Is your CV IR35 friendly? If you haven't already, some consideration ought to be given when designing your CV as it is a record of your employment status. Make sure the name of their own limited company is listed as current position - the same good practice stands for your LinkedIn profile as any information should be presented in a consistently ‘IR35-friendly’ way.

’IR35 friendly’ - isn’t that an oxymoron?

As a seasoned professional with many years of experience as an independent contractor a traditional chronological CV may not work best for you, not only because if might be overly long and therefore off putting to the reader. See our previous article <hyperlink> for some inspiration here. Focus on individual packets of work or projects written as mini case studies. Define the current state, the objective, what you did and the end result.

‘IF’ HMRC is looking for triggers that you are using a personal services company as a means of tax avoidance, then anything that makes you look like an employee isn’t a great idea. IR35 will be looking for engagement patterns, so structuring your CV as a portfolio of case studies with your limited company cited as your employer is far less likely to trigger an undesirable engagement pattern than a chronological CV might.

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Think of yourself as a Bundle of Skills Part 2 is specifically directed to Professional Contractors

If each entry in your CV’s career history describes your entire period of time with a company rather than describing the individual pieces of work that you delivered, then it looks like a period of employment instead of a series of individual and separate pieces of work. Bullet points have a habit of making the role feel BAU rather than project-based, whereas using case studies does the opposite.

When creating a case study style CV amend your ‘profile statement’ which outlines that you are an independent contractor who acts as a service provider for a portfolio of clients as leaves the reader under no illusion you are a professional contractor.

If you have been contracting for many year if may be that you have a master document that contains all your case studies which will allow you to draw from when designing a fit for purpose CV consider a method known as STAR (Situation, Task, Actions and Results) and use this as a guide to write your case studies. There is a link to this on our Twitter page https://twitter.com/DegreesofSepar1 or use the QR code above.

Give tangible and statistical evidence that you delivered results in each contract and ideally align the result with some kind of benefit that you delivered for your client.

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