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One of the biggest questions that companies considering hiring a freelancer want answered is how much any given freelancer should be paid.

Using data from hundreds of respondents to our 2023 Freelance & Interim survey, we’ve set out some guidelines to follow when it comes to calculating how much to pay freelancers.

Day rates

Freelancers earn, on average, 43% more than permanent staff in consulting. For an approximate conversion between an existing perm role and the equivalent freelancer day rate, divide the perm salary by 120.

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Average day rate - Analyst

On average, freelancers at Analyst level sought a day rate of approximately £450.

Average day rate - Associate

Associate level freelancers earn, on average, £550 per day.

Manager

At Manager level, freelancers typically earn approximately £725 per day.

Read more bout market insights & trends, interviews with leaders and success stories on the Movemeon blog.

Senior Manager

The average day rate for Senior Manager level freelancers is approximately £800 per day.

Director

Director level freelancers often earn day rates in excess of £2,000. The day rates are, however, highly variable, and depend heavily on expertise and project length.

If you’re interested in learning more about hiring freelancers, talk to our team!

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For more exciting insights about careers after consulting, how to hire current or former consultants and a lot more, join 33,000+ following Movemeon co-founder Rich on LinkedIn.

Aidan Curran trod a familiar path before becoming a Chief of Staff. After graduating from business school, he spent three years in strategy consulting for LEK. He then made the shift into the industry to join Penfold, a workplace benefits and pension management platform.

In just over a year and a half with the company, Aidan has gained valuable insight on the ever-changing nature of the Chief of Staff role, one which has transformed as the company itself has grown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFn809qJ_vQ&t=24s

How would you summarise the Chief of Staff role?

It’s really dependent on the company you’re at, their stage and size. I’ve been here for 18 months. In that time we’ve grown from 25 to just over 80. Also the role has changed drastically as the company has changed.

Right now I have three broad areas of responsibility. First: if we’ve got a genuinely new venture or idea, that doesn’t have a BAU functional team responsible for it, I’ll investigate whether there’s an opportunity there and understand what it would take to run with that going forward.

Secondly, I help out in the functional teams themselves, either leading on a project or jumping in with a team that’s under-resourced. Finally, I play a broad support function for the business, managing our People and Office Manager and taking the day to day lead on our finance and accounting function.

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What was it like when you first started?

It was very different. It now feels quite structured and grown up compared to when I joined. Now, I’m more like an extension of the founding team, making the leadership team as effective as possible, shaping OKRs at the company level. That’s really a reflection of the fact that with 25 people 18 months ago it was very founder-driven. Whereas now it’s a much more mature business with clearer functional leadership and established managerial processes.

Was the OKR structure in place when you joined?

No, we’ve been doing it for 6-9 months now, and we’re still iterating on the way we do it, but it’s absolutely integral to the alignment between our teams now. On an accountability level, there’s so much stuff that we could be doing that just nailing down the 2 or 3 really important things we want to move the dial on in that quarter, and focusing on those key metric ladders up to the entire business doing well.

How is your working relationship with your founders?

A lot changed since I joined. Now, every other week we have an hour in the diary to go through my priorities, how I’m getting on with my own personal OKRs, anything that I need help unblocking and how I'm progressing.

But also, I’ll talk with one of the founders on the phone at least once a day. The other is in the office most days so there’s a pretty organic checking in.

What skills does an effective Chief of Staff need?

There are four big areas that are really important. All closely related, and all very much relating to a consulting background. 

One is prioritisation. You need to be able to understand the context you find yourself in, the opportunities and problems which you face, and be able to make sure that you are doing the most impactful thing with the finite amount of time you have. You’ve got so many things you could be doing, so many problems to solve, that making sure that you’re doing the most impactful ones is super important.

Then there is problem solving. Although we’re a pretty small business, a lot of the problems we’re tackling are still very complex. Being able to walk into a situation, understand all the moving parts, and really get to the bottom of what’s causing a problem or finding areas to improve is really important.

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Organisation is massive. Consulting might seem fast-paced, but really you’re on one project at a time, it’s all very hierarchical and clear in terms of what needs doing, by whom, and when. It pales in comparison to being across all the context of a business and juggling all the things that are happening there. So being absolutely on top of really basic things like your inbox, your to-do list and your objectives is really important.

The fourth attribute, but by no means the least important, is strong EQ. Often if you’re helping someone address a problem, they’ll have been working on that area for a very long time. They might have been the first person to start doing sales or operations in this business. If you come in and tell them they’ve done 17 different things wrong, that’s incredibly aggravating and incredibly blind to the context, which is probably a brilliant generalist trying to do something from scratch for the first time. It’s no good telling them what the problem is: they probably already know that. So being really sensitive and not throwing around any intellectual plays or being unnecessarily unclear, just rolling your sleeves up, being sensitive, and just trying to be helpful, is so important.

