Why are we doing this?
The next level is to look at ways to ensure consistency within IT practices so that it is easier for 7C Alliance members to market themselves for work in them. This can otherwise take considerable time for an individual contractor to keep up-to-date with or work out when operating independently in an industry which is constantly evolving – and especially when there is not much opportunity to interact with colleagues and clients outside of the immediate contract that a contractor is working on.

The 7C Alliance are looking to overcome this challenge in the IT contractor marketplace by better understanding the practice(s) that an IT contractor’s services relate to, as well as the supply chain for them at large, by having various 7C Alliance members take responsibility as leaders in different practice areas. These leaders will act as a single point of contact (SPOC) for a practice and help to clarify any misunderstanding about what a practice involves as well as analyse how a particular practice can be developed and improved. The latter can include facilitating engagement of relevant 7C Alliance members where it is determined necessary to mitigate a risk or resolve an issue arising from a lack of clarity or support for a particular practice for a particular business.

What will be the focus?
The lead will be in areas where there are already numbers of 7C Alliance members operating and in practice areas where there is known interest and support for such practices from businesses interested in procuring such contractors’ services for helping them manage and support IT effectively end-to-end.

How will it work?
The practice leaders will review and analyse interest in response to queries about their designated practice area. They will help with determining what works best for the practice to improve for not only the benefit of 7C Alliance members operating in that area but also for businesses who need to understand what people operating in these practices can do for meeting their needs.

How can you engage with the 7C Alliance Practice Leads?

1. A generic email address will be provided for a practice.
2. Members and businesses wanting to participate in discussions or events about a practice will engage with the 7C Alliance through that email address.
3. The practice lead will determine engagement and support required by analysing emails received.
4. The practice lead will determine what discussions, events and other forms of communication are best for making sure that the supply chain for services in an area are understood and managed effectively for members of the 7C Alliance operating in that area – but also for helping businesses who need support in that practice too.
5. FAQ for IT contractors, as well as industry support for their services, will be managed through social media that is being built by the 7C Alliance and will be available in the near future.

What are the next steps?
As a first start we are looking to have three practice areas where members who have proven themselves will act as coordinators in the following areas:

We are also going to be providing a mix of business, life, recruitment coaching services to assist those who are not sure which direction they are going in.

Please join the UK and European Open Practice Technology Network in the first instance for discussing this initiative.

The 7C Alliance is also looking for sponsors of practices – however as the intention is for focus on the practice and not products for managing the practice, sponsors cannot be suppliers of practice management tools.

See the posting by Philip Fanthom from Jenrick IT in the 7C Alliance – Open Practice Technology Network for details and registration of interest.

Background
Mark Compton, from Fisher King Associates, was engaged as an Alliance Partner by the 7C Alliance last year to provide advice and assistance to those 7C Alliance members who are independent contractors, aka freelancers, on good recruitment practice both by and in using recruitment agencies. This draws on his background of 20+ years in IT and technical recruitment as well as reputation for high integrity and value as a recruiter.

Mark’s and other Alliance Partners’ engagement, and introduction of Trusted Recruitment Agencies to members of the 7C Alliance’s Open Practice Technology Network, are all part of an “open practice” approach that the 7C Alliance initiated in 2009 to enable greater awareness and understanding of how the recruitment marketplace operates from the contractor’s perspective. This includes professional support and advice for the wider local UK community of independent IT and Telecom (ICT) contractors on how to engage and best manage the supply chain for their services end-to-end, using the 7C Alliance concept of there being “7 C’s to consider for survival and success on contract“.

As part of this initiative, Mark and the 7C Alliance started doing live events and trialed two presentations in West London last year that are now to be presented again on March 18th, 2010, but this time in Central London.

Overview of CV WorkShop
This will be a panel-based workshop on CV Writing and Marketing Tips. It will include techniques for both writing your CV for agencies to pick up on in the current market but also for following up and getting agencies to read and submit it.

Mark will give us his advice on what agencies expect and how they use your CV, if it is accepted.

Matt Miller, Director and Founder of the 7C Alliance, will share 7C Alliance Members’ understanding based on experience gained from his coaching as well as 7C Alliance Limited’s independent research into the UK contract recruitment market over 5 years. This reprises the highly successful workshop that we trialed in September last year as shown on 7C Alliance’s blog at the following link: http://bit.ly/8RDo5v

This workshop will be from 2.30 to 4 pm.

