How To Add Consulting Work To Your Resume Without Raising Red Flags

Forbes

2 days ago

How To Add Freelance Or Consulting Experience To Your Resume (Without Raising Red Flags)
I've been consulting for the past year and I wasn't sure how to put it on my resume. I know that employers don't like to see that. – Accountant
Your resume is an important part of your job search, so it's good that this accountant is thinking about how to maximize each item they include. However, overly generalized assumptions (such as, employers not liking consulting experience) are not good. See previous post, The Reason Your Job Search Isn't Working Is Not What You Think, for a more detailed explanation, but essentially the wrong assumption can derail your search, and even a correct assumption likely doesn't apply to every job you're targeting.
Why Employers Care About Consulting Experience
If your most recent experience has been consulting (or freelance), then employers care about it because employers prioritize what you have been doing most recently.
Listing all of your experience (including the consulting) ensures that you don't leave employment gaps that you'll need to explain. A prospective employer might skip over resumes with gaps, assuming that the candidate hasn't been doing anything. Add consulting experience to your resume as soon as you confirm that you'll be consulting, rather than working a traditional job, for several months, certainly at the one-year mark.
Consulting projects give you results to discuss in your interviews and networking meetings. You can point to skills and expertise you have developed and used firsthand. Make sure your resume sells your consulting experience by itemizing specific software and other technical skills you are using. If you are concerned that sharing quantitative information will betray your client's confidentiality, then share less specific information (e.g., % improvement rather than the actual result).
If you work with brand-name clients that your target employers know, then your clients give you a halo effect – i.e., if your work is good enough for them, it's probably good enough for the employer. If you have worked with a variety of clients, you can sell your diversity of experience and access to multiple strategies and best practices as a competitive advantage. If you are concerned about listing specific client names, then list a description that still gives readers a sense of the type of client you served (e.g., industry, size using terms like 'small business' or 'Fortune 500', tenure using terms like 'start-up' or 'established').
How To Avoid Raising Red Flags When Looking For A Full-Time Job After Consulting Or Freelancing
That said, a move from consulting back to full-time employment can raise red flags if positioned incorrectly.
Employers may question your motivation because consulting work and the consulting life is different from being a full-time employee. You need to convince prospective employers that you are genuine in why you're making the change, ideally focusing on why you want to be an employee and not on why you don't want consulting. Motivation is not something that comes across in the resume, so make sure to attach a cover letter framing your transition into consulting as temporary. Focus on networking where you can tell your story prior to sharing a resume. Tell your story in the About section of your LinkedIn profile to preemptively address any questions about your motives.
You can't be unemployed for a year, do a day of pro bono work and call yourself a consultant to paper over an employment gap. While you don't need to have worked 40 billable hours each and every week to match a full-time schedule, you should have multiple clients, or multiple projects for a single client, to point to, so your experience is taken seriously. On your resume, if you have multiple clients or projects to showcase, dedicate a separate bullet in your consulting experience section to detail each client or project.
Employers are tuned to WIIFM radio (i.e., What's In It For Me). You may have impressive results-focused consulting experience but until you show how it's relevant to your target employer, they may discount it. Don't just list your experience, and assume your prospective employers will see the value. Promote your value by talking about the specific needs they are facing and showing how your experience, expertise and skills are the solution. This is best done in a cover letter or in a networking meeting. On the resume, include details that your target employer cares about. For example, if you are targeting accounting jobs at large companies and you have large company consulting clients, when you describe your consulting, be sure to include the sizes of your clients.
What Career Changers Can Do To Get Past The Resume Screen And Into The Interview Process
The change from consulting to full-time employee is a career change, even if you're returning to a similar function, like accounting, and/or returning to the same industry you worked in before (e.g., media, retail, banking, etc.). Generally, employers prefer people who have done the exact role before. In a choice between someone who had been in-house versus a consultant, they may feel the in-house candidate is a safer bet.
If your consulting work was taking over for a full-time employee and essentially filling that role, just not on the payroll, then emphasize this for future employers. You're positioning yourself as an employee who happened to be a consultant, minimizing the change. If your work wasn't structured like that, find other similarities between your work and the in-house staff, such as working closely with them, using the same processes, or interacting with the same senior leaders.
Resumes make it easy to filter candidates out, not invite them in. Employers look for gaps in dates, search for keywords (and note their absence), scout for recognizable names (and discount ones they don't recognize) and skim years or decades of background in seconds. Relying on a resume to make your case cedes control of your job search to the resume reader (if anyone reads the resume at all!). Spend more time reaching out to decision-makers and other working professionals than sending out unsolicited resumes.
If you haven't made it known to your consulting clients that you would prefer a traditional job, do that ASAP. Your clients know, like and trust your work so if there is an ongoing need, they may convert you to a full-time employee. If there isn't, they can at least be strong references for you and may have opportunities to refer. Once they see how serious you are about leaving for a traditional job, they may create something for you in order to keep you. Your consulting experience is a lead generator for your job search, not a detractor. When looking for a job, consider both consulting and traditional jobs.