Ultimately, Fractal is designed to enable recruitment professionals flexible work to support their income streams, whether as a true freelancer, a side hustle, or whilst between jobs.

From a personal perspective, when, like so many others, I was made redundant, my first reaction was panic about how I was going to afford the nursery fees and the lovely life my family and I have built ourselves over recent years.

The stress that redundancy can cause is pretty 💩, especially if you have responsibilities for tiny but expensive mouths to feed at home (or indeed other caring responsibilities), mortgages, bills constantly creeping up due to the cost-of-living crisis, and the list goes on. For me, it wasn’t so much losing that job specifically. I quietly pride myself in being adaptable and rolling with the punches and I’ve done just that over the last 4 turbulent years.

The scariest part was looking out there at the apocalyptic TA market…some of the best recruitment professionals I’ve known struggling for months on end to secure a new role, sporadic job postings, and those that were out there had 782 applicants in the first 7 minutes, plus my LinkedIn feed largely covered in stories similar to my own. I did actually have a couple of interviews for opportunities that looked promising but interactions like the below left me pretty deflated:

Interviewer: “We have a set policy of 3 days in the office a week, 9 – 5.30, are you ok with that?”

Me: “Yes, absolutely – I’m more than happy to commit to 3 days. I should mention my husband works overseas a few days each month though, so on those days I may need a small amount of flexibility on timings to allow for nursery pick up and drop off.”

Interviewer: “Ah yes, my wife deals with all that so I don’t have to. Well, we really are quite set on start and finish times so have a think if you can commit to that…”

I consider myself very lucky to have a husband who views being a dad as a pretty significant part of his day job, in fact, he does drop off pretty much every day. I had naively assumed that the above request would be a pretty reasonable one, especially for a non-entry level role…

Before this descends into a diatribe about gender equality, I’ll get back to the point. It was soon after that a friend gave me some advice. Do it on your own, set up a limited company, and go forth. Somehow taking control of my own destiny felt less scary than the alternative option – permanent roles that had always seemed so much ‘safer’ in the past. However, when relentless rounds of layoffs of permanent staff take away the very stability it’s meant to offer, I thought ‘why not make myself more attractive to a potential organization by being a flexible (meaning less fixed cost and commitment) service provider which, through my experience and expertise, can offer even more value than simply executing a list of tasks I would be given as an employee?’ (Ok, I may not have had that thought quite as eloquently as I now write it but you get the gist…)

There are many other reasons that I’m passionate about what we are building at Fractal that I’ll come to next time, but the idea of being able to match a global community of high-quality, flexible recruitment professionals to opportunities just felt like a win-win all around. If you want to join the community, sign up here: 👉 Join Fractal Community

Zero cost, zero commitment, zero risk… just potential upside as soon as we have a role that fits your expertise…

We are particularly interested in the below geographies and locations at the moment due to pending work, so if you or anyone you know specializes here, send them Fractal’s way!

🌍 Technical sales roles in the Philippines

🌍 Aviation and engineering roles in the UK, Japan, China, India, Netherlands, Italy

🌍 Software and Technical Support Engineers in Japan, Malaysia, and India

🌍 Software engineers and solutions architects in North America, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Germany, and India

🌍 Sales, accounts, and customer success managers across EMEA and the UAE

🌍 PM’s and BA’s across EMEA and the US