Tell us something we don’t already know: a new survey from an industry body says that umbrella companies and other interim service providers run the economy.
The Institute of Interim Management has come out with a new research study that has found that interim service provider organisations such as umbrella firms are a driving force in the labour markets. Around 72 per cent of businesses surveyed by the IIM’s research study reported using recruitment agencies or umbrella service companies to source short-term flexible workers, while the number of overall assignments sourced through such organisations was found to be 44 per cent.
If anything the new study shows how important it is to use networking to your advantage if you’re a freelancer or contract worker. An umbrella company contractor has the benefits of their firm’s resources at their disposal, which makes it much easier to land a contract position somewhere: only around 17 per cent of contracts were filled through an online job site or some other impersonal method, so it absolutely behooves you to find some sort of networking solution in order to maximise your chances of landing that all-important client.
Even if you’re not one to join an umbrella company, you can still network yourself quite effectively by maintaining your own professional website. If that’s not your style, you should at the very least maintain an updated account on LinkedIn or other social networking sites; however you should be careful to not make anything public on a networking site such as Facebook that you don’t want a potential client or employer to see – more than one prospective client has decided to pass on taking on a new freelancer because of unprofessional images or status updates, or appearing on Facebook or Twitter.
And don’t think that your social media profiles aren’t going to be checked very carefully in today’s day and age. Hiring managers and business owners are very particular about who they’re hiring nowadays, considering how important it is to only associate with professional workers that have a proven track record of helping firms grow their businesses in the aftermath of one of the worst economic downturns in the history of the modern era, so trust me when I say that you shouldn’t be posting snaps of the last time you went down to the pub with your mates and got a bit pissed – not unless you don’t want that lucrative new job offer!
