We’re really excited to announce a new partnership with Hnry to offer automated tax calculations, payments, and lodgments for Movemeon’s network of freelance consultants in Australia and New Zealand.
Movemeon members will be able to use Hnry’s app-based service, powered by a team of qualified accountants, that will take care of all the financial admin – including invoicing, expenses, payments, and tax payments – enabling them to get on with the job rather than having to fret about tax and compliance.
“As the world’s home of consulting and strategy talent, Movemeon has seen the popularity of freelance consulting skyrocket over recent years. But working for yourself comes with challenges such as tax and related admin that can be time-consuming and stressful.
So we’re excited to announce a partnership with Hnry, whose platform solves your tax headaches and ensures working as a sole trader has never been easier”.
– Peter Clifton-Smith, General Manager APAC, Movemeon
How Movemeon + Hnry makes your freelancing tax payments effortless
If you’re an ABN / NZBN sole trader, Hnry saves you both time and additional accountant fees – here’s what you get:
All your taxes calculated and paid automatically as you earn (Income Tax, GST, Medicare levies, and student loan)
All your are returns lodged by Hnry’s accountants (BAS and Income Tax returns)
Send unlimited quotes and invoices from the Hnry app
Raise deductions on the go (snap a photo of your receipt via the app)
Generate reports your on business’ financial performance
The thing that sets Hnry apart from either accounting software or using traditional accountants is they are the best of both worlds. Hnry is a digital tax accountant and the software smarts all in one solution.
As part of the service, the Hnry team of accountants lodge your income tax return – this includes any earnings from employee salary or various contract income sources, not just projects through Movemeon.
All of this is included in Hnry’s fee which is 1% of your initial payments from your clients, capped at $1500. No need for additional software or accountant fees. Nothing is too complicated for Hnry, even if you have crypto or shares and investment properties that require deductions.
“Most accounting software is just that – software. It requires you to pay for a separate accountant, maintain spreadsheets, and to spend precious time actively reconciling transactions and ‘doing’ taxes. With Hnry, that’s all done for you, and all included in our incredibly low fee.
Hnry is about helping independent earners get on with servicing their clients and growing their businesses, not getting bogged down with tax and financial admin. Given Movemeon’s network and innovative approach to helping freelance and independent consultants find work, we know there is a natural partnership between the two companies”.
– Karan Anand, Managing Director, Hnry Australia
To get started with Hnry and have confidence that you’re always up-to-date on your tax and reporting obligations, head to: https://hnry.com.au/au/movemeon/
In this interview, we spoke with candidate Sidne about his career path and his new unique role as Senior Business Development Manager at Lufthansa Innovation Hub in Singapore – which he found via Movemeon!
Please tell us a little about your career so far?
I started my career out in China working for an asset management company, following which I co-founded three companies based out of China. I had mixed success with these, but it taught me so much about business development, growing teams and working across the region.
I then returned to Singapore and joined Grab (Asia’s super app!), where I led business development and partnerships, then two years ago I joined foodpanda where I managed key accounts and was responsible for a significant regional P&L.
You just found a new role with the help of Movemeon! What is the new role about and what excites you about the new opportunity?
I’ll be joining Lufthansa Innovation Hub which is the airline’s digital, innovation and venture capital unit. I’ll be helping to build out LIH’s Asia presence from our Singapore and Shanghai hubs, connecting with exciting startups and fostering partnerships in the travel and mobility tech ecosystem. In terms of career growth, this ticks every single box for me – business development, VC, startups, innovation. I’m super excited!
How did you come across the role with LIH?
The Movemeon APAC team reached out to me directly to highlight this role. Initially reading through it, I was intrigued by the name of the company and decided to investigate further, realising that they were not simply an aviation startup, which was my initial assumption. I’m glad I took that step and decided to apply straight away!
In your opinion, how does Movemeon differ from other platforms/agencies/channels?
I believe that traditional recruitment agencies tend to have a “fill the spaces” mentality, where candidates are simply commodities. I’ve genuinely found that from the first point of contact through to receiving the job offer, the Movemeon team has been extremely helpful and highly communicative and responsive. What you see in the space that’s quite common is the Recruiter “ghosting” the candidate at times, which is extremely unprofessional and a big gripe for many in the recruitment process. I have no doubt that should I not have gotten this role, the Movemeon team would have been equally communicative, and only wish to offer other roles that suit my profile.
Seems to me as well that Movemeon connects candidates with jobs that are out of the norm, focusing largely on fast-growing startups that many candidates wouldn’t even have heard of (like in my case). There’s a vast array of companies out there looking for hires, and awareness is everything, in order to match the right candidate to said companies.
What advice would you give to other Movemeon candidates?
