Thank you
Many thanks to everyone who liked and shared the posts on my blog and LinkedIn where I was announcing that I was searching for a new IT assignment and where I was asking people to not put me in a box.
Maaike Brinkhof
I can now happily announce that it worked. I have found a new assignment thanks to your help. Because of the sharing you all did, a particular person ended up reading my "Don't put me in a box"-blog. She liked the blog so much that she reached out to me. We ended up meeting, had a click, and we'll work together soon! This is, of course, an extremely concise version of events, but it's not the main focus of this blog.
Again, I first and foremost wanted to thank you all. Every like, every share, thank you.
I guess this is also once again a time to dish out some advice. Having your own website truly helps. I'm not going to call it "personal branding" because frankly, I despise putting it like that. My take is: be yourself, show yourself. I think it's important to show people what you care about in your work. Write about it, talk about it on conferences, or make video's about it to put online somewhere. Show the world what you can do.
My blog is my portfolio. I show what I care about, and I'm also honest about what I don't like about tech, testing and IT. Heck, I'm anti-AI, pretty anti-capitalist, and I write about that too. Sadly, I also have to play the capitalist game (it's a system no one can escape), but being honest about my dislikes has not resulted in me being unable to find assignments. So, please, be yourself. Dare to be critical of things. Me being critical doesn't mean I'm incapable of nuance. So far, companies I've worked for have understood that. And if I run into people who dismiss me as a candidate because I dare to be critical of things, will not be a good match, anyway.
I once again marvel at the serendipity of it all. I heard the term "don't put me in a box" in 2014 at the Agile Testing Days. There's no way I could have predicted that the term would stay with me for almost 10 years, would lead me to write a blog about it, that would lead to a particular someone reading it, who needed someone to help with testing AND was in a position to hire people, who would then reach out to me and who would hire me. Ain't that amazing?!
Invest in your network, invest in getting to know other people. Be kind to others, be yourself as well. Be good at your job and be able to show how you've been good at your job. Who knows what it could lead to.
End of happy story. Now on to the sarcastic thanks.
Thank you to all the recruiters who reached out to me when I put my LinkedIn to "Open To Work" with "contract" and "short term" as requirements. Thank you for NOT reading any of that, and offering me internal roles only. And when I said that I was looking for contract based work, thank you for trying to instil fear on me that it would be "very hard right now". Thank you for trying to get me in all sorts of shady midlance constructions that would get me exactly nowhere.
Thank you to the Dutch government for making the current landscape for self-employed people so freaking vague and awful to deal with. Truly, it will most definitely get the result you are looking for. I'm sure NO ONE is going to find ways to work around it and everything will change for the better. Way to go.
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