What type of person is best suited to being a Chief of Staff?

It’s a really good question! I think you need to be very organised, and very relaxed with a slightly chaotic style, particularly if you’re going to work closely with founders and trusted with their most important topics and challenges. This is their job, but they’re also staking something so much bigger on this by taking the risk of running a business. So all the things they’re trusting you with are really big topics. They’ll throw around a lot of ideas and different problems, some of which are going to be felt very intensely. You need to be quite relaxed about it. 

To summarise, you need to be organised as well as emotionally resilient. I imagine that if you found it stressful to have lots of things going on at once and not be able to get all of them done, it would be quite difficult.

What are the best aspects of being a Chief of Staff?

It’s a bit like consulting in that I don’t have very many fixed remits, it’s all quite project based. I really like the continuation of being involved in lots of different stuff, for quite short periods of time, and then seeing them through to completion. There’s very little monotony and routine, so that’s really positive.

I love the feeling of involvement in shaping an entire business. In consulting you might be involved in a big five year strategy planning exercise, but whether that was still being used six months after you left, you don’t really know. In a start-up, you’re making very big decisions and you’re involved in conversations at a very high level around what this business is going to do. And because it’s so small, you see that stuff happening as soon as you walk out of the meeting. So the level of impact you’re having is massive. 

Consulting can be quite a homogenous environment with lots of similar types of people. I really like working around lots of different types of people. It’s incredibly refreshing to see people with real domain expertise, functional expertise, and very different ways and working styles from me, and to be able to learn from them. I’m finding that a hugely enriching part of my job.

Any final thoughts on being a Chief of Staff?

I so infrequently take a step back and reflect, so I miss all the positive things. Every 3-6 months when I do performance reviews there’s some self-reflection, but week by week, if I haven’t hit all my to do list or something massive came up and everything got reprioritised, you always feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle and it’s incredibly stressful. But if you take a step back and think about what you’ve achieved and the impact you’ve had it feels absolutely massive. 

So taking a step back, separating the day to day, minute by minute stress and intensity of the role, and reflecting on all the positive things you’re getting out of it is something that I have to remind myself to do. I’d advise anyone considering the role to do the same. And the fact that you have to do that is also indicative of what the role is like!

Interested in hiring a Chief of Staff for your team? Get in touch with one of our experts.

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About the author: Dan McEvoy is a freelance writer and editor, with extensive experience in finance, technology, HR, recruitment, and marketing content.

Growing a new business, in amongst the fun and excitement, presents a series of intense challenges. Here, we'll delve into the most common hurdles that start-ups typically encounter: from cash flow constraints that can cripple operations to the complexities of finding and hiring the right talent, and the crucial decision-making required for crafting a winning strategy. Overcoming these challenges effectively is the key to success for any budding business.

Cash

Top of the list for any start-up is cold, hard cash. Businesses come into this world without any revenue streams. Some might be able to start generating revenue quickly, but others (such as biotech firms) may need to dedicate years to R&D before there is any product that can be sold.

In either instance, it could be a long, long time before the company breaks even, and throughout this period the existential challenge for any start-up is managing cash flow to ensure it remains a going concern.

There are, effectively, two ways in which start-ups can solve the cash problem.  

Acquire funding. This is the only viable option for companies that will take years to generate revenue, but many other start-ups also look to external investment in order to jump-start their growth. VC or PE firms can boost a start-up’s warchest, but often at the expense not only of material ownership, but also of a degree of control over the business on the part of the founders.

Be a cockroach. Alternatively, companies can adopt a slower rate of growth, prioritising survival at all costs. This involves careful marshalling of what resources they have, in order to preserve start-up capital as long as possible. Ideally, cockroach start-ups will only spend money they have already earned. While this approach works for businesses that don’t want to resort to external funding, it is also the strategy adopted by many VC-funded companies.

Hiring

While the founding team can, to a certain extent, wear multiple hats and achieve a lot during a start-up’s early years, there will inevitably be knowledge and skills gaps within this team. Perfecting the product, implementing a marketing strategy, and scaling a sales function may all call for additional skills or headcount. 

With cash a limiting factor, though, making the wrong hire early on can have devastating consequences for your business. Furthermore, the time taken in sourcing candidates, reviewing CVs, and interviewing can be draining on the limited resources of a founding team.

With the stakes so high when considering early hires, a cost-effective solution is to partner with a recruitment expert in your field. The right partner can at once expand your total network, while refining your interviewing pipeline to only the best-suited, most engaged candidates for the position, saving you valuable time qualifying and interviewing the wrong candidates.