I would be clear in the profile setup on exactly what geographies/ salary range/ skillsets you bring to the table, and let their algorithm work naturally. I’m still receiving many interesting job opportunities pushed to my inbox from Movemeon, many of which are intriguing!
Are you ready for a career change? Click here to become a member of the largest community for consultants and alumni.
We spoke to Dan Connor, who recently hired a Chief of Staff and Director of Growth & Business Development for his team through Movemeon, about his career journey. In this article, Dan, CEO at Migo Indonesia and ex-Bain, shares his experience leaving consulting to join a startup.
Tell us a bit about your early career journey, Dan!
After completing my Masters degree in politics, I actually had my eye on joining the State Department. I had a job lined up in the USA, but I decided to put it on hold and take some time out and work in Asia, to get that notch on my belt and broaden my horizons a little.
So I joined Bain in Singapore, expecting it to be a 18-month to 2-year type thing. But I really enjoyed the challenge of consulting, as well as working in Asia, so when I asked to help found Bain’s Jakarta office in 2013, I felt it was an awesome opportunity that I just couldn’t turn down. I was proud to be one of the first five employees for Bain in Indonesia, which I believe is now a team of 70-80 consultants.
So I guess you can say I was really bitten by the Asia bug. I also learned Bahasa Indonesia and some basic Chinese along the way.
What was it about working in Indonesia in particular that really grabbed you?
I think ultimately it was about being able to have the most impact and getting up close to the really fundamental issues. As a consultant in Singapore, we’d often (not always) be helping more mature, stable businesses optimise for performance gains.
Whereas in Indonesia, we were helping our clients grapple with fundamental growth opportunities and the various challenges to navigate. I could really tangibly see and feel the impact we were having, working with really senior decision-makers.
So talk us through the next phase – leaving Bain and joining Migo.
It was in 2018 when I was thinking about my next step out of Bain. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that I chafe at existing systems that don’t make sense – much better to help build something new, effective and fit-for-purpose. Not to mention an opportunity to help launch something much bigger, not just doing the optimising and refining thing.
Furthermore, I’d always been more interested in companies that make products and services for the mass market, rather than those which look to target the top 5-10% of consumers.
I had done a bit of work in the telco space while at Bain. Once I heard about Migo and its mission to make a difference to the 90% of Indonesians who have limited internet access, I knew this was a pretty special opportunity.
Migo had done tech trials at that stage, and was ready with the first iteration of our solution, but needed someone to come in as Indonesia CEO to drive our go-to-market and scale the team. So right on three years ago, I joined Migo and have loved being part of this great ride.
Tell us a bit more about Migo?
For the majority of people living in emerging markets, the promise of high-speed internet is a pipe dream. They have limited cellular data budgets and no wireline internet. Their access to data is limited to the most basic functionality. They are not able to participate in the rich data experience of the few who have real-time access to virtually any service at their fingertips.
Migo levels the digital playing field for 3 billion consumers by bringing the best bits of the internet to the corner store. We offer affordable access to Entertainment, Education, Financial Services, and other digital products and services through a disruptive tech solution that delivers data up to 100 times cheaper than existing networks.
What’s the trajectory for Migo from here?
It’s been such a great growth story. In two years we’ve built a team from scratch to 200+ people across 4 offices in the country, and we have 1,200 locations across Java. In April we welcomed our one millionth customer in Indonesia, and we’ve attracted multiple rounds of investment from Temasek and leading VC firms along the way.
We’ll continue to focus on our rollout across Indonesia, while in parallel we are actively looking at other markets in the region where we see huge opportunities for our offering.
What kind of advice would you give to consultants keen to make the jump into a startup?
Bear in mind that startup life isn’t necessarily going to be all about super-intellectual problem solving, every day, like it is in consulting. Ultimately, it’s about getting your hands dirty, grappling with multiple problems and challenges (and opportunities) quickly and efficiently. You will use your consulting toolkit, but you’ll need to make trade-offs and make decisions rapidly.
How did you get to know Movemeon?
I think I first heard about Movemeon through the Bain grapevine. I signed up as I was interested in picking up freelance projects while I was looking around for a new challenge.
It was great to be able to keep an eye on the market for permanent jobs as well as interesting freelance projects. I really liked that I could keep the net super wide across different geographies and role types, but the alerts and jobs highlighted through Movemeon were always relevant, so I wasn’t wasting my time sifting through other channels or platforms.
And we’re thrilled that you’ve recently made some hires through Movemeon!
Yes! I’m happy to have been able to leverage Movemeon to find a great Chief of Staff and Director of Growth & Business Development for my team.
