What makes a good contractor?

You can scroll down for the five things, or you can indulge me for a brief introduction.

As I get close to a decade of contracting across both the public and private sector, I’ve found myself coming back to a pretty simple question more often than not. What actually makes a good contractor?

I’m writing this because, in most cases, we instinctively know who is and isn’t a good contractor, but the reasons why are a bit harder to articulate.

At its core, the answer is not that complicated. A good contractor is client oriented.

If you strip everything back and look at it through the client’s lens, most of them are looking for the same few things:

• Value for money

• Reliability

• Accountability for results

They’re not looking for theatre. They’re not looking for someone to come in and tell them how everything should be done in a perfect world. Most of the time, they just want someone who can step into a messy, busy environment and make things better without making everything harder in the process.

Before getting into the detail, it’s probably worth clarifying one thing. I don’t want to confuse or conflate contractors and consultants. They’re often grouped together and they do overlap, but in practice they can be wildly different, even if they come from the same breed. This piece is focused on contractors, particularly those embedded within teams and responsible for delivering outcomes in the day to day.

So if that’s the expectation, what actually separates a good contractor from someone who just fills a seat?

Here are five things that make a good contractor, in my view.

1. Conscious of the optics

This isn’t about putting on an act or trying to be something you’re not, but it is about understanding the environment you’re walking into.

Contractors, particularly in the public sector, come with a certain reputation. People will assume you’re expensive and overpaid, and whether it’s said out loud or not, there’s often a question sitting in the background about whether you’re worth it.

Unfortunately, we don’t get to argue our way out of this attitude and the associated misinformed comments. You demonstrate it through how you show up. Being on time, being visible, presenting yourself properly, and contributing to the culture of the team rather than sitting outside it all go a long way. None of it is complicated, but taken together it shapes how people perceive the value you bring.

2. Sit in the mud

There is nothing worse than someone who lands in a new environment and immediately starts pointing out everything that’s wrong. We’ve all worked with that person at some point. It might even be well intentioned, but it lands poorly every time.

Every organisation has its own context, pressures, and history. Things that might look inefficient or messy from the outside often exist for a reason, even if that reason is just that people are stretched and doing the best they can with what they’ve got.

A good contractor takes the time to understand that properly. Not just at a surface level, but in a way that shows the people around them that they actually get it. That they understand the competing priorities, the stress points, and the reality of the day to day.

Once you’ve done that, you’re in a much better position to help in a way that’s actually useful.

3. Make good pudding

At some point, empathy and awareness only take you so far. You do need to be very good at what you do.

I love the phrase “the proof is in the pudding”, mainly because I’m an avid fan of the Great British Bake Off and I make a pretty mean Bakewell Pudding (if I can say so myself). In a contracting sense, it really just comes down to whether you can deliver.

You don’t need to know everything, and you definitely don’t need to pretend that you do. Being comfortable asking questions and admitting when something is outside your depth is part of being a professional. But at the same time, you are there for a reason.

There is an expectation that you know your craft, that you’ve seen enough situations to navigate them with confidence, and that the work you produce stands up.

That balance between confidence and humility is important, but ultimately people judge you on output. If the work is good, people notice.

4. Above and beyond (in the right way)

There is a layer of value that comes from going slightly above what is asked of you, but in a way that is practical rather than disruptive.

This isn’t about coming in and trying to overhaul everything, especially early on. It’s more about the small things. Turning a basic spreadsheet into something that is actually useful. Bringing structure to information that is scattered. Tightening up a process that everyone quietly knows could be better. Formatting work properly.

Individually, these things are not groundbreaking. But over time they signal that you’re thinking about the work in a broader sense. That you’re not just completing tasks, you’re looking for ways to make life easier for the people around you. That’s where you start to become genuinely valuable, and often a lot harder to replace than you might expect.

5. Measure and evaluate

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about contracting is being a step removed from the more formal performance frameworks that exist in a lot of organisations. You’re not necessarily tied into the same development plans or templated review processes.

But that doesn’t mean you’re not being assessed. If anything, the feedback is just less structured and a bit more subtle.

So you have to take some ownership of it. Asking for feedback directly, being aware of your own blind spots, and paying attention to how people respond to your work all matter. It doesn’t need to be formal, but it does need to be deliberate.

Part of that is also making a conscious effort to capture the results of your work. Not everything lends itself to clean metrics, especially in comms or advisory roles, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t value there. Sometimes it’s qualitative. A stakeholder who is noticeably more confident going into a meeting. A piece of work that gets picked up and reused. A team that starts operating with a bit more clarity.

Those signals are easy to overlook if you’re not paying attention, but over time they give you a much clearer picture of your impact. And just as importantly, they give you something tangible to draw on when you’re explaining your value to someone else.

Because in the end, it’s not just about what you did. It’s about what changed as a result of you being there.

Closing thoughts

None of this is particularly revolutionary. Most of it is fairly common sense when you lay it out like this.

But in practice, it’s the combination of these things, consistently applied, that tends to separate contractors who are trusted and retained from those who are just passing through.

And more often than not, it comes back to that original point. If you stay genuinely focused on what the client needs, and you align how you work to that, the rest tends to take care of itself.