Seminar: How Agencies Work
This seminar will reprise the presentation that Mark gave to members of the London IT Contractor Alliance Meetup (LITCAM) group at a meetup at the London Chamber of Commerce in July last year.

This seminar will be from 4.30 – 5.30pm and include advising how contractors can leverage understanding of how agencies work in sourcing and applying for contract work through them.

Mark will also give advance notice at that workshop of what contracting management structures contractors are best to use in line with new legislation on the Agency Worker Directive (AWD), aka Temporary Worker’s Directive, which is now due to be introduced following the UK Elections and most likely in 2011.

Registration and Fees
Unlike the trials of this workshop and seminar last year, there will be a fee for each of £55 to members of the general public – or £100 to attend both.

A discounted offer of £45 each per seminar / workshop is available for members of the OPTN group or LITCAM list.

Please note that spaces ARE limited on both of these – and we will hold more if they prove as popular as they were last year.

Other Workshops
On the same day there will also be two workshops on Interview Techniques held by Lindsay Maclean from ielevate.

These will be held earlier in the day and be 1 hour each, with one at 11am (Workshop A) and the other at 12.30pm (Workshop B). They are the same workshop but just geared to allow for the fact that some contractors may want to attend in their lunch-hour – and as much get a few tips on what they can do to improve their presentation as much as their interview techniques from Lindsay in the 12.30pm time-slot.

A separate blog post on this will feature shortly.

Well, the 7C Alliance Contractor Support Analyst team asked these very questions while doing the first trial of the new contractor health check call initiative.

The intention of these calls is to determine:

a)    What 7C Alliance can do to help the group, as a whole, to increase its opportunity

b)    What can be done to help an individual member specifically with increasing their opportunity, according to the needs and goals that they advise on becoming a member (which is based on the 7 C’s)

c)    What the individual member can do to help themselves

For the first and only time, we have decided to publicise the responses we have received in the 7C Alliance discussion group and are interested in feedback from other members on this initiative as well as the Open Practice Technology Network at large.

If you are interested in reading the results of the first round of Contractor Health Check Calls, please join the 7C Alliance LinkedIn discussion group by clicking on the link to the left or by cutting and pasting the following into your Web browser: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1542397

Once you have joined the group, you will be able to read and participate in the discussion by following this link: http://bit.ly/70U9oh. We look forward to your contribution to the ongoing discussion!

Written by Stuart Brown, an Associate Member of the 7C Alliance.

Diana started well with her intro that engaged the group on how helpful it is to know what makes us notable and known when networking. The example of David Beckham – and his ability to “bend it” on the playing field – helped identify those interested in football by contrast with those who know him better for being able to “strut it” on the red carpet with Posh Spice or on the catwalk. So, when networking, we should also be aware of what others are likely to know and be interested in, as well as what makes us good or interesting to talk to.

Diana also gave a few tips to help get the group started in networking on the Vinopolis wine tour that followed the talk.

These tips were as follows:

1. Have a Goal

2. Prepare a 30 second advert

3. Ask Open Questions

Sound simple? Maybe, but how many times have you been to a networking event and not known where to start, who to talk to or what to say? If so, these tips are for you – and here’s a little more on each to help you do what you have to do

Have a Goal

This amounts to:

Prepare a 30 second advert

In IT and other areas of technology, it can be challenging enough to help explain what you do – let alone make it interesting in explaining your edge in it.

To help you, you need to perhaps discuss it with others to get the idea – such as using a great discussion similar to one recently on LinkedIn about how to explain “Enterprise Architecture”, simply, to The Board in less than 160 characters. You may have heard of such things referred to before as an “elevator pitch”

Once you have a simple catchy definition of the area you work in – and one you think that the listener may need to know and be interested in – then you need to practice it.

This combination will:

Ask Open Questions

This makes the person you are talking to “open up” – and allows you to find out more about them and their relevance to you, as well as make the conversation flow and them more interested in you

Open questions start with: Who, What, Why

So what’s the value of these tips?