With a network of over 60,000 former-consultants, half from MBB firms, Movemeon are well-placed to partner with start-ups seeking strategy hires. Get in touch here!

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Product / Market fit

There are really two challenges here: identifying the problem, and building a viable solution.

Successful start-ups set out to address a real problem. Identifying this problem is, however, easier said than done. It is a common fallacy for start-up founding teams to focus on the solution; the product, after all, is the exciting part, but building a product that no-one wants is a surefire route to ruin.

Successful start-up founders are best advised to focus their early efforts intently on identifying the problem they are trying to solve. 

Once this is done, developing a MVP is the next key step; bringing this to market not only starts generating revenue, but if feedback is gathered from early adopters, it can inform future improvements of the product with the goal of achieving PMF.

Strategy

Strategy pervades all these challenges. Managing cash flow will depend primarily on the go-to-market strategy; hiring the right staff at the right time depends on the plan the start-up is trying to execute, while establishing PMF is intimately bound up in the company’s overall short- and long-term strategy.

Framing all of these challenges effectively requires thorough strategic thinking, including a keen attention to the product’s potential competition and market demand. There is also the arduous task of building a brand from scratch, without any prior awareness of the offering within the target audience.

Start-ups must overcome all these challenges and more if they are to be successful. Hiring an in-house strategy expert early on can help businesses plan for the future with the right tools and expertise.

Movemeon is expert at partnering with start-ups and scale-ups, connecting them to ex-consultants the world over that can provide vital strategic insight to overcome their hardest challenges. Find out more here!

About the author: Dan McEvoy is a freelance writer and editor, with extensive experience in finance, technology, HR, recruitment, and marketing content.

What do I need to know?

In the most recent Autumn Budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced a number of changes that will impact your ability to achieve your lifetime wealth ambitions. 

From 6 April 2023, the main personal tax changes to be aware of are: 

• The reduction in the threshold above which the 45% additional rate of tax is payable
• The reduction of the tax free dividend allowance from £2,000 to £1,000 (and further reducing the following year)
• The reduction of the CGT exemption from £12,300 to £6,000 (and further reducing the following year)

Why does it matter?

These changes mean that in the current environment, making the best use of tax-efficient wrappers such as  pensions and ISAs is all the more important. 

In addition, if you earn between £100,000 and £125,140, the tapering of the personal allowance means you  could end up paying 60% tax. 

This 60% ‘tax trap’ isn’t published in any HMRC guidelines because it’s an unofficial effective rate of Income  Tax. It occurs due to the tapering of the personal allowance for higher earners. 

The result? Those earning between £100,000 and £125,140 can end up paying 60% tax.

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What to do?

It all starts with you, taking into account your personal goals and circumstances: 

• What are your ambitions for the future? 
• What’s most important for you to achieve? 
• When do you want to do these things? 

Write down your answers, and then look at your current plan. Is it on track? 

Could or should you be doing better – better planning, better efficiencies, better understanding? 

Speaking with a professional adviser can give you clarity on your options and work with you to tailor a plan that  works towards your ambitions. 

Tax rules change frequently but financial advice can help make sure you stay tax-smart, and always pay what  you owe, and no more.

Are ready to hire, looking for more information about hiring or just want some advice? Get in touch and one of our team of friendly specialists will get in touch within 24hrs.

Author of this article

Charlie Channing-Williams provides bespoke financial advice to individuals, families and business owners. He  does this this through lifetime wealth planning, based on their unique circumstances and ambitions. 

charlie.channing-williams@sjpp.co.uk | +44 (0)7778 708968 | www.channing-williamswealth.co.uk

Important note

The value of an investment with St. James’s Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds selected  and may fall as well as rise. You may get back less than the amount invested. 

The levels and bases of taxation, and reliefs from taxation, can change at any time. The value of any tax relief is generally dependent on individual circumstances. 

Channing-Williams Wealth Management is an Appointed Representative of and represents only St. James's Place  Wealth Management plc (which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) for the purpose  of advising solely on the group's wealth management products and services, more details of which are set out on the group's website www.sjp.co.uk/products. The 'St. James's Place Partnership' and the titles 'Partner' and  'Partner Practice' are marketing terms used to describe St. James's Place representatives.

SJP APPROVED 26/4/2023

Click here to view all articles and read about the latest industry and consulting insights on our blog.

Do you know where all your previous pension pots are and are they aligned with your future  plans? 

One risk that people face when moving companies is losing track of their paid-up pensions. It can make sense to review your old pension pots for a number of reasons.

Firstly, knowing what the total value of all your pension pots are will help you plan your future work timeline – when you could reduce or stop working, and what kind of lifestyle it could support. 

Secondly, what are you invested in? Does it suit your timeframe and ambitions, your risk appetite and plans for  the future? Often you’ll be invested in generic funds that assume you’re a standard profile – does that suit you  best? Probably not. 

