A day in the life of…a self-employed consultant

Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR, the HR blog written for and by members of Human Resources UK.

Despite being truly caught up in the Olympics I’ve promised not to fill this with tenuous links as is my way, so this week’s Discus HR... That will be the end of that! 

This week we welcome back our regular writer John Hepworth, who has written a piece that I feel will be extremely relevant to a large number of our members, those brave souls who go it alone and become self-employed consultants.

P.S. Look out for next week’s announcement about our forthcoming networking events (Ed Scrivener)

A day in the life of…a self-employed consultant

The consultant's leap of faith!

Being self employed is a weird thing. To begin with, the majority of self-employed consultants appear to work on their own – after years of trudging to the office to work with colleagues (love ‘em or hate ‘em), we suddenly find ourselves at a laptop in the kitchen or in a managed office somewhere, infrequently populated with others! So, that is the first thing about self-employment, in the world of HR especially - are you happy to spend more time with your own company? Now, do not get me wrong. You soon start to network with ‘fellow travellers’ and some even join established consultancies where the transition is perhaps easier. It is still a change, though, from the daily routine and monthly salary of ‘employed status’.

And the next change of course is how you get your work. Having spent years sorting out management and employee disputes and getting a pay cheque each month, suddenly you are in the role of sales and marketing manager – for yourself! The challenge is doubled if you decide that you want to do work you like, more than the ‘stuff’ you don’t – one distinct advantage of self-employment – and this of course is much harder than it sounds? On average, one day of consultancy takes 15 days of effort…

To a certain extent, the focus in the early days is learning how to ‘sell the benefit’ of HR & D to organisations that have had no HR or Training culture – or indeed, have one that is different to your own. Either that, or you are having to ‘sell the benefit’ of your skills and experience to an HR Manager / L&D Manager, who may see you as a threat to their authority – especially on cold calls (hint – don’t make ‘em)!

This is the next thing - you need to be very focused and in that clichéd recruitment phrase, a ‘self-starter’, to succeed. There is invariably no support network around you, at least initially. In order to get business, you get very skilled very quickly in assessing whether a potential client may be interested or not.

Cashflow is another aspect of self-employment to which you need to adjust. It is a bit obvious perhaps – regular pay suddenly becomes either feast or famine. You then have the view that you cannot turn work down ‘just in case’ and suddenly, you have been working flat out for six months and done nothing to build contacts for the next set of assignments! This inevitably comes back to focus. Focus in that you need to understand how much you need to earn; how many days that equates to and at what price; what sort of work you want to do (surely there has to be a benefit to being able to do what you want?); and when to schedule in time for ‘Project You’ – if you don’t, then you will fall over!

So, why become self employed? To start, you get to meet a whole load more people in the long run and you do manage to escape from the computer. The job is about relationships and not the PC, so the role releases you to do just that – build relationships. In the scheme of things, you get the chance to build a business – regular clients, people who share your values – rather than ‘get work’. If you go out as an interim, that lifestyle allows you security AND flexibility as you can – by and large – choose when you want to work.

This theme of flexibility continues in that you do learn and develop, putting yourself into situations that you would never have dreamt of in ‘proper jobs’. The fact that you do so and survive is very motivating and fulfilling. Above all, self-employment allows you to have control of your life AND satisfy the needs of others. Ideal, then.

About the author

John helps organisations, especially in the SME sector, achieve competitive advantage.  He has a particular interest in translating strategic HR management into practice.  Typically, this has meant focusing his efforts on recruitment and selection, performance management and training and development activities.  John sees the challenge of matching the development of internal competencies with the externally driven demands of the market place as one of the key themes in developing organisational engagement, capability and performance.
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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK.  Next week’s Discuss HR will be written by Performance Consultant Una Doyle.

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