Ask HN: How to turn self-employment into employment? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to turn self-employment into employment?

9 pointsivyirwin19 comments

I've been working for myself for the past 7 years and it's been great. But life is moving pretty fast and the security and reliability of a "real" job is looking more and more attractive. What's the best way to represent the time I've been working for myself when applying for a job?

In particular, I've been involved with a handful of failed startups (some I've started, some as an employee of sorts) and I find it difficult to translate the experience from those projects onto a resume (i.e. I didn't have a particular role because I was doing everything). And along those lines, while being self-employed I've picked up a variety of skill sets that don't fit a particular "category" on a resume.

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So, let me be the one to come out and say this:

I've been in several interviews, both at startups and on more-established teams, where a record of no-traction startup failures was a real neg. It can have the appearance of someone who doesn't want to buckle down and work.

There is no reason --- none at all --- that you should put disfavorable information on your resume. Pick a couple (2) of the most interesting-looking attempts and showcase them. Leave everything else out.

Obviously, subcontracting, consulting, temp, and meaningful volunteer and open-source work should get written up. If you worked for name-brand clients who you're allowed to mention, and you were there for more than a couple months, list them as if they were jobs, with a subhed like "on behalf of XYZ Consulting, Inc.".

If you did most of your self-employed work under a single umbrella company name (and, everyone else, here's a good reason why you should), list that company for the largest possible time span. Freelance work counts! Having helped run a consultancy for 4 years now, I'd look more favorably on someone who managed to keep a freelance practice running for 7 years.

Thanks for putting the failures in perspective. I think my biggest challenge on that front is to represent the time I spend on those projects without showcasing the failure or leaving a time gap on the resume. Also, it would be great to be able to represent the "intangibles" that come with startup experience.

If at any point you've operated a sole-proprietorship or LLC with an actual documented name, you should list the earliest justifiable start time and the latest justifiable end time for it, allowing it to span the periods where you worked at your least-successful startups. Demote those startups from standalone entries in your resume to bullets (at most) in your IvyIrwin, LLC entry.

What exactly do you do, it may help us to offer useful suggestions on how to fix it

Thanks for the offer. But in the spirit of HN, this question is for all of the self-employed people out there that might one day need to put together the ol' resume.

Not sure if this will translate to your situation, but I eventually figured out that resumes need to show I created specific tangible benefits to whomever was my employer at the time. For example, rather than say "Have 5 years of Blub", I'd was better off saying, "Wrote code in Blub that reduced transaction processing time, resulting in greater sales of foo."

Are there things in your experience that demonstrate the ability to add value (even if the overall project failed)?

Brought a product to market? Improved overall development time? Unless you're applying for some grunt cog coder job, I think (or hope, at least) that showing you are capable of producing value under pressure would be of most interest.

Whoever hires you can teach you the stuff you don't know.

> I'd was better off saying, "Wrote code in Blub that reduced transaction processing time, resulting in greater sales of foo."

and better again by stating it as " wrote code in blub that increased sales by 25% and reduced transaction processing time by 50%"

There are probably some smaller successful sub-projects within the startup failure.

Yes, details can matter.

Note to all of you working regular jobs that you will eventually leave: Pay attention now to the value you are adding, and keep notes. It's very hard to recall these sorts of details when you are depositing your final paycheck.

It really does look better when you have some actual numbers, and better yet when you know they are true.

Even if you can only say, "Was part of a team that ...", the fact that you pay attention value added, and not simply count the years spent sitting in a cube, speaks volumes.

I had that same issue come up for me and I think the approach I've taken isn't terrible. I updated my resume and for years I was contracting, I wrote a seven word synopsis for each project I did during that time putting it all under a big heading of "Contracting". I sent my updated resume to some recruiters and they've gotten me several interviews. On the interviews, I've gone into great detail on the relevant projects and mentioned the companies I worked for.

I haven't gotten a job from that part yet but at the same time that I was dealing with recruiters, I called all my best clients and told them what was going on with me to let them know I wasn't going to be available for future work. During that call, I asked them to keep there ears open for anyone who needed me full time. I ended up getting a job from one of my clients with the understanding that I would be looking for a full time position. I had to give him a really low rate though but the dependable income is really nice, especially considering how many times I haven't gotten paid on jobs.

Ted you say that you didn't get paid on some jobs? What advice would you give someone who is thinking of starting to freelance with respect to getting paid? Any insights from having gone through the process yourself? Thanx

You are doing it wrong if you don't get paid at least 3x for every contract.

Before starting, after a significant milestone, and before handing over final code.

Two things that I found which make it easier to get paid are working on site at an hourly wage and sending your bills out weekly. Everybody gets to see how hard you are working this way and there isn't any question about value. Also, there is the added benefit of you gaining a deeper understanding of your clients business instead of seeing only a small part of it.

Sending your bills out more often will stop clients from getting sticker shock. Remote jobs I've done where I sent one bill at the end of three or four weeks when the work was done were the hardest for me to get paid on, even from people that I had success at getting paid by previously.

Cool thankx for that. A few more questions: 1. In the case you didnt get paid, what did you do? Did you send them a lawyer? 2. How did you get your first gig ? Thanx

I've gotten all my jobs by word of mouth. The first person that didn't pay me, I found out that he has a long list of people that he hasn't paid so I let it go after several months. Since then, I've always limited how much I would do for someone until there was a long term business relationship.

Cool thanx.

From what I have seen in the recent market in california, if you are a coder you should be ok, if you are not then you need to network a lot. People tend to see big name companies and think they are a lot more worthy than people who have been working on their own startups. I don't agree, but it is what I have run into. It may be different in SF than LA but getting through that first HR person hurdle tends to be tough.

If you are a coder they have no understanding of what you are doing most of the time so they just forward it up the chain more readily.

I had an even more extreme situation: 15 years of self-employed bumming, startups, small-business and I did very little programming.

How I got a full-time programming job:

Find industry that I was interested in.

Research company that I was interested in.

Brush up on industry and company specific domain knowledge.

Tailored my CV to be relevant to company.

Get interview(direct personal e-mail to person responsible for hiring).

Nail linked-list building and recursive tree traversal in the interview.

Show industry specific knowledge in the interview.

Get job.

Note: industry specific knowledge was as important as programming knowledge.

Two extra things you could consider:

1. Think of what you'd like to be doing and accentuate those achievements that reinforce your past success in the areas that will allow you to do more of what you want.

2. In my experience, generalist experience often helps you in tricky situations once you have the job. But, it doesn't win you jobs. Recruiters will gloss over that stuff or even simply reject your CV. Accentuate your strongest skills and achievements that clearly demonstrate them.

In the current job market, you want to position yourself as someone who consistently delivers above average results that can't be off-shored. So all those learning experiences (failed startups) are best papered over.

You do the same thing everybody else does, show them what you have done, and what you can do for them. The fact that you were involved in startups and managed to stay afloat last 7 years is an asset to you, not a liability.

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