
Self Employed CV - sudorank
How do you guys and girls go about adding self employed periods to your CV?<p>Are they a help or hindrance in tech?<p>I&#x27;ve got quite a few periods in mine and are updating it at the moment. By reading some message boards it appears self employment is a really bad thing!<p>Any thoughts on how to market self employment?<p>Thanks :)
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Tloewald
Build your CV around _projects_ not _employers_ (I was taught this style of CV
writing when I worked at Andersen Consulting (aka Accenture) and it's one of a
handful of things from that time that stuck with me). Also try to state
clearly and concisely what the project was and what your role was. AC also
suggested anonymizing employers -- e.g. "medium sized construction company"
which is a wise thing to do if the work is not public.

~~~
sudorank
Thanks, I did read about more "functional cv" types where you talked about
your roles and responsibilities.

Sounds like a possible plan.

To be honest it's quite frightening writing a CV again! Haven't had to do it
for a while!

~~~
thenipper
Be careful with functional resumes. A lot of recruiters/hiring managers don't
care for them. Myself included. They can work, but I also sometimes they can
be used to 'hide' inexperience. Disclaimer: I don't do tech recruiting so take
all of this with a grain of salt. I have reviewed resumes for
technical/'social innovation' positions but I tend to focus more on non
computery roles.

That being said, having a nice list of what your good at is great. Also I
really recommend having a summary at the top that is almost like a mini cover
letter. Target it towards the job you're applying for for example:

Sudorank is a developer with experience developing mid-sized systems in ruby
on rails hooking into legacy COBOL backends. Lauded for his/her ability to
mentally parse XML, he/she can manually code systems using a magnetic needle.
Comfortable leading teams Sudorank has had experience working a variety of
fields, from bio-med to lifestyle startups.

Keep in mind is that you want to save the recruiter/HM time. They might be
looking at 100 of these. Lead with why you're kickass.

Another handy trick is keep a plan text version for if you end up applying
through any automated systems. Source control is your friend here.

~~~
Tloewald
There's an enormous tension between CVs that are short and to-the-point and
CVs that pass some kind of idiotic "weight" test. The solution is:

a) To be brief and to the point (and honest), and b) to put your stuff in
reverse chronological order -- so the recent (and hopefully relevant) stuff is
up top.

The rest of it is there in case there's a weight test, or for when the CV has
been shortlisted and is being given a closer look.

Finally, you need to exercise judgment in how fine-grained you get with
"projects". You don't want to give the impression you're padding or claiming
credit for projects you had little hand in. (And consider tailoring your CV
for the job. I do not always do this, but I always do it for jobs I really
care about.)

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graeme
Which forums? Not everyone uses the term the same way. I stopped saying "self-
employed" and started calling myself "entrepreneur".

When I said self employed, people either heard "unemployed" or "marginal
freelance person, barely made ends meet". When I switched to entrepreneur,
people heard "successful businessman". The change was uncanny.

Now, my activities didn't change. So the questions to ask are:

    
    
      1. How did the people complaining about self-employed mean the term?
      2. Does that match what you do?
      3. How should you brand it so that the person hiring you understands it correctly?
    

I never had a problem with other entrepreneurs or managers. We spoke the same
language. I even got some unsolicited job offers when working for myself,
which never happened before.

In general, I think it's seen as a positive thing, as long as you're talking
about the kind of self-employment we mean here on Hacker News. Fairly
lucrative, manage your own schedule, no shortage of clients, but more overhead
and uncertainty than a job and a need to focus on non-technical stuff. The
latter two points explaining why someone might want a job instead of self-
employment.

~~~
rupert_murdaaa
This is solely my opinion, but whenever I hear people call themselves
"entrepreneur" I immediately think "C student in high school with few tangible
skills but is sick of working as a cook at Denny's and thinks calling
themselves an entrepreneur will lend them some weird street cred because they
heard Dre call himself an entrepreneur".

