How to Stand Out on Your Freelance Resume
When writing a CV, how can you demonstrate your freelancing job experience? Find out how to write a freelance business CV, as well as recommendations for making your freelancing abilities stand out.
In your freelancing career, you may run into what seems to be a roadblock when constructing your CV.
The question is, “How do I compare to someone who have years of full-time experience?”
What can I do to make my freelancing experience seem more like management experience?”
What is the best way to demonstrate my hard and soft abilities on my CV by highlighting my freelancing work?”
There’s nothing wrong with any of these inquiries, and drafting a CV as a freelancer may be a difficult task, particularly if you’re coming from a traditional job.
A typical CV will generate a slew of recommendations from friends, coworkers, and family members as you go through the hiring process.
For example, consider the following.
Rather of listing your responsibilities, highlight your successes!
If you want to stand out, share your most unusual job experiences with us.
All of your promotions and your professional development should be shown.
A freelancer’s life, on the other hand, is not as simple as the life of a full-time employee who has aspirations to rise through the ranks of the corporate world.
One of the most difficult tasks for a freelancer is determining how to ‘identify oneself.’
When it comes to seeming ‘all over the place,’ it may be a difficult issue to navigate.
Even if you want to make the transition from your freelancing work to a full-time position at a typical bigger organization, the process might be quite challenging.
As a freelancer, there are a few tactics that will help you stand out and seem strong, as if you are a truly experienced leader who brings a wide range of valuable talents and values to the table. Here are a few of these suggestions:
Yes, I also work as a freelance resume consultant, to answer your question. I’ve also worked with full-time professionals as well as creative freelancers on their resumes, providing consultation, editing, proofreading, and rewriting services.
It is critical to explicitly express your freelancing experience when dealing with freelancers (and I, too, had had a full-time freelance profession at one point!) Additionally, if you are freelancing while simultaneously working full-time, this is applicable.
The reason for this is because if your resume is presented to a recruiter who has never seen a freelancing CV before, you want it to stand out and make you seem to be the expert that you are. Even if your freelancer website has all of your portfolio work, you should have a CV that summarizes your qualifications.
As a freelancer, here are my greatest ideas to keep in mind whether you’re preparing your CV, or if you want to increase your freelancing experience and transform it into a full-time profession.
Take advantage of the most recent freelancing advice.
In the future, you’ll get more articles similar to this in your mailbox!
REGISTRATION BY E-MAIL
Get inventive while describing your company if you are the owner of your own.
For example, I’ve seen various kinds of ‘disclaimers’ that appear after the name of a creative freelancing firm, such as:
Becca’s Freelance Business, Inc. is a for-profit corporation incorporated in the state of California.
To assist professionals in improving their resumes, I founded this company. My primary emphasis is resume rewrites and customizations to job specifications, as well as the transformation of ordinary resumes into extraordinary ones.
Utilize bullet points underneath a statement like this to demonstrate precisely what you accomplished for your freelancing customers, even if it is very descriptive.
In other words, if it would be hard for the reader to figure out what your company does from a one- or two-liner business description, you should refrain from providing one or two lines. Provide a description for your creative services or online services, for example, if you provide an EXTREMELY broad range of these services.
It’s possible that if you’re a freelancer who works in writing, coding, or photography, you won’t need all of this extra fluff and can go right to the point with your amazing successes instead.
Remember to keep your attention on your accomplishments rather than your job description.
This is true on any CV, but it is particularly true for freelancers: never write down the description of what your freelancing client contract said you were paid to accomplish in your application for employment.
I have said that achievements should be included on a CV. This is indeed the moment when you can make a difference in the world.
Was it your job to enhance the amount of web traffic a client’s website received by 248%?
Did you write a slew of pieces for a campaign in the media?
In three months, did you shoot 12 weddings?
You learned to collaborate with customers in five different time zones and complete 16 projects while working remotely… from Taiwan, didn’t you?
In order to demonstrate your level of productivity and goal-focusedness, utilize statistics, metrics, and measures to quantify your successes.
According to others, the fundamental advantage of working as a freelancer is that your triumphs are limitless and are not restricted by your pay grade or your position title.
Prepare a well-organized freelancer profile that serves as an introduction to the remainder of your résumé and qualifications.
People read things, and they prefer to know what they’re getting into before they start reading into the meat of anything.
A book’s back cover has a brief overview of the book, and books on Amazon include a three-sentence blurb describing what the book is about, among other things.
One of the most important things to remember when creating a freelancer resume is to make it specific.
Are you a graphic designer who works on a contract basis? Are you a self-employed web designer or programmer? Are you a self-employed business advisor?
Make a strong first impression by beginning with a ‘what,’ then working your way up to a “why me.”
In order to secure that initial video or virtual interview, your CV should demonstrate your abilities (which are, after all, the primary reason anybody would choose you for a specialized position) and make you seem enticing on paper.
To that end, my best recommendation in this situation is to begin with a strong professional description that sits on top of your freelancing CV.
Introduce yourself, provide a few indications as to why people like working with you (and why they keep contacting you for more work), and last, describe what makes you distinct and unique from the rest of the competition.
If it makes sense for you, you may organize your freelancing work by customer.