Diana referred to recent blogs on other IT industry professional sites where support has recently been given for IT contractors to be able to “talk the walk”. This is never truer than when having to meet someone in a social setting, and especially when you only have a short space of time in which to introduce yourself and get them interested in what you do. So Diana’s tips help with that.

But How Do I Get To Know Who I Need To Meet?

It also helps to have some support from the hosts of the event in providing some means to help you know who you need to know.

7C Alliance Limited has developed a structured approach to networking, using a mix of its guest profile list and networking coordinators, that helps guests identify who is relevant to them based around common skills and knowledge elements in technology, or other areas of known interest. This helps make it easier to meet and get to know who you need to know readily.

What’s more, where they are happy to share them, the guest profile list even includes a few things about what the person likes to do socially as a way of having something more than just “shop talk” to talk about with them…

The rest, beyond identifying who you need to get to know, is certainly helped by the tips that Diana shared.

Further Events on Networking

Diana, Stuart and Matt look forward to hearing from people interested in coming along to a workshop in the New Year where you can learn a few more tips from Diana and practice the art with others in ways that will help you to achieve what you need and want to do. Such as using it to get yourself a new contract job – but also to have some fun in doing that too (like we did in the course of the Wine Tour last Thursday).

Thank you once again to all those who came along – and especially those who came along from St Paul’s Speakers, a Division of Toastmaster’s International, to support Diana.

Written on behalf of the London IT Contractor Alliance Meetup (LITCAM) Group and the 7C Alliance by Matt Miller, Director, 7C Alliance Limited

Definition and Focus
These will be sessions where fellow IT contract freelancers can get together – in some cases with contract recruiters – and discuss, face-to-face, how they are finding the market for IT contract work. The intention is to provide an opportunity to compare experiences on how they are finding work either online or through face-to-face networking, focus on what works best for sourcing contract work online as well as discuss what follow-up is needed to help secure it with any one of agencies, consultancies or end-clients. Some direct one-on-one assistance will be available to help those with challenges in sourcing work relevant to them (see below for details). This assistance will be provided through either one-on-one or group sessions.

Presentation will also be made by contract recruiters on observations of what knowledge or skills that the market is seeking in their area – and these sessions will be geared to participation with contractors who already have had some relevant exposure to the market that the recruiter is presenting on. As such, registration is required for these sessions and is based on participants already having some experience relevant to the recruiter’s area of focus for recruitment.

Contractor Job-Search Support Provided
Some support will be provided to participants from 7C Alliance member volunteers experienced in social media and online networking. This will be based on how they have found contacts or work online that is most relevant to their capability – and they will show how this can best be done through identifying the mix of either job board, agency or end-client web-sites that are most relevant to each contractor . How participation in online discussion forums can help to source work, such as those provided by LinkedIn, Xing, ecademy, Facebook and Gum Tree, will also be discussed.

Analysis
7C Alliance will endeavour to note participant’s own experience, including tips and traps, and ensure that this included in key Q & A discussion at 7C Alliance’s de facto “Club House” in West London. A follow-up Blog will be produced that captures experience relevant to the group attending.

Industry-Focus Presentations By Contract Recruiters
These will take the form of one-hour workshops and be a more formal get-together. They will involve presentations by representatives from leading recruitment agencies on observations of types of IT solutions and work that they have noted end-clients are interested in, e.g. trading and risk management in the Banking sector, and will then be followed by Q & A.

Post-JSAW
The London IT Contractor Alliance Meetup (LITCAM) group’s Monthly Meetup will follow on at the conclusion of these workshops on Thursday 10th September. This will be held over coffee or tea initially at 7C Alliance’s de facto Club House in West London, followed by adjournment at around 8pm to either a local restaurant or pub. This will be held from 6pm onwards and will be an opportunity for the participants at JSAW to meet face-to-face and share experiences, as well as relevant leads and contacts, with fellow contractor colleagues on the LITCAM list.

JSAW Registration
Please register interest online by selecting “Study Group” on the Contact Us page of the 7C Alliance web-site – and put JSAW in the query details of the form. If interested in being part of the networking that follows on – and not already on the LITCAM list, then please also register for LITCAM too.

Final date for registration is cob. Monday, 7 September. Further discussion on this and other initiatives for IT contracting in the UK can be had by joining the 7C Alliance Discussion Group on LinkedIn.