October 21, 2021

Explore the benefits of contracting

7 min read

The rapid growth of technology’s core role in business has created a demand for skills in the space that’s hard to keep up with. New Zealand is experiencing a skills shortage across many roles in tech, making it an ideal time for experienced IT professionals to tap into the abundance of opportunities.

Along with full time, part time and fixed term roles, Absolute IT is a market leader in placing skilled contractors into organisations requiring specialist tech expertise. What’s interesting in talking with job seekers each day, is that many haven’t considered the benefits of contracting vs. a full time role. In this high-demand low-supply IT market, contracting presents a compelling alternative.

In this article, we’ll cover some of the benefits of contracting. If you identify with any of these points, a great next step is to get in touch with our team to discuss your options further.

There’s a big demand for specialist expertise

Many big tech-based initiatives in Kiwi organisations are project or programme-based, which inherently come with a finite lifespan, making a contractor resource the logical choice for many roles. Project managers, Business Analysts, Architects, developers and designers to name but a few, regularly have opportunities for work through contracting.

Furthermore, businesses know that to gain access to highly skilled experts in a particular field of tech, they may need to look to contractors, who have identified a more lucrative career through non-permanent ‘gigs’. In many cases, this makes sense for both parties – the contractor earns more and the organisation isn’t required to commit long term to an expensive resource potentially only needed for a specific project stage.

Many of our IT professionals enjoy 12 full months of work, for years at a time. This isn’t always the case, and as with any contractor you should expect the possibility of less or no work. Some contractors in IT may also have other ongoing freelance clients to help cushion the financial blow in between large contracts.

Variety in tech, projects, industries and businesses

Are you the type of tech professional who gets bored working in the same role, on the same platforms for the same business long term? If so, contracting might be the perfect antidote. By design you’ll be hopping from project to project, acquiring new experiences and skills along the way.

For our more technical contractors, they often get exposed to a wider range of technologies, quicker through a career in contracting. While you will be brought in for your strengths, the broader tech stacks will vary from contract to contract, giving you exposure to newer technologies, different products, builds and methodologies.

Contractors need to apply different parts of their brain as the business requirements and challenges vary between contracts. Being exposed to these varying challenges can help fast-track the development of a contractor’s skill set through exposure to different issues, helping them add value to the next project. While this approach may suit those who are comfortable with change, having a series of contracts will equip anyone with more confidence and new techniques to adapt and learn.

Variety is also rewarding thanks to the plethora of industries that require specialist IT talent to deliver on their business objectives; think financial, transport, tourism, government, health, ecommerce, retail – the list goes on. As a contractor, you’ll come into contact with these businesses, their people and their tech requirements. Aside from providing opportunities to apply skills and critical thinking across a variety of applications, switching up industries can be good to simply keep things interesting!

Flexibility around hours to fit your lifestyle

A contractor is essentially self employed, meaning that there’s often more flexibility around how to engage with the organisation they’re delivering services to. Full time employees are often obliged to meet more baseline requirements such as set start/finish times, company training obligations, and team building. Contractors aren’t so connected with the business (outside of the specific work they’re doing). This is by design, as contractors’ typical hourly rate means every minute they spend is ideally adding tangible benefit to that specific project.

While some projects may require contractors to be present for a full day, many projects can be negotiated as far as hours, days, and even location. Remote working with your own equipment can be attractive to an organisation who would otherwise need to supply a desk, power and potentially computer equipment.

So, if you’re an experienced IT professional who has other life commitments or hobbies, a contracting model could allow you to structure your week exactly how it suits you.

Significant earnings potential

There’s no big secret here; contractors usually earn more than full time employees and are typically paid on an hourly basis. The question will remain however, will this translate to a larger income, prorated over the course of the year? It’s an important consideration for a contractor as this answer may depend on how much downtime you have between projects. In today’s high-demand IT industry, any contractor with some good networking skills shouldn’t be without a gig for too long.

Organisations are willing to pay more for a contractor for a number of reasons:

Engaging a contractor ensures they are purely paying for technical resources that will be 100% productive on the task (or close to it).
Contractors don’t come with all the admin of a permanent employee, making onboarding or winding up engagement much easier (provided the terms of the contract are adhered to!).
Contractors are often brought into an IT-based project possessing some specific technical skills that may have been hard to find otherwise. Like salaried equivalents of these jobs, they demand a premium on the market.
The cost of a contractor can be built into the total project costs without great difficulty. When offset against the specific value they’re engaged to deliver, this makes the ROI model much easier for an organisation to account for.
Contactors may be needed immediately, and are able to hit the ground running.
They don’t need to pay the contractor holiday pay, sick leave or allocate training budget.

