How to start consulting ?

[avalon37]

I used to be a consultant from 2004-2008 and at any given time managed Adwords accounts/SEO projects for 3-4 different clients at any given time. Then I had a full-time client side job for the last 4 years. I'm finding it harder to find consulting jobs now that companies have in-house search depts. Any tips/advice of how to find consulting roles these days? Any good sites to post resume on?

Thanks

[httpwebwitch]

The best avenue for consulting gigs is word of mouth, aka achieving a little bit of "fame" in your industry. That's a tough nut to crack.

Make sure you have a really thorough and flattering resume on LinkedIn, and a self-promo website that attracts traffic & ranks reasonably well in Goog&Bing for local terms (your city name + your expertise). You don't need anything fancy. Perhaps add a blog so you can accrue a corpus of articles under your name, increasing that fame ingredient mentioned above.

Then, try cold-calling some agencies & local companies with a well-crafted pitch.

[anallawalla]

Terminology is part of it. I'd describe your work not as a consultant, but as a contractor. It sounds as though you are looking for outsourced contracts, so you may want to sound out all the digital agencies in your city as well as do your own promotions.

LinkedIn is your best resume, but by hanging out in non-SEO/PPC business groups there, you might inject your expertise in some discussions. That could bring in enquiries from clients and approaches from recruiters. You'd have to balance whether you should describe yourself as a "President" of your own company (discourages recruiters) or a "Manager", which may leave the door open to clients and recruiters. I know at least one such individual who did this and increased his enquiry rate.