Thirdly, circumstances change and your need for advice. Your situation and outlook on life will be different in  five, ten and 15 year’s time. Having the advice to help you navigate those changes, and being proactive with your pension investment decisions, can be crucial to make sure your ambitions don’t leave your plans behind. 

Finally, when it comes to accessing your pension, having it in one place can make life easier, giving you oversight  of your available options and the ability to discuss how it can best suit your needs, alongside the benefit of regular  reviews and ongoing advice in case of future legislation change.

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Are you making the most of your pension contributions? 

A pension is the most tax-efficient vehicle available to UK savers, subject to certain limits because the government typically adds relief to your contributions. This boost essentially increases the value of every pound you pay into a pension. 

Recent changes to legislation have meant that for some people, they have become an even more valuable and tax efficient way to invest for their future: 

1. Increase in the Annual Allowance – for the 2023/24 tax year onwards, you can contribute up to  £60,000, or 100% of your earnings (whichever is lower), for tax-relieved contributions. This is up from  £40,000 the previous tax year. 
   
2. Removal of the Lifetime Allowance – this was the total tax relieved pension savings you could accrue in your lifetime, with anything over and above this being taxed. Any charges that would have been due in current tax year have been removed, before the abolition of the Lifetime Allowance from April 2024.

Are ready to hire, looking for more information about hiring or just want some advice? Get in touch and one of our team of friendly specialists will get in touch within 24hrs.

About the author

Charlie Channing-Williams provides bespoke financial advice to individuals, families and business owners. He does this through lifetime wealth planning, based on their unique circumstances and ambitions. 

charlie.channing-williams@sjpp.co.uk | +44 (0)7778 708968 | www.channing-williamswealth.co.uk  

Important note

The value of an investment with St. James’s Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds selected  and may fall as well as rise. You may get back less than the amount invested. 

The levels and bases of taxation, and reliefs from taxation, can change at any time. The value of any tax relief is  generally dependent on individual circumstances. 

Channing-Williams Wealth Management is an Appointed Representative of and represents only St. James's Place  Wealth Management plc (which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) for the purpose  of advising solely on the group's wealth management products and services, more details of which are set out on the group's website www.sjp.co.uk/products. The 'St. James's Place Partnership' and the titles 'Partner' and  'Partner Practice' are marketing terms used to describe St. James's Place representatives. 

SJP APPROVED 26/4/2023

Click here to view all articles and more read about the latest industry and consulting insights on our blog.

One of the many reasons that people start their careers in consulting is that it’s seen as a training ground for the business leaders of the future. McKinsey in particular leans into this typecasting, describing itself as “one of the world’s largest leadership factories”.

Do the claims stack up? What research has been conducted into the claim took place in the early part of the last decade, but the short answer is: yes, it does. Movemeon has complemented this research with a more up-to-date look at leadership within the FTSE 100 and the UK’s start-up unicorn scene, and the evidence suggests that former management consultants are still disproportionately likely to lead successful businesses.

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We took a look at the data in more detail, and heard from one former McKinsey consultant who has gone on to found his own business, and invest in others.

CEOs

Movemeon research reveals that 9% of current FTSE 100 CEOs have a background in consulting. This means they outnumber those who are Oxbridge educated (5%), or who have worked in a large accounting firm (8%). USA Today previously found that McKinsey alumni were more likely than those of any other company to lead a $2bn+ business, Deloitte coming second on this list.

Having employed 3% of FTSE 100 CEOs, McKinsey is the single firm with the largest leadership footprint. The firm previously reported (in 2015) that 450 of its global alumni were running companies valued at $1bn or more. These included Oliver Bäte, CEO of Allianz, and Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO of Lego. 

McKinsey alumni also prevail in public and non-profit organisations. Isobel Coleman, Deputy Administrator for Policy and Programming at the United States Agency for International Development and former ambassador to the UN, started her career at McKinsey, as did 2014’s World Mayor Prize winner Naheed Nenshi.

Not all of McKinsey’s “successes” are praiseworthy. Jeff Skilling, the CEO in charge of Enron during its accounting scandal, for which he served 12 years in prison, started out at McKinsey.

On the whole, however, consultants tend to have a beneficial impact on the organisations they lead. HBR showed, in 2013, that former management consultants that became CEOs improved company performance during their tenure in 71% of cases, verses 42% for CEOs without a consulting background.

Company founders

Consultants are also disproportionately likely to run their own businesses, exhibiting an entrepreneurial streak as well as the business fundamentals to succeed in the perilous world of start-up survival.