If you’re looking into contracting, make sure you put the time into determining the right charge out rate, based upon things like market demand, your experience, skills, covering costs like ACC and tax, plus the margin you want to make. It might also be worth connecting with others in contracting to get insights into how they calculate hourly rates.

There’s also nothing preventing you from adjusting your rates between contracts, either, so do make sure these are reviewed periodically to remain in step with the industry and your evolving value.

You’re totally in control of your business direction

Being self-employed puts the control – and responsibility – totally in your hands. That means you get to decide what work to take on, not an employer. If you’ve ever felt like you needed more say over how you use your workday, contracting is probably a good fit for you.

As the industry changes and evolves, a contractor can update and reframe their offering to market relatively quickly, ensuring that you stay current and in demand.

The one thing to note here – when we say it’s all up to you, it really is. This means any training, learning, sales, networking and marketing will fall on your shoulders alone.

Building a strong network of contacts quickly

Naturally, a contractor who strings together jobs will start to build up a sizable network of business relationships. Keeping connected with previous colleagues opens up the opportunity for repeat business.

As these contacts move to other organisations, there’s a chance they may tap into your expertise there as well. While permanent employees build strong relationships with their fellow staff, contractors build this list much quicker.

And beyond any business benefit, moving around regularly is simply a great way to meet lots of new friends, full stop!

Remove the perception around ‘job hopping’

We regularly talk with candidates who express concern around their CV and LinkedIn profiles showing multiple roles in a short space of time. While the stigma of this is much less in the modern IT era, it’s still a legitimate concern when trying to reassure a potential employer that you’re not a ‘flight risk’.

These aren’t concerns a contractor really needs to worry about; by design their careers are made up of lots of projects as opposed to permanent roles. Therefore it’s unlikely to cause any issues.

Furthermore, many IT-based roles on a contract basis will last for a significant period of time; some bigger projects could require you for over a year!

Keen to look for a contracting role or simply learn more about your options? Absolute IT connects skilled IT workers with fantastic contracting opportunities. Reach out to our team today to start on your contracting journey.

How to talk about responsibilities in a job interview (and how they differ from ‘duties’)

7 min read

There’s no one standard way to run a job interview – in fact our clients have a myriad of ways they like to assess a candidate’s fit for a position. You might interview a 1-1, 1-2 or even talk to a panel. The questions might be open ended and organic, or set based on a tight framework or behavioural based methodology. But there’s one thing that is consistent – and that’s the importance of answering a question substantially and positively. If you’re about to give a one word answer, there’s a good chance you have misunderstood the question!

In this article, we’re going to explore the idea of duties vs. responsibilities and how they are both important to cover in your answers. It can be tricky telling the difference on face value, but these two concepts manifest entirely differently as you assume a position in a company.

What is considered a ‘duty’ of a job?

A duty really refers to a requirement, or expected tasks you’ll carry out in a role. They are more to do with a job description and less about you, the individual. All jobs include duties that need to be done regardless of who fills the position. They are designed to make the role function properly within the context of a wider team and organisation.

Duties are expected and fulfilled. There’s often a measure or yes/no answer as to whether duties are being done or not.

What is considered a ‘responsibility’ of a job?

Responsibility in the job world is less about actions and more about being ‘on the hook’ for something in the business. If you’ve got a responsibility for something in the business, you are mostly concerned with it being done vs. who actually does it. This is why leaders in a business have plenty of responsibility – they will utilise the skills of their team to see it out, providing support and direction where needed.

For example, let’s take the activity of front end development. A duty associated with this job might be “coding and styling of visual components”. And a responsibility of this job might be ‘ensuring that our online portal’s forms offered a positive user experience’.

They may seem nuanced, but employers will be listening out for examples of responsibility as well as duties. Remember, your CV can do some of the heavy lifting when it comes to duties, and talk to some responsibilities. But it’s in your job interview, where you’ve got the format to answer in long form, that you’ll best illustrate your fit for the role.

Using the job description/job ad to understand the duties of the role

Preparation is everything with a job interview. The last thing a hiring manager wants to do is reiterate what’s already in the ad. Take a few hours to read through the job ad (and description if that’s available) and become familiar with exactly what the employer is looking for. Some candidates we talk to like to print out or mark up the job ad digitally, making notes against each requirement or sentence with relevant experience they bring that aligns to this.

