Ask HN: As a contractor can I list projects I've worked on on my resume?

[r3vo]

Hey guys,

Just started out full time contract work this year with some great success. I've worked on some very well known web sites.

Is it ok for me to list these websites in my resume? Do you guys do this? Including these projects in my resume would make it much more impressive and would lend me a great amount of credibility to potential contracts that I'm looking for.

On the other hand I'm not sure if this would be a breach of an NDA agreement or not. And what if I haven't signed an NDA?

My rule of thumb has been to only talk about projects that I've worked on that could be deduced from publicly availible information, but I'm not sure even this is ok.

Thanks for any feedback you can give me!

[davismwfl]

I am not contracting at this point, but I have done a lot of it in my past.

The answer is, it depends on what the NDA & your contract says. Generally in my contracts I used to always have a clause that allowed me to say who and what project I was working on, and it overrode the NDA for that sole purpose. There were a few exceptions when a project was stealth of course which is fine.

Mine basically spelled out what I could say, basically it was generally: who, what, when and basic goals. Outside of that and you have to get permission usually. I also still to this day don't list them on my resume by name, but instead by basic details. When I talk with people I will say who/what and that lets them know I have the chops which can be validated through contracts or references in certain cases. To be fair, usually the talks come first then if they need further due diligence they see my resume. When I was contracting it was super rare anyone on my team had to produce a resume for clients, except for the largest of clients who wanted more to vet and frankly to get them in their contact list to try and poach them later. No matter what was in the contract about anti poaching, every person who produced a resume would suddenly find themselves in headhunters sites or in corporate recruiting systems (mine included sometimes).

[r3vo]

Thanks for the reply! Did you submit this clause to them yourselves when you agreed to the work? I'm not working with an agency, I'm just scouting work myself. It seems like I could generate a lot of friction from potential employers by asking them to sign a clause like this.

I'm been searching online to see if the specific project I just left could be publicly connected to the company for which I worked, and I'm finding that all of my fellow contractors have listed the project on their linkedin. I think I'm going to take their queue and put it on my resume myself.

[davismwfl]

I didn't work through an agency, I have been the founder of more than one consultancy. I had my own MSA/RSA agreements and SOW templates I would work from. And in some cases large companies or publicly traded ones would want to use their own contract and I would send them my requests which is part of normal business practices. If you don't send them back something on the contract than you probably haven't looked close enough to find the potential problems with it, and they get it. Any client that got all pissy about contract revisions was a client not worth having because they were trying to get something over on me and I wouldn't put up with it. Push back/negotiation is fine, pissy attitude isn't.

I am not a lawyer but use them when needed, you should too. But in general, usually in the MSA/RSA or similar I'd have a clause under a section called "publicity" or similar that would read substantially similar to below, where Company was my company and Client was the client we were doing work for:

"Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the Agreement or applicable Statements of Work, Company shall be permitted to disclose in summary form the nature of the work performed for Client under the applicable Statement of Work. Such disclosure includes a description of the technology utilized by Company, but Company shall not disclose the proprietary business processes of Client or otherwise result in any breach of any other term of this Agreement."

[r3vo]

Thanks so much for the reply! My medium-long term goal is to turn what I'm doing as a freelancer into my own consultancy/development firm.

Really appreciate the feedback. I'll look into integrating this sort of thing into my future contracts.

[tjkrusinski]

I work in live events and frequently see people list specific events they have worked on in their resume. While this isn't an apples to apples comparison, it has some merit. Generally, it's not useful for me to know that you worked on something a few years ago. What I care more about is a narrative of impactful work across a number of projects, whether small, large or in between.

If someone violates an NDA to tout their contribution on a project it is an immediate turn off as it shows a breach of trust before we even have had a conversation.

It's likely that over the course of n projects, a contractor was 'over hired' and 'under hired' some amount of times. Seeing a trend of consistent placement in their past work helps me know that they have an area of focus and expertise that I can capitalize on as well. This means they will have a high level of efficiency in the work that I need them to do. Given this, seeing that narrative played out in the resume is important.

[vkaku]

Do not disclose any details if you know that information is valuable to your clients. Follow the agreement.