Movemeon’s research found that, of the 63 British-founded businesses to have achieved unicorn status, 16% were started by founders with a background in consulting. With 1.6% of unicorn founders as alumni, McKinsey at first looks over-represented again – however, due to the sample size, this represents just a single founder (Matt Robinson, founder & CEO of GoCardless).

However, McKinsey believes its consultants do have a tendency to start their own businesses. One in four go down this route according to its Thirty Thousand Leaders blog, which lists Innocent Drinks and MetaPack among the businesses to have been founded by McKinsey alumni.

Movemeon previously spoke to one such consultant: Srećko Džeko. Džeko left McKinsey in 2019 to co-found construction material marketplace Simplo before moving into venture capital where, he says, many of the most successful founders he encounters also have consulting backgrounds.

He makes a link between the kind of people that are attracted to a career in consulting and those cut out to succeed as founders: “People who go into consulting in the first place are often overachievers and strive for change. They then get into this big machine that teaches them many things, like problem solving, top-down communication, execution, and project management.”

The end result? “A commercial allrounder with the right mindset and work ethic, something that is much needed in founding teams.”

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McKinsey is not alone in producing business leaders. Crunchbase counts 556 startups founded by BCG alumni, and 505 by those of Bain.

McKinsey, however, stands out as having successfully established its brand as “the CEO launch pad”, celebrating its role as the training ground of the business leaders of the future. As its former global managing director Dominic Barton put it, the organisation cares about the success of its alumni because “it is a measure of how we develop leaders.” In other words, McKinsey more than any other consultancy, or company, sets out to produce tomorrow’s leaders, and brands itself accordingly.

All former consultants will share the skills that make McKinsey alumni effective leaders for organisations. Their ability to think strategically and execute under pressure can help any organisation, from start-up to large corporate, which is why they so frequently soar through the ranks into leadership positions. To discuss hiring a strategy expert for your business, through a company founded by McKinsey alumni, speak to Movemeon today.

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About the author: Dan McEvoy is a freelance writer and editor, with extensive experience in finance, technology, HR, recruitment, and marketing content.

Veronica Sherwood-Meares, Head of Product at Future Super, has already had a varied and successful career.
In this interview, she tells us how she got into consulting, why she then worked in many different areas and positions, such as Head of Strategy, spent some time in marketing and finally became Head of Product. Veroncia also gives valuable tips on how to make the leap into product management as a consultant and explains why it's worth trying out different roles.

How did you originally get into consulting?

My original ambition while at uni was to go into equities or research, so I studied finance and accounting. When my final year came around, I really cast the net wide. I applied to a bunch of investment bank graduate programs, but also to some consulting firms, as I had heard of consulting but didn’t have much of a clue as to what was involved - it just sounded interesting. 

Not long after putting in an application to Port Jackson Partners, I got a call one afternoon, asking me to come in for an interview the next day at 7:30am! I agreed, but again I didn’t really have much of an idea about what was likely to be involved.

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So assuming that you weren’t really expecting to have to grapple with a complex case study?

Totally not. But looking back on it, it probably helped that I hadn’t tried to memorise any specific frameworks, I just used logic to break down the problem and not overthink it. (Not saying this would work for everyone, but it did for me!) Maybe it also helped that the case study was quite interesting: advising Uber on predicting likely usage on New Years’ Eve. 

I received an offer to join PJP just as the banking interviews were due to start. I was intrigued by my interactions so far at the firm, I had found the interviews and case studies interesting, and I had a feeling that consulting would provide a broader experience than banking - so I was happy to accept.

And then things took off from there!

Yes - and a good choice of phrase, as I was lucky enough to do a lot of client work overseas, which I absolutely loved. PJP had a partnership with Scandinavian consultancy QVARTZ (acquired by Bain in 2019) and I spent 6 great months in Copenhagen as part of a consultant swap. I did a lot of work with global Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk and loved soaking up the best of the city.

It's been almost three years not being staffed in Sydney, working on really interesting projects in China, Singapore and the US. I worked across a number of sectors, particularly industrials, manufacturing and natural resources, and then later had some great exposure to superannuation (pension) funds - which came in handy later on.

How do you look back at your experience in consulting?

PJP was a terrific environment to be part of. At that stage, the firm would have been only about 30-40 people, with one office in Sydney. We had a great reputation in strategy (our founding partners were all ex-top-tier) and we were working on critically-important projects, but at the same time, the firm was small enough to easily navigate and develop relationships. I built a really strong bond with colleagues, especially with those I worked on international projects with.

So what got you thinking about moving on from PJP?

It was probably a combination of three things. Firstly, it felt like it was probably time to stop travelling quite so much! Secondly, while I really enjoyed consulting, there was appeal in the opportunity to tangibly see something through, from analysis through strategy through execution and operations. I could see the appeal in doing this in a smaller growth company or startup. Thirdly, and probably most importantly, I wanted to feel like I could contribute in a role that was connected to the purpose of the organisation, while remaining industry agnostic.