At least being simply self-employed is easily explained away by just wanting
to do some freelance work or consulting for a few months or whatever.

~~~
graeme
I think a lot depends on how the person says it too. If I had said
"entrepreneur" when I just started out, and things were shaky, people would
have had a different reaction.

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ffn
You could always change your title from something like "CEO of XYZ Co.",
"Founder at Acme Inc.", or "Chairman of Dog Corp" to something less ambitious
like "lead developer", "marketing manager", or even just "web developer".

Sure, occasionally, you might get employers in the valley who (claim) they
care a lot about your personal growth, but from my experience outside the tech
world, plenty of employers would much rather just have a dull but trustworthy
tool who gets the job done without fail to someone incredibly smart,
unscrupulous, and motivated. To these people (which I will venture to say is
the majority of small-business owners), your ambition is scary to them, so
you're better off not coming off as being ambitious.

TL;DR: best way to market self-employment? Don't. Instead market it as regular
employment where you had a lot of responsibilities.

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onion2k
Anecdotally, I've found it difficult to persuade potential employers that I
won't just quit after six months and start another business. It's a legitimate
concern on their part - if you're someone who likes the challenge and
(potential) reward of running your own business then you're less likely to
stay in a salaried job for as long as someone else. Employing someone should
really be a long term commitment from both parties.

Secondly, it's quite hard if you failed. I learnt a huge amount about running
a company, building software, even about _who I am_ , when I've been doing
startups, but ultimately the main thing I've demonstrated is that I can put a
lot of time and energy in to projects that fail. I didn't have the insight to
change what needed to change to ensure success or to walk away earlier to
limit my losses. Those aren't great things to show people.

All in all, being self-employed does make it harder to get a job afterwards.
If you recognise _why_ though, you can defend yourself against those issues
that employers will have.

~~~
seren
On a more optimistic note, from an employer point of view, I would prefer if
you had made some mistakes in the past on your own funds, and hopefully,
learned a good lesson in the process, and would not reproduce them with the
company money.

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victorstanciu
There's nothing wrong with self employment in and of itself. I've been self
employed for many years now, and this hasn't stopped me constantly receiving
jobs offers. Of course, I've also been employed for many years before that,
and that probably counts too.

I think self employment only looks bad when it's interspersed with very small
periods of employment, from a couple of months to six months. Having long
periods of unemployment, followed by short bursts of a couple of months here,
three months there could maybe be interpreted as a sign that the candidate has
a problem with keeping jobs, and that there are probably good reasons for
that.

Having only ever been self employed could also be seen as a bad sign. Having
never worked within a company, maybe the candidate has no teamwork skills,
cannot work within a hierarchy, cannot keep a fixed schedule, etc.

I can't think of any other situations when self employment would look bad.

~~~
fivedogit
May I ask how employers are even finding out about you to give you these
"constant" job offers? I've been a solo project guy for a long time and feel
like employers are unaware that I even exist.

I'm going to guess your resume has a Google/Amazon/Facebook name brand on it
somewhere.

~~~
victorstanciu
LinkedIn and personal recommendations mostly. I have absolutely no "name
brands" on my resume (I stay well away of large companies actually), but have
a somewhat productive network I've nurtured over the years, which is where I
also get 90% of my freelance projects. I also happen to live in Romania, where
there's no way to go hungry if you are an even remotely competent developer or
other type of IT professional, because the demand outweighs the supply by a
huge margin here. Living in the capital (Bucharest) also helps, since the vast
majority of IT companies have their offices here.

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reboog711
I'm not self employed; I am a small business owner. Start a formal business
for consulting [or whatever].

That way you aren't self employed; you were employed at Sudorank LLC or
something similar.

I haven't maintained a personal resume/CV is years; and have no plans to do so
again. I do not share past client names with other potential clients.
Recruiters don't know how to handle me, however it hasn't hurt my business.

For proof of skill people can review my books, articles, blog posts, or
StackOverflow profile.

I assume my first meetings with clients are very different than interviews
[although a few have had an interview-like feel].

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8ig8
I'm trying to do the same after ten years of running a web agency. I had some
successes, but I also made plenty of mistakes along the way since I was
learning while doing. Ultimately I couldn't make it into a viable business.

At first, it felt like a hindrance, a decade-long black dot that I wanted to
somehow hide. Now I'm proud of the period -- provided jobs, mentored, made
things, etc. -- so it is easier to talk about.

I'm not going the hide that period. I'm going to be frank about it once I hit
the streets. I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of hard lessons,
lessons that should help in whatever my new capacity is.

So I guess my advice is to be honest about those self-employed periods. They
are what they are.

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cik
IMHO - which doesn't mean much, it's really a combination of industry and
geography. And of course, I fully realize that what I'm writing below is based
on generalizations that I've witnessed/experienced.