Go through the job ad and look for language like “in this role you will be…” . This is the most logical place to start when listing out the duties that will be expected of you. Then, take a look at the experience/qualifications to pick out the technical/hard skills desired. Make a list of these.

With the ‘what’ clearly extracted from the ad, you can now go through other parts of the job ad, such as the company’s mission, the team, the culture etc. It’s here where you can start to get an idea of some of the responsibilities you may have the opportunity to take, which is an excellent place to prepare answer forms.

How to surface your past experience with holding responsibilities

Time to sit down with your CV and/or LinkedIn profile and do some reflection. Every role you’ve had there will be responsibilities you can point to. Here’s how to surface ‘responsibilities’ from previous work experience:

What was the end result of the work you did in the job?
What risks did you individually have to navigate through?
What tasks were delegated or given to you by a leader to ‘own’?
What activities outside of your job description did you take on in the role?
What parts of the business or project were solely on you to make sure they happened?
Did you train or lead others?

Spend a good amount of time on each role as it can be tricky to write these out immediately. By answering the above questions you can start to build a list of responsibilities.

Applying past responsibilities to requirements of the role in preparation for the interview

Now you’re able to go through the long list, with the job ad next to you and mark out the responsibilities that directly apply to the requirements of the position. You might want to copy and paste the job ad into a document, split up each requirement and underneath drop in the past experience that applies.

It might sound like a bit of work, but believe us, you’ll be thankful when you’re sitting in the interview and have this experience to draw from immediately. Taking a minute to answer every question can at best slow the energy down, and at worst, look simply unprepared.

Find responsibilities in every job, no matter how junior

The reality is that every single job from mowing the lawns to CEO of a major organisation has ‘responsibility’. Often certain actions we took can be undersold as simply duty, when in actual fact the importance behind the action and your personal accountability means these are legitimately responsibilities you were managing.

Situation, Task, Action, Result

STAR method is just one way to answer a job interview question but can be useful to structure a comprehensive answer, as well as provide you a structure to prepare for. Some job interviews will require this type of answer, often framed as ‘behavioural’ style interviews. Even if this isn’t outwardly required by the hiring manager, you may wish to use STAR to prepare answers that focus around responsibilities.

Here’s an example:

Tell us about a time where you didn’t agree with the decisions made by a leader and how you navigated this?

Situation: The suggested platform to build a customer portal was one I’d had experience with and encountered numerous issues with.

Task: I was expected, as an experienced FED in the team, to provide some guidance to others about the best way to apply our designs to the platform.

Action: I arranged a 15m one on one with my direct lead, confidentially to air the concern, rather than put them on the spot in front of the whole team. We had a discussion where I cited previous issues with the platform chosen and why they could put us in trouble later on.

Result: My lead was grateful that someone had spoken up and helped the business mitigate risk. Together we put together communication for the team and I was made responsible for identifying some alternative options as well as investigating the latest version of the platform in question. Ultimately the business proceeded with the platform, after we got assurance from the vendor that my past experiences were due to issues that were now resolved. Ultimately my manager developed greater trust in me for being open, up front but respectful in the manner in which I went about it.

Now, you don’t need to verbalise ‘STAR’ method in the interview itself, but instead map out your examples ahead of the interview in this way as it will a) help you remember the scenarios, and b) structure them in a way that lines up with what the interviewer wants to hear.

Through a STAR type answer, you can pick out examples of you taking responsibilities that will apply to the role you’re interviewing for. The example above includes instances of existing (provide guidance to others) and newly-given responsibilities (help identify alternative options). As you prepare your STAR stories, try highlighting these moments to ensure you speak to them in the interview. You will also naturally cover off duties of your role through these answers and your CV which provides the timeline/context for the interview as you talk.

Examples of responsibilities within the IT sector

Clean, secure code
Security of systems
Training of others
Ensure a project hits milestones
Budget is kept to
Provide the best possible user experience
Designing a solution for the business that meets all stakeholder’s needs
Understanding and communicating requirements of a project
Represent the technology side of the business to other departments.
Protect the business from cyber threats
Reliability of information and data.
Ensuring our users can access our product, uninterrupted.

What’s the hardest interview question you’ve been asked?

We’d like to know! Get in touch with our team here to share your experiences or ask us a question.