I had an opportunity to join Future Super on a 3 month basis. (Future Super is an ethical superannuation fund, the first fossil fuel-free fund in Australia). As a relatively small business (~30 people at that stage), they’d never had a “Strategy” function. I came in and picked up a bunch of areas that needed framing up and building out. I got heavily into the data, set up OKRs and led the planning cycle.

Having thoroughly enjoyed that first stint, I joined the business as Head of Strategy in a permanent capacity, where I set up a small strategy team. This included formulating the company’s 5-year strategy, helping with a capital raise, as well as steering analysis and research functions.

Two years in, Strategy was humming along well (I was also fortunate to have hired very well!), so I was open to exploring new challenges within the business. 

At the time, we were working with an external agency that was running all our online and performance marketing. As we were reaching a certain size and scale, the outsourced model was proving to be sub-optimal, and we had no real analytical capability within our in-house marketing and creative team. So I pitched the idea to move into marketing and help bring it all in house. I hired a really solid performance marketer and we built a small specialist team which delivered savings to the business while driving better performance than the outsourced model. This included developing LTV models and we established LTV:CAC as the lighthouse metric for the team. 

Again, it got to the point where things were running really well, and it started to feel like (again) I had done myself out of a job!

Is that when you first got the opportunity to get involved in Product?

Yes. At this time we’d set up our first product team as a 3-month pilot program. Instead of having silos of engineering, design, analytics etc, we made it cross-functional from the start. I sat in on that program from an analytics perspective.

The pilot program was a great success, so I pitched the idea of becoming a full-time product manager and running one of the ongoing teams being set up off the back of it. It was a bit of a running joke that it was about time for my regular internal job change!

Find your next opportunity on Movemeon. Click here to view all open roles.

And the rest is history - how have you enjoyed the shift into Product?

While I obviously really appreciated and enjoyed my career up to this point, it was when I took on the Head of Product role that I had the proper Eureka moment of, “this is the job that I totally love”. It’s just such a satisfying role. It’s utilising a bunch of different skills and experience, across strategy, analysis, prioritisation - it’s hugely around prioritisation - making sure your team is focusing on the biggest opportunities.

On that point, I feel that Product is an underrated exit opportunity for consultants, who bring all the right skills. The more technical specifics (like how to work with engineers!) is something that you learn by doing.

What advice would you give to a consultant keen to pivot into Product roles?

An ex-consultant might be lucky enough to find a product role straight off, but even if they first pivot from consulting into a strategy or commercial role, to move into Product will come down to getting a foot in the door. It will be about jumping on opportunities to get exposure to Product internally and building your credibility to the point where you can make a jump across. 

I believe coming from a strategy, analytics, commercial or biz ops background into Product could gear someone up to become more senior quite quickly, as the grounding in those areas are super important building blocks.

Do you have any other advice for people making a pivot in their careers?

What worked extremely well for me was finding an external mentor. Future Super proactively suggested I link up with a mentor who in my case was an ex-consultant who had built his career in Product. It was so incredibly helpful and you really don’t need a big training budget to fund an hour or two a week of someone’s time. A real no-brainer.

Secondly, I invested a lot of time into my relationships with our tech and engineering team. It was a steep learning curve, but being really open to constructive feedback and making it clear I was very ready to dive into the detail so I could upskill myself. I guess it’s like anything, once you get a few reps of something that’s foreign, you’ll soon get to grips with it! 

With the competition for consulting talent fiercer than ever, speak to Movemeon to find your perfect hire from our network of 60,000+ consultants, worldwide.

What about you as a hiring manager - any tips?

At Future Super we have a very structured process that deliberately tests skills of candidates, rather than relying on personalities or career backgrounds. I must admit I was incredibly sceptical about the fact that we were supposed to make a hiring decision without reviewing CVs! 

But it has been such a positive way to bring great talent into our business. It really reinforced that it has to be the skills that we hire for. The subject matter can just be coached. We’ve found we’re hiring for excellence consistently now, and we’re also seeing a brilliant diversity dividend across our hires too.

And now you’re off on a sabbatical?

Yes! My partner and I have decided to quit our jobs and take 12 months off for travel. We didn’t do the gap year thing after school or uni, so it’s been on the wishlist for a while.

We geared up to do it a few years back but then the pandemic put those plans on the backburner. Originally we considered doing a sabbatical for 3-6 months, but the list of places grew to the point where we realised we needed a whole year.

We’re keeping it pretty flexible though. If we like a place, we’ll stay longer. We might even decide to work a bit along the way, to keep the brain ticking over. I’ll be keeping an eye on remote freelance projects via Movemeon, if it comes to that!

