Mumsnet Talk

I'm doing a maternity cover at the moment as a freelancer. It's a bit more junior than roles I did before DS was born. I'm hoping to claw my way back up to doing more challenging work – short term contracts and projects as a freelancer, not back to being a permanent employee. I’m just pondering about the best way to show that I’m capable of this.

I’d like the company I’m working with and others in the (small) industry I work in to ask me back for short term contracts… but at a more senior level than this one whenever possible. Obviously swanning about saying how easy this is compared to my last job isn’t going to win me any friends or future contracts. And extending the job too much could leave the person I’m covering for in a tricky situation if she comes back and finds I’ve started off lots of new projects that she’s got to run when she’s just finding her feet after ML. At the moment I’m concentrating on just being super-organised about records so that when she comes back she’ll be able to see exactly what I’ve done and have followed all of her systems, and I’m doing her core job to the best of my ability obviously. And I’ve started a couple of finite projects that I can wrap up before she gets back so she won’t have any extra work but the company will have an improved market position. How can I best position myself so that when I leave this contract I go onwards and upwards? Anyone else got experience of achieving this? A contact, when I mentioned I was looking said ‘I don’t think we have any ‘mummy’ jobs at the moment…’ and when I took this job he made a comment along the lines of ‘oh, glad you found the perfect thing.’ Which was slightly worrying considering it in the context of his previous remark!