How to set goals as an IT contractor in 2025-26
One of the many things IT contractors discover when they move from permanent to contract work is that their ‘careers’ have just come to an abrupt halt. Clients pay for your expertise and experience; they won’t help you gain new skills.
But since most tech contractors I know are quite ambitious and want to progress, you need to have some sort of growth plan for the future, including for 2025-26 on April 6th, writes Alan Watts, a service management consultant (retired) with 40 years’ experience as an IT contractor.
If nothing else, the IT contractor jobs market is not going to stand still, it is forever changing so you’d better get your goals down.
Goal-setting 101
When trying to come up with a singular goal, setting a pretty precise target is key, including if you’re assessing your next 12 months -- as many of us do in January.
The age-old interview question “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” isn’t a bad starting point, as your answer to this slightly irritating probe should help you unearth at least a few goals.
My tip here? By all means pose yourself this classic question, but try to set it in a new context.
Act now to head off pipedreams
Prioritise what you NEED to do this year (or this quarter if you’re already feeling behind), to make the crux of that 10-year plan NOT look like a pipedream.
At all times as an independent IT consultant but especially at key junctures like the new year or new tax year, you have to map out your own path, rather than follow convention or the corporate progression route.
Setting a key goal
Your ‘key goal’ for 2025-26 will be different to the ‘key goal’ of the IT contractor coding in the silo next to you. Of course it will!
But do be unashamed to come up with this key goal because, as implied, you actually need it spelt out more so than permies, given that there’s no corporate hierarchy to suggest one, let alone facilitate getting you there.
What are common goals of IT contractors?
Typical goals for IT contractors include:
- Becoming a recognised expert in your field.
- Moving to a new, more challenging, or higher-paid field.
- Employing others (‘sub-contractors’) to work via your limited company.
- Retiring when you decide the time is right.
Whatever your key goal is, you should first have some miniature goals conducive to achieving it.
If nothing else, you’ll need these mini-goals to later measure your progression to your end target, in the unimaginable event you miss it by December 1st 2025 (or whenever your goal-achieving deadline is).
A word to the wise
IT contractors who’ve been around the block must recognise that the market for temporary tech jobs is nowadays far harder to navigate.
A lot of the leverage that contractors had ten years ago to control their destiny, flex their in-business muscles, or walk if the rate was lax has been erased. The general falling off of the UK economy and a noticeable reduction in available work has made that considerably less wriggle room even tighter.
And that’s before the whole complicated world of the off-payroll working rules constrains your movement a bit further. Even the simple inside IR35 / outside IR35 choice has been taken out of your hands -- for most IT contractors anyway.
Whatever goals you set, be realistic -- even on the New Year job itch
The long and short of it? Whatever goals you set have to be realistic and factor in the world we now live in now.
Let’s take the classic example of the ‘New Year, New Job Itch.’
Jumping ship to a new three-month tech role is invariably going to be trickier than once upon a time.
There are a lot of qualified people chasing the same work these days, and clients (currently) hold the bargaining chips so your bargaining power has been greatly reduced. Agencies have possibly pinched a chip or two too.
What is a good goal to have?
So, a goal of increasing your day rate by 15% a year, effective from 2025-26? It’s probably not going to happen.
That said, a rate increase as a goal is absolutely not a silly idea to have as an IT contractor.
Having the target of a rate increase would at least give you a yardstick to measure progress against, even if you don’t meet it.
Goals that lead to goals
It might even make you think about why the market rate isn’t going up or even going down in real terms. And that could give rise to a different goal such as adding a skill to your armoury to widen your potential market.
My contractor career is a good lens to look at the fourth goal above -- the retirement goal.
Even as an employee, my key end goal was always to retire when I chose with a comfortable income and no serious worries.
What my 'Goal 1' and 'Goal 2' looked like
A quick bit of context.
I fell into IT contracting almost by accident.
