HOW CONTRACTING CAN BOOST YOUR CAREER
As an ICT professional, your value
to those who hire you is built entirely on your perceived value to them. How best to build – and be able to boast of –
your value? You could spend years
climbing the corporate ladder, fighting to build credibility, bogged down by
in-fighting and politics, and waiting for your seniors to retire or die off.
Or you could open up a world of opportunities to which you would not otherwise be exposed, fast-track your personal growth and extend your reputation. If you are strategic about it, contracting is the single best way to access those opportunities that will amplify your experience and capabilities, potentially catapulting you years ahead in the game.
Why?
You have access to a variety of industries
The vast majority of ICT skills can be applied across a variety of industries. By putting yourself out there as a contractor, the applicability of your skills increases enormously. Strangely, the mindset that constrains companies from considering you for a permanent position because you didn’t earn your pedigree in their industry, no longer applies. Effectively, the world becomes your oyster.
Not only are your opportunities for work increased, but so is the opportunity for you to add real value. One of the key sources of innovation is the adaptation of work methods from one industry to another. Take, for example, the revolution engendered by the application of ‘kaizu’ or total quality management principles – practiced initially in manufacturing - to business process engineering: it gave rise to an entirely new set of professions and business practices, and changed the definition of ‘efficiency’ forever. As a professional, these types of new learnings are invaluable. Not only does this exposure allow you to augment your own skills, but they can catapult the value you bring well beyond that of your staid and rigid peers.
Your ability to adapt to different circumstances is amplified
Adaptability is a key factor in your capabilities and effectiveness, and is an important component of resilience. As the pace of change in our world increases, our ability to not only to adapt to new circumstances but to be effective in them, will become a critical differentiator of those who succeed from those who become mediocre.
Every work environment brings its own challenges, new learnings and success factors. As a contractor, you are likely to be exposed to a significantly wider variety of such circumstances than as a permanent employee. This affords you the advantage of unconsciously learning to adapt and survive, a talent which is likely to elude those who choose to climb the corporate ladder and remain in the same company year in and year out.
You learn new ways of working
Let no one tell you all companies are the same. Each company has its own unique culture, work methods, policies, values, products, constraints and so on. And insofar as they affect your role and capabilities as a professional every experience – whether positive or negative - teaches you something of value. These new learnings may be subtle and unconscious or overt and conscious, but either way they add to your toolbox of skills, knowledge and experience, and become valuable add-ons to your competency on future assignments.
Increasing your range of experiences and capabilities in turn makes you more versatile and more valuable for prospective employers, whether in a permanent or contracting capacity. And hopefully it will make you ever more effective in your chosen field, improving your marketability.
You get to pick and choose your opportunities
As a contractor, you command your own destiny. Because you are not making long-term career decisions, your choices can be based far more on the attractiveness of the assignments themselves. You can accept an assignment because it excites you and will contribute directly to your skill set without needing to concern yourself about the corporate politics that come with it.
And of course, there is the corollary: because you have a choice, you don’t necessarily need to accept unpleasant situations merely because it will look bad on your CV if you choose to opt out.
You get to build your reputation and your network, exponentially
The more exposure you have and the more people you work with, the more you can extend your network of contacts and hence your reputation. Your personal network and the reputation you have built with them can have a massive influence on your future opportunities. Not only in terms of referrals for past work, but also in terms of contacts for your next assignment – networking counts!
And in today’s highly networked society, you have more opportunity now than ever before to showcase what you can do.
But be careful. Contracting takes guts, determination and diligence. It’s not for the faint-hearted; otherwise anyone would be able to do it. Understand that the next opportunity depends on what you’ve done in the past. Always be mindful of the pitfalls of contracting and diligently guard against falling into them. If you do, you may just find yourself telling others “I’ll never be able to just be an employee again.”
Or you could open up a world of opportunities to which you would not otherwise be exposed, fast-track your personal growth and extend your reputation. If you are strategic about it, contracting is the single best way to access those opportunities that will amplify your experience and capabilities, potentially catapulting you years ahead in the game.
Why?
You have access to a variety of industries
The vast majority of ICT skills can be applied across a variety of industries. By putting yourself out there as a contractor, the applicability of your skills increases enormously. Strangely, the mindset that constrains companies from considering you for a permanent position because you didn’t earn your pedigree in their industry, no longer applies. Effectively, the world becomes your oyster.
Not only are your opportunities for work increased, but so is the opportunity for you to add real value. One of the key sources of innovation is the adaptation of work methods from one industry to another. Take, for example, the revolution engendered by the application of ‘kaizu’ or total quality management principles – practiced initially in manufacturing - to business process engineering: it gave rise to an entirely new set of professions and business practices, and changed the definition of ‘efficiency’ forever. As a professional, these types of new learnings are invaluable. Not only does this exposure allow you to augment your own skills, but they can catapult the value you bring well beyond that of your staid and rigid peers.
Your ability to adapt to different circumstances is amplified
Adaptability is a key factor in your capabilities and effectiveness, and is an important component of resilience. As the pace of change in our world increases, our ability to not only to adapt to new circumstances but to be effective in them, will become a critical differentiator of those who succeed from those who become mediocre.
Every work environment brings its own challenges, new learnings and success factors. As a contractor, you are likely to be exposed to a significantly wider variety of such circumstances than as a permanent employee. This affords you the advantage of unconsciously learning to adapt and survive, a talent which is likely to elude those who choose to climb the corporate ladder and remain in the same company year in and year out.
You learn new ways of working
Let no one tell you all companies are the same. Each company has its own unique culture, work methods, policies, values, products, constraints and so on. And insofar as they affect your role and capabilities as a professional every experience – whether positive or negative - teaches you something of value. These new learnings may be subtle and unconscious or overt and conscious, but either way they add to your toolbox of skills, knowledge and experience, and become valuable add-ons to your competency on future assignments.
Increasing your range of experiences and capabilities in turn makes you more versatile and more valuable for prospective employers, whether in a permanent or contracting capacity. And hopefully it will make you ever more effective in your chosen field, improving your marketability.
You get to pick and choose your opportunities
As a contractor, you command your own destiny. Because you are not making long-term career decisions, your choices can be based far more on the attractiveness of the assignments themselves. You can accept an assignment because it excites you and will contribute directly to your skill set without needing to concern yourself about the corporate politics that come with it.
And of course, there is the corollary: because you have a choice, you don’t necessarily need to accept unpleasant situations merely because it will look bad on your CV if you choose to opt out.
You get to build your reputation and your network, exponentially
The more exposure you have and the more people you work with, the more you can extend your network of contacts and hence your reputation. Your personal network and the reputation you have built with them can have a massive influence on your future opportunities. Not only in terms of referrals for past work, but also in terms of contacts for your next assignment – networking counts!
And in today’s highly networked society, you have more opportunity now than ever before to showcase what you can do.
But be careful. Contracting takes guts, determination and diligence. It’s not for the faint-hearted; otherwise anyone would be able to do it. Understand that the next opportunity depends on what you’ve done in the past. Always be mindful of the pitfalls of contracting and diligently guard against falling into them. If you do, you may just find yourself telling others “I’ll never be able to just be an employee again.”