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Following the publication of our Freelance and Interim Report 2023, we’ve put together five of the report’s key implications for employers considering hiring freelancers.

This is a growing market, and one that can provide considerable savings compared to engaging external consultancies, but there are some important factors to consider before hiring freelancers, especially the importance of flexibility and how to convert perm salaries into day rates.

And read the full report here.

Overview

Over three years since our last survey of freelance consultants, the latest Freelance & Interim Report is out. The report identified a growing market with deep, high-quality expertise.

Here, we identify five key findings from the report and highlight their relevance for employers considering hiring freelancers for their key strategic projects.

5 key considerations for attracting freelance talent

Freelancers are cost-effective for long term projects

While hiring a consultancy makes sense for highly strategic, time critical projects, they are an expensive option compared to hiring freelancers.

Over the course of a six-month transformation project, our report found £100k savings on Analyst day rates compared to consultants, and £280k savings on freelance Managers compared to those working for an external consultancy. Overall, a freelance team costs 68% less than a consultancy team.

On Movemeon we have many freelance opportunities. Find your next project today!

Freelancers are motivated by good work-life balance

The freelance market is growing thanks to the great resignation, and the main driver of respondents’ switch to freelance work was work-life balance.

This indicates that companies employing permanent staff are lagging in the flexibility they offer staff. When considering and engaging potential freelance hires, it is important to remember that this flexibility is likely to be important to them. 

For this reason, freelance hires are best-suited for roles or projects that are primarily about individual delivery, as opposed to (for example) those that involve lots of face time with clients, colleagues or other stakeholders, or on-call requirements. 

Work that can be done at any time of day within a given timeframe, without needing excessive coordination with stakeholders, is well-suited to freelancers.

Freelancers are working, and earning, more

Day rates have remained flat since the last report in 2019, with a 7% increase at Analyst level and 1-3% for Managers.

However, high utilisation means that freelancers now out-earn permanent counterparts. Bear in mind, when planning costs and negotiating day rates, that freelancers are looking for high utilisation – as many days of the week, month or year worked – as possible, as this has a higher impact on their annual take-home than day rate alone.

Divide a perm salary by 120 to find the equivalent day rate

There are various costs incurred by employing permanent staff that don’t apply to freelancers, such as pensions, bonuses, training costs, etc.

The back-of-the-envelope calculation to convert the cost of a permanent salary into a day rate is to divide the perm salary by 120. 

However, because freelancers typically work for just under 200 days per year, they tend to earn 25-45% more than they did as full time employees.

Platforms are rising in importance

Since 2019 there has been a 50% increase in the number of freelancers finding work through platforms, with 21% of respondents saying they found the majority of their projects through them.

Agencies were the main source for 20% of respondents, with word of mouth the largest source at 40%.
If you are struggling to find suitable freelancers through your own network, consider signing up to a freelancer platform, or speak to Movemeon for access to our global network of over 60,000 (ex-)consultants.

More detail on the state of the freelance market can be found in our Freelance & Interim Report 2023, including the kinds of projects that freelance consultants have worked on over the past 12 months, the primary reasons that respondents give for reducing their day rates, and the average day rates that freelance consultants at different seniorities seek.

Are you thinking about hiring a freelancer for your team, looking for more information about hiring or just want some advice? Get in touch with one of our team of friendly specialists.

For more insight into the preferences of freelance consultants, see our chat with Mark for Life after Consulting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVR2kNdT-wA&ab_channel=LifeafterConsulting

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About the author: Dan McEvoy is a freelance writer and editor, with extensive experience in finance, technology, HR, recruitment, and marketing content.

Growing a start-up from ideation to IPO stage is a challenging journey. Estimates of the number of start-ups that make it public vary from 10% to as low as 0.8%.
We’ve produced a guide offering five pieces of advice to start-up founders seeking to steer their ship towards a public listing, including one quick-and-easy route to an early IPO.

Are you looking for support with hiring the right employees to help you on your journey? We can help - contact us here to find out.

How to IPO

A public listing is the holy grail for many start-up founders. Alongside selling or merging the business, listing is one of the surest exit strategies and, in many respects, represents a company’s transition from ‘start-up’ to large, established company. 

However, the vast majority of start-ups fail to exit at all, and the road to an IPO is especially tough. It is difficult to measure start-up success rates precisely, but estimates for the proportion that reach IPO vary from 10% to as low as 0.8%.

This guide seeks to help start-up founders navigate the path towards an IPO with five tips for surviving the tumultuous.

Are you interested in joining a start-up? You'll find loads of exciting start-up and scale-up roles in all seniorities live on Movemeon. Click here to view all jobs!

Before diving into our tips for growing a start-up to IPO, it’s worth considering what this actually means: i.e., what does a start-up (realistically) need to achieve in order to IPO? 