For example, here in Canada there's very little risk tolerance, regardless of
what people tell you. You see it in the ways companies raise funds, are
valued, and even the execution points. Being 'self-employed' can be a
hindrance, especially in marketing. On the other side 'Founding X company -
building the overall business to over $YY in revenue' is a positive spin on
the same result.

On the other hand, discussing a project-based approach looks VERY good. At
that point you're a consultant, rather than a contractor or freelancer. Here,
that resonates better, in that people go 'ah, well paid expert'. This in turn
means that you can pivot the discussion around to project successes, the
values you've learned working on multiple projects, etc.

But most importantly, don't underestimate the value of the cover letter -
which I used to believe no one reads. If you can explain your _passion_ to
join organization X (for some specific reason), then effectively you're
priming your resume reader. That helps you positively change the conversation
- a brilliant technique from behavioral economics.

Good luck!

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mcv
Despite my CV clearly stating that I'm self-employed, and which period I've
been self-employed, many recruiters still seem to think my own company is
someone else's company. I have no idea why.

In any case, it doesn't seem to cause any problems. I work as freelancer, so
it makes every kind of sense that I have my own company.

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joeyspn
I've been intern, employed, freelance, self-employed, founder, consultant, and
I haven't had any problem marketing myself. In fact, I had an online profile
in one of those job seeking sites, and I had to take it off cos recruiters and
headhunters were continuously calling me with job offers (but I was happily
self-employed as stated in the CV!).

I think it is more about your achieved goals, projects and skills, and less
about who have you been working for. If I were you, I'd just concentrate my
efforts in building projects where you show off your skills (blog/portfolio,
github, etc...). IMO this can be more powerful than a CV.

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Avalaxy
Of course I added it to my resume! All the companies I interviewed at (all
small companies of <10 people though) thought it was a huge bonus for me. Even
though I'm only a medior developer I have proven that I can work independently
and responsibly. It also gave me a lot of cool projects to show.

That's how I did it; I just demo'd them the coolest apps I built and explained
why they were cool (google tweeted about it, won the imagine cup with it, got
covered by major news sites, etc.).

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mrvladnov
I'd create it around the job that you're trying to get. If an employer is
looking for a candidate, often the don't have the time to look deeply into
each resume coming in.

If your resume has traits that stand out for the position available, it'll
catch the employers eye and increase your chances of getting an interview.

I'd recommend writing about projects you did that relate to the job posting
combined with measurable facts about the results.

Hope that helps!

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vlokshin
If you go self-employed and take it seriously, you shouldn't be thinking about
a CV/resume :)

~~~
codingdave
Sure you would - maybe not for cold calling new prospects, but when I was
doing consulting, I would get asked for my resume as part of my potential
customer's due diligence process on me.

And those people would actually read it, because they already knew me and were
trying to understand my background to decide whether or not to bring me on to
a project. Unlike recruiters or hiring managers who are often just looking for
a reason to throw a resume in the trash to thin out their crowd of applicants.

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barrystaes
For me, as a programmer, having a (1 employee = me) business / being self-
employed alongside my study and some jobs has helped in building my CV.

On one hand it gave me a lot of first-hand experience with a lot of things,
and second it shows that i'm not keen on sitting on my hands.

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erik123
I tend to show my github account. Nobody asks any further questions about
ability after that.

~~~
simi_
Why the throwaway?

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philjackson
[http://philcv.com](http://philcv.com). I just mark the roles as
'(freelance)'.

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kybernetyk
I don't want to have a conventional job ever. So I don't have to worry about
my CV.

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keithalexander
been dealing with this for a long long time. Until I learned how to fudge a
resume or CV correctly(doesn't take much effort), I really struggled and lost
out to what I called the, "certified stupid", or "the Educated/indoctrinated
incompetents". Take a google search through people busted for fake CV's, many
of whom held VERY high positions at prestigious Universities yet it took
decades and decades to catch the few who've been caught. And we have a
commander in chief who's 'cv' is either false, or the biggest joke in history.
So my friend, plan ahead, purchase a number of throwaway cellphones(TracPhones
are less than $5!) and label each with a name, company, gender, etc. and use
those for your 'references'. Depending on what kind of work you seek you may
also want to research what people who left jobs under a NDA have to do when
trying to list previous work experience.

