Resume for the self-employed: watch the wording

Self-employment is a popular form of work today. But it also happens that the self-employed, seeing an interesting vacancy, decide to get a permanent job under an employment contract. Moskovskaya Pravda learned from experts how to correctly compose a resume and how to correctly reflect their activities in the self-employed mode.

Basically, when writing a resume, you should be guided by generally accepted principles. So, the resume should have a clear structure, it should contain basic information about you, education, work experience and key skills. But there are some nuances, especially in the part that concerns the description of labor activity.

“Depending on the field of activity, it is worth indicating what projects you have implemented, their scale and duration, with which companies you have collaborated,” said Daria Kosareva, director of the Amplua career bureau. – But if you had a large number of customers, it makes sense to indicate in your resume only those who are relevant to the vacancy you are applying for. Suppose you are an accountant and provided payroll services and bookkeeping for entrepreneurs with a simplified taxation system. In this case, when applying for a vacancy for a payroll accountant, you can indicate all projects on this topic, and the companies with which you collaborated, describe the tasks that solved, what difficulties you encountered and how you got out of them. If you had more creative projects, like, for example, a graphic designer, then in addition to the key tasks, you also need to attach your portfolio.

It will not be superfluous to ask for letters of thanks from the companies with which you have collaborated and also attach them to your resume. And, of course, an additional plus will be a cover letter with a reasoned explanation of why you are the right person for this job.

Dmitry Karpov, director of the National Sports Center ANO, shared his experience of reviewing resumes of self-employed people:

– I am the head of an enterprise in an industry where self-employment has recently spread quite widely. Therefore, my personnel officers quite often have to not only ask for self-employment certificates, but also give advice on how to correctly reflect it in a resume. We did not reinvent the wheel, but chose the long-established wording “independent”: an independent consultant, an independent fitness trainer, an independent accountant, and so on.

However, since this wording still does not adequately reflect the skills of the candidate, more specific information should be indicated in the resume. In addition, you should be prepared for the fact that she will be asked to confirm.

– We ask you to additionally indicate several organizations or individuals (with their consent) ready to confirm the fact of providing quality services. And in order to avoid possible attempts at deception, we warn that at the interview it will be necessary to show receipts for payment for the services of the self-employed, issued to these companies or individuals, – said Dmitry Karpov.

The importance of paying attention to wording was also emphasized by career consultant Maxim Chernyshov.

– The expression “everything ingenious is simple” can be applied here as well. So, in a resume, instead of “self-employed” or “freelance”, it is better to write “private practice”. Someone does not see much difference in this, but as my practical experience of creating a resume shows, the conversion rate for a response with the wording “private practice” is much higher than for others,” the expert noted.

When describing the functionality, there are also some peculiarities that are necessary for resumes to be noticed and to distinguish you from the total number of candidates.

– The first point is to use the past tense action verb to write the functional. Suppose a candidate is applying for the position of an HR manager. This means that one of the functional points of a HR manager who has worked for some time in private practice should look like this: “I conducted preliminary telephone interviews and initial interviews in person and remotely,” Maxim Chernyshov explained. – The next point, which 95% of candidates forget about, is the mandatory presence of achievements in the resume. They, too, should be indicated using the action verb and the maximum digitization of the results. For example: “During the period of work, she developed, agreed and approved more than 200 job descriptions and other local regulations.”

In general, the nuances of writing a resume for the self-employed are quite simple, and if you take them into account, the likelihood of getting the desired position will be higher. In addition, as Maxim Chernyshov noted, the current situation on the labor market is largely due to the demographic gap of the 1990s. That is, in many areas, an overabundance of workers is clearly not observed. So the presence of a private practice candidate in the resume is unlikely to become an obstacle in order to get a comfortable and highly paid employment position.

Alena Bodrienko.

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