My last permanent role had degraded into a continuing fight against poor management, lack of resources and zero rewards, so I was looking for something that would use my particular skills and experience. That turned out to be to build a helpdesk from scratch for a big government contract. It wasn’t until I received the offer that I realised nobody had said it was a freelance contract, not as a full-time position as an employee.
As the contract space was a world I knew nothing about, my first goal:
1. Learn how IT contracting works.
My second goal:
2. Write down a few key things about what I need to do, financially and practically, to make this new world work for me.
Even basic things got jotted down, like, ‘How do I pay the mortgage each month if I’m going to be paid every day, via a day rate?’
Setting follow-up goals (based on mistakes, potentially)
Goal three? To understand how I came up with it, you first need to know I made the usual mistakes IT contractors make in their debut contract.
In particular, I realised I was paying a lot to HMRC in taxes; I had no idea what assignment I’d land next, and I wasn’t sure if I would make enough on the next assignment to make contracting viable.
So my goals as a still new IT contractor but no longer a first-timer were:
1. Secure my next assignment.
2. Read every day 5 x reliable blogs or websites/newsletters about the accountancy side of a contractor biz and commit much of it to memory.
3. Create a mind map entitled ‘How to improve my worth as a contractor.’
Refining goals
Due to a little bit of luck, I ticked off my first goal quite quickly.
And more than just this bonus, I was doing much the same thing as before, meaning I was free to focus on my remaining two goals.
Further helpfully and easing my underlying fear of viability, the role was with a bank!
My new goals:
1. Secure my next role. DONE
2. Read every day 5 x blogs or websites/newsletters about the accountancy side of a contractor biz, and commit much of it to memory. DOING
3. Write down a mind map on how to improve my worth as a contractor. DOING
4. Become a subject matter expert.
As you can see, my fourth ‘career’ goal was to get to the point in my IT contracting experience where I could describe myself as a ‘subject matter expert.’
My objective was to become a consultant in this field.
Three ways to become a subject matter expert (which worked for me)
To become a subject matter expert, as an independent consultant-for-hire, I:
- joined some professional forums (so I could both learn from other members and post my own concepts).
- created a website to showcase my ideas about how my field should work in the real world, and;
- actively chased roles that were related to my skills but featured different /distinct headline tasks.
What about sitting down to review goals?
When you review your goals, and so you don’t get dispirited but feel encouraged, note down your successes so you can identify them at-a-glance.
Or at least somehow acknowledge progress -- ‘50% done’ for example, or even use prison-esque tally marks i.e. four vertical lines, followed by a vertical line -- as a strike-through to denote completion.
Looking back now, my seed of success was…
For me, the seed of success was sown when I was individually recommended for two months' work to secure the renewal of a Service Desk contract for a consultancy. Or else the consultancy would lose a £17million-a-year contract!
Fortunately, I succeeded.
The £17million renewal was saved, and I could then proudly update my CV to say I was now experienced at:
- Client management,
- Toolset implementation, and;
- Leading a diverse team.
With this trio now in my locker, I was there -- I could finally justify calling myself a ‘consultant.’
Goals as an independent consultant, be like…
Earlier, I talked of goals that lead to goals.
Well, now I was a ‘consultant,’ this achievement led to me setting two new goals:
- Increase my network of contacts
- Use these contacts as support when looking for work.
Combined with making a concerted effort to talk less to agents (oh the hardship!), the process of building contacts came quite naturally to me and took off. So much so, that my four subsequent contracts all ended up being people or parties approaching me, rather than me approaching them and having to fight it out with other contractors on JobServe!
Eventually, I became a senior Service Architect for major organisations.
Did I achieve my key goal?
In my case, I did succeed in meeting my original ‘key’ goal -- retiring on my own terms and without sleepless nights.
In fact, I stepped away from chasing work in my early 60s and have been living a comfortable life in retirement ever since. I had a degree of luck along the way; yes -- but having a clear set of goals had a lot to do with it.
So, for 2025-26, or beyond, what are your goals?