There have been a number of times when I’ve seen freelancer resumes that explain the professional’s tiny company with a few job description-style elements, and they look something like this:
Client X’s data must be transferred from Platform A to Platform B, and you are in charge of it.
Designing marketing flyers for new product campaigns has been assigned to me.
Work closely with the executive team, including the CEO and CFO, to develop new work plans and management goals.
You are accurate in thinking that things are dry. They’re also not arranged by customer, which is a wonderful method to construct a freelancing resume so that it seems organized, productive, and impressive to potential employers.
Here’s what a bullet-pointed freelance employment description might seem like if it were categorized according to the client:
Becca’s Freelance Writing and Design Business
Company A: Developed three project management process workflows that were adopted by four worldwide offices as standard practice.
After just nine months of consulting partnerships, Company B was able to increase profit margins by 28 percent for two corporate subsidiaries.
The third business, Company C, brought on three new customer portfolios that, after four months, accounted for 49 percent of total revenue.
Even though the samples above are all very simple and seemingly random, it’s likely that you can see how much more engaging the resume segments seem when you a) organize out your successes by each freelancing customer, and b) employ quantifiable accomplishments, which I will never stop promoting.
INSPIRATIONAL SUGGESTIONS
Please refer to my article on how to discuss job gaps during an interview if you have had breaks in client work, had sabbaticals, or otherwise taken time off. The same recommendations apply to your freelancer resume.
Make a list of the highlights of your freelancing career.
Just because you work as a freelancer does not rule out having some memorable moments in your professional life!
While considering my own freelance work and Dan’s as well, it seems to me that we have both completed some really remarkable freelance work that we never imagined we’d have the opportunity to do.
In the case of this website, for example, we created it from the ground up and have written 460,000 words on it collectively to far. Could this be a defining moment in your freelancing career? Yes, particularly if no one else has taken the initiative yet.
Consider your freelancing career to be similar to a movie. What are the top three things you could brag about to your friends and family? What accomplishment are you most pleased with? Which unexpected customer provided you with the most leadership or the most task-heavy plate, and when did you manage to put it all together and achieve success?
I propose selecting three to four “career highlights” and listing them precisely as they are. Don’t waste time avoiding the subject. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. It’s important to note that if someone is already reading your freelance resume in order to recruit you to work on a project, they are interested in finding out more about you, so tell them!
Make yourself stand out as a freelancer by developing a list of distinct abilities.
No one else has the same abilities as you. This applies to professionals who work full-time as well as freelancers, to name a few groups.
In fact, I’m certain that you’ve gained some useful skills from the diverse range of freelancing customers with whom you’ve worked.
Someone at the company could have stated something like this to you: “We want to recruit you because of your expertise in X, Y, and Z since we haven’t been able to find this combination from anybody else we’ve interviewed,” but “we’ll need you learn Software Z.”
So you’ve learnt Software Z, either from a member of the team or by doing your own study, and you’re now able to mention Software Z on your CV, simply and directly under your skill set.
Rather of mentioning soft skills (which should not be overemphasized – you’ll see what I mean later), I propose describing tech stack or software abilities.
If you believe your sector is too soft, employers will still want to see that you are capable of using some kind of technology in your job search and interview. Indicate if you are a freelance instructor and whether you use task management or planning software in your description. Provide a complete list of all of your graphic design software platforms if you are a graphic designer.
When it comes to soft skills, one of my favorite things to do is go at job descriptions online and check exactly what qualities are listed as desirable. Here are a few (and completely arbitrary) examples:
Personnel management is a term used to describe the management of people.
Product roadmapping for upselling and cross-selling
Proofreading and editing are two different things.
Development of an incentive strategy Writing a lesson plan
As an example of software talents that any freelance client or recruiter charged with recruiting freelancers would be happy to see (again, completely at random), here is a list of software skills that any freelance client or recruiter tasked with hiring freelancers would be delighted to see:
Adobe Creative Suite is a software package that allows you to create graphics.
Canva \Trello
Grammarly \Python \Javascript \Salesforce
Quickbooks
Hubspot
If you are a web developer, I suggest that you avoid displaying a percentage of how much you know about a given language or skill set on your profile.
One of the most important takeaways from this is to present a prospective customer or company with a window into your expertise working with a certain technology stack.
Make your freelancing resume stand out from the crowd by using professional formatting.
I’m not talking about insane formatting, such as making your resume appear like a business card with a lot of Photoshop applied to it. Nah. Just some well-organized, pleasing-to-the-eye paragraphing and sectioning, punctuated with thoughtfully bolded content.
Consult with a buddy if you need assistance determining whether or not your resume is up to date and current. Use of a drab old font, ugly formatting, text that is too small to read, or columns that separate content into sections that are difficult to read are the worst things you can do to make your resume seem out of date on first glance.
Make no apologies about starting a network and asking around in your communities to see if anybody would be willing to provide feedback on your newly created freelancer CV. I’m certain that you’ll be able to get some valuable tips and feedback!
Interested in working with me to have your freelance resume reviewed? Please contact me.
You may get in touch with me via my resume makeover website, which is also where I conduct my freelancing company. Come and say hello! You are welcome to say that you found my contact information at the end of this post.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article, and I hope you will use these excellent advice on how to stand out as a freelancer while looking for employment to begin constructing your freelance CV.