and phrases

Keywords and phrases are an important factor in how humans process everyday information. People generally scan information for the relevant content, prioritising the content that most closely matches their interests or requirements. Clients and agencies can receive hundreds of contractor CVs for each job or vacancy, spending less than 20 seconds looking at each one. In order to grab their attention, pay attention to the following:

• Profile
  This is your ‘introduction’, so it needs to stand out. Profiles should concisely summarise your skills and work history in fewer than five lines. Always fine-tune your profile to each assignment.

• Expertise
  Instead of listing generic skills, your expertise should be industry-specific, such as knowledge of procedure or technical proficiency with equipment and software. You can also include membership of professional bodies in this section.

• Achievements
  This allows you to draw the client’s attention to any instances where you’ve made a significant impact; worked on a high profile contract for a prestigious client, or achieved accolades and industry recognition.

• Experience
   Instead of a lengthy employment history, your contractor CV should list your most relevant experience first. For example, if you’ve worked in different sectors on different projects, prioritise those that relate to the current project, regardless of chronology.

• Professional Training & Education
  If you’re an experienced contractor, you may have undertaken professional courses relating to your specific industry and role, these should generally come before your university education, while school education is often left out unless you’re relatively new to contracting.

Pay attention to presentation

Regardless of their individual skills, all contractors need good attention to detail and the ability to stay organised. How your CV is formatted and presented will tell the client something about you, even before they begin to read it, so make sure that your contractor CV looks professional. Check your CV for clarity and readability, paying attention to fonts, paragraphs, alignment and grammar. Avoid using pictures or unusual fonts as they are distracting and can become distorted in digital format. If you want to provide examples of your work, include a link to your LinkedIn profile or online portfolio.

Investing time in your CV will save time later

As a contractor, a stand out CV is your primary marketing tool and will also form the basis for your other marketing activities, so it’s worth investing the time in getting it right. Once you’ve got all the information and dates in the right order, it’s a simple matter of ‘tweaking’ things here and there or using the information for the basis of your online profiles, portfolios and application forms.