Freelance and Perm work on CV

notsurewhereIstand

I'm looking for work at the mo and re-doing the CV, I've done mainly freelance work most recently and am applying for work, do I label the periods of employment as freelance and permanent or otherwise. I've got 10 years experience and want to get back into perm work. Any thoughts appreciated.

magenta22

Put on the end of that they were freelance, contract or temporary.

scheming_gypsy

Mine says (for example)

Senior IT support Engineer
dates from - to........................................................... Where at



2nd line support engineer (contract)
dates from - to ..........................................................Where at

an9i77

Agreed - you need to say they are contract to avoid looking like a job hopper, although you may still come up against employers who think that 'once a contractor always a contractor' so you may want to put in your covering letter why you are now changing to permanent. I did a lot of contracts during a five year period and when I wanted to make the switch to perm, I found it difficult to be taken seriously as a perm candidate tbh, although it may be different in your field.

bergamot_2

I don't think freelancing is taken as the bad thing. It shows that you can work on your own initiative, you know people and you are rather flexible. You just have to be able to show what exactly you've done during that time.
Or maybe I am just saying that because I'm freelance architect...;)

notsurewhereIstand

an9i77 wrote: »

when I wanted to make the switch to perm, I found it difficult to be taken seriously as a perm candidate tbh....

What did you say when they asked you why you wanted the perm position?

paddyrg

The other thing about contractors is they bring a lot of fresh ideas from having worked at multiple companies - it can work in your favour if in the interview you allude to the fact you've been luck enough to see how xyz companies solved particular problems, and the pitfalls and benefits thereof.

notsurewhereIstand

Very true paddyrg.

an9i77

notsurewhereIstand wrote: »

What did you say when they asked you why you wanted the perm position?

To be honest I found it hard to even get perm interviews! Eventually I got a perm job via the temp to perm route as I went to do a three month contract, the permanent person got a job elsewhere and my manager like me so asked if I wanted to take her role. But the way I spun it when I did get the odd perm interview was - I did contracts to get breadth and depth of experience in a number of industries whilst I was young and earlier in my career blah blah blah, now I want to settle down and have the security of a permanent role. If I hadn't gone the temp to perm route I expect I'd still be contracting. But then I've known a lot of contractors get into permanent work that way, where I work I can think of a number of people in professional contracting roles who stayed on as perms. Especially now that contracting is less secure I think a perm role is a lot more appealing than it used to be.