Crackerjacks

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• Using Crackerjacks

Creating a complete profile is instrumental to being offered contract roles through Crackerjacks.  Keep in mind – not all businesses publicly post their roles – often they will rely on searches to find the right contractor.  This means you could be sent a profile request at any stage – making it crucially important to ensure your profile is complete, because you don’t miss out on an opportunity.

Key components to a successful Crackerjacks profile:

Key Skills:

A business user with a contract role will look at your key skills and decide whether they would like to know more information about you.  When a search is conducted – your key skills are the first thing that is shown.  So it is important to include an accurate list of the key skills you have developed throughout your career.  This would include your core skills as well as the applications you have used.  For example, if you were an Accountant it would be important to include software that you have used e.g SAP.

Career Summary:

This is the section that will be shown to business users after you agree to a profile request.  In essence, this is a copy of your Crackerjacks CV.  Keep in mind you can not upload your CV.  The reasons for this include:

• Business searches are optimised when a standardised format is used.  For example, if individual CV’s were uploaded it would be difficult to scan for key skills and business sector experience.
• Your Crackerjacks profile is immediately updated when you secure a role through Crackerjacks.  The contract will be added to your Career Profile automatically – with a manually uploaded CV this could not take place.

You can simply copy and paste your responsibilities from your existing CV into the achievements section.  Please note that bullet points from Microsoft Word are not recognized in this format.

Referees:

Perhaps the most important aspect of your profile are referees, as your performance rating, along with your key skills are almost always the first thing a business user sees. Contractors are rated most commonly as either a one, two or three star ‘Crackerjack’, and this is based on answers given by referees during the reference checking process.

Crackerjacks reference checks are more like performance checks – assessing performance in past roles. When you enter your referees (2 are needed), they are automatically sent an email, explaining they have been nominated as a referee and asking them to complete a quick online reference check. In the check, your referees are asked a series of nine questions, each question reflecting a different aspect of performance: integration with the business, core competencies and performance against objectives. The referee is then able to rate your abilities on a scale of one to seven.

It’s important to enter a valid email addresses for your referees, as email is ideally our only point of contact with referees. However, if they do not respond to our follow-up email, we will usually give them a call to complete the check verbally.

Rates:

It is important to enter your expected rates to your Crackerjacks profile.  Without adding these, your profile will not be complete, which lessens the probability of appearing in searches businesses conduct when looking for contractors.  Also – we do not disclose what your rates are to businesses, but they are told whether your rates fit in with what they want to pay.

Once you have followed these steps your profile will be complete and you will be more likely to receive profile requests for active contracts.  Log in now to make sure your account is up to scratch.