Taking the LSE’s AIM as a guide, there are few official requirements – companies don’t need to meet trading record or market cap requirements, for example. Practically speaking, however, a successful IPO (one which excites investors enough to raise significant funds) depends on being able to demonstrate consistent, reliable revenue, growth potential, a reasonably dominant position within its market, and a convincing roadmap, as well as having the funds on hand to pay for the IPO process.

In other words, your start-up needs to have achieved a secure, revenue-generating position within its industry, with room for further growth.

Find us on Youtube - Interviews with leaders

Movemeon Co-Founder Richard Rosser recently spoke with Jonny Khan, ex Bain and now Head of Central Operations at Deliveroo Hop about 'joining a start-up & growing through IPO'. In that interview Jonny shared his experience about going through IPO, startup life and how to become a senior operational leader.
You can watch the whole interview by clicking the video below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcpSddvBZcE

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5 tips for growing a start-up to IPO

1. Assess demand

On that basis, establishing the total addressable market (TAM) for your product or service is going to be key. This will define the amount of income that you can promise investors once the IPO comes around, and in the nearer term will help you plan your route to revenue generation.

This is a vital stage to get right, and it pays to be conservative. After lack of access to capital, overestimating market need was the second-most common reason for start-up failure identified by a CB Insights study of 111 start-up post-mortems in 2021.

Hiring an experienced consultant can be a vital tool to help you assess demand accurately. MoveMeOn helped junk removal start-up AnyJunk to develop and execute its growth strategy by hiring an ex-McKinsey consultant as its COO.

2. Test your assumptions

Until you have achieved product/market fit (PMF), your analysis of demand is little more than a hypothesis. This hypothesis needs testing, which requires a minimum viable product (MVP).

The Lean Startup approach tells the cautionary tale of founders who “spend months, sometimes years, perfecting [their] product without ever showing the product, even in a very rudimentary form, to the prospective customer.” Once you have identified the problem you’re trying to solve, develop an MVP as quickly as possible to test your assumptions about market demand.
Gather feedback from your early customers and use this to inform tweaks. Use PMF surveys to identify how many of your early customers truly love your product, and how you can make it more appealing to similar customers.

Join 33,000+ people and follow Movemeon Co-Founder Rich on LinkedIn for exciting insights about careers after consulting, how to get the most out of consulting, how to hire current or former consultants and a lot more. 

3. Leave room to pivot

Counter-intuitively, you should expect your hypothesis to be disproved. Give your business time to shift its focus if that’s what the PMF data shows. 

While it might seem like a sideways or a backwards step, there is evidence that a small number of pivots is good for a start-up’s growth. Start-up Genome found that start-ups that pivoted once or twice raised 2.5x the funding, saw 3.6x better user growth, and were half as likely to scale prematurely than those that never pivoted, or that pivoted three or more timers.

4. Manage your culture’s evolution

Once you have achieved PMF, your revenue will start to grow very rapidly, and your team size is likely to rocket with it. While this is great news, it comes with challenges.

Chief among these is maintaining culture. Start-up culture, with its emphasis on fast implementation and iteration, is a precious commodity, and contrasts with the slow bureaucracy of large corporates. It’s unlikely you’ll be profitable (as opposed to revenue-generating) by the time of your IPO, so you’ll still need to retain that start-up competitiveness, even as the size and process of a more mature organisation sets in.

“We had to get everything straight and in order,” Jonny Khan, an ex-Bain consultant and now Head of Central Operations at Deliveroo Hop, said of Deliveroo’s 2021 IPO on Life after Consulting. “That was probably a catalyst to making sure we matured as a business.”

Equally, avoid the temptation to scale too early; ensure any revenue spike is sustainable, and not the result of transitory market conditions. Premature scaling is one of the most common reasons why start-ups underperform.

Find more industry insights on our blog!

5. Consider a SPAC

There is an alternative, ‘quick and dirty’ route to listing your start-up. Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) have gained popularity in recent years as a means of bringing start-ups public at a relatively early stage of their growth. 

This isn’t the place for a detailed exploration of SPACs, but in a nutshell, they are blank check businesses that are listed on an exchange with a view to merging with an exciting start-up in future, thereby listing that company without as many regulatory hurdles as more established businesses face. Companies like Virgin Galactic and DraftKings went public via SPAC mergers.

However, SPACs are considered a risky option by many investors, and have fallen in popularity over the last year or so.

Finding your path to IPO

Navigating the path towards an IPO requires determination, a clear strategy, and getting the right team in place. Find the people that will power your start-up’s growth by speaking to Movemeon today.

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About the author: Dan McEvoy is a freelance writer and editor, with extensive experience in finance, technology, HR, recruitment, and marketing content.