I’ve been super happy about the quality of candidates that Movemeon have been able to connect us with. Movemeon is proving a great partner as we scale: they can obviously support across Asia-Pacific, but the ability to cover both permanent hires and contract resources is particularly helpful.
Thanks, Dan for your time and all the best for continued success at Migo!
No matter what stage we find ourselves at, we all have thought about career change at some point in our careers. At the same time, this is a daunting topic as it will impact all areas of your life. Whether you are 30 and looking to buy a property or in your 50s preparing to save for retirement, career change is a serious decision. We understand this change can be scary and so big it’s actually stressful to even start thinking about it.
That’s the reason why we have compiled our best tips on this page and in an ongoing series of articles. Our aim is to help you understand what a career change involves, and how to approach it strategically. We also want to guide you through the process. From browsing jobs to the final stage of interviewing for your dream job, we’ll be there. Below, you will find a high-level exploration of your most frequently asked questions, and a list of useful resources we have created to help you. Please note that this page will be updated regularly to keep up to date with the latest changes to the job market. So make sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to receive any updates straight into your inbox:
Before engaging in a career change, it’s great to take some time to reflect on yourself. First and foremost, do you know the difference between a job change and a career change? And which one is the right option for you? A job change is when you use your skills and experience to apply to a different industry (or a different company). Whereas a career change is when you look to develop new skills in order to join a completely different industry and job type. Most people who go for a career change will usually look to get training to work in an industry they are passionate about. For instance, take a course in Python to develop your coding skills to work in Tech, or research trends in philanthropy to join an NGO.
You might also hear about career transition. This is essentially the exact same thing as a career change, but also encompasses the process that happens before the actual change. On the other hand, career advancement is quite different as it refers to when you move upward the career ladder. If you are an Analyst and get a promotion or a new job to Manager level, we can speak of career progression or advancement. More often than not, career changers do not experience a progression in seniority as they tend to start this new career from scratch.
Once you have figured out that what you want to do is change careers, you need to find out what career would make you happy. It’s quite easy to think we’d love to be a lawyer, a human rights advocate, or a game developer. But taking the leap to actually become one is a whole different story. The idea might sound attractive, but how can you find out what career would actually fulfil you? That’s when having some experience as a consultant can come in handy. You will have worked on a range of projects with varied clients, and it gave you a glimpse of different industries’ day-to-day.
Pros and Cons of a Career Change
Changing careers is personal – what might be a positive for you might be a deterrent factor for another. For this reason, we decided against listing the pros and cons of a career change. Instead, we answer the three main questions that will help you figure out the balance between pros and cons.
Is it worth it?
The main question to ask yourself is to know whether all your work and efforts will pay off. This is the biggest question and the one that’s the hardest to give a definite answer to. First of all, we only tend to see something as worth it once it’s done. Secondly, this will depend on the change you’re operating and the socio-economic conditions.
However, career changers seem to confirm that this change was the best thing they could have done. They all agree that this was the best thing they could’ve done both professionally and personally. There is a tendency to confess changing careers was not easy and took a long time. It involves some self-sacrifice, but it is all made worth it by global satisfaction in the end. People who changed careers and wish they hadn’t tend to confess a lack of organisation and forecasting before actually taking the leap. Read on below to make sure you prepare as best as you can.
What about my finances?
You need to consider financial implications when you’re thinking of leaving consulting or your current industry. Most of the time when changing careers, you will need to take a step down in responsibility and compensation. You need to ensure that you can sustain your current lifestyle with a lower salary. If not you can use the job-hunting period to revise certain costly habits that you can put on hold for the next year or so. In the meantime, you can progress in your new career and get back to a similar compensation level. Or stick to your new habits if you found them better!
If you quit your current role without anything lined up yet, then you need to prepare even more. You need to make sure you have enough savings to pay all your bills/mortgage/etc. whilst you’re job hunting. It takes on average between 6 and 12 months to find a new role. So the best is to plan how much money you would need to go on for a year without a salary. You can use this period when you’re saving up to prepare for the other aspects of your job change, like upskilling, volunteering, etc.
But perhaps you’re really unsure of your finances, or you’re not in a position where you can take any risk. Then you can consider offering your expertise as a freelance consultant. Going freelance is a relatively easy career change that actually pays well. You can either work on a project for a couple of months or also fill an interim position. The latter would last longer and compensation would be similar to that of a permanent position
Because changing careers can be such a long process, it’s very easy to lose motivation over time. The best way to tackle this is to be super organised from the get-go and plan a very strong strategy to achieve your goal. Make sure the end result drives you, and reward yourself with more attainable goals throughout the process. Maybe you want to be a Product Manager and you set yourself up to upskill, be mentored, etc. Having a multitude of smaller, more easily attained objectives will help you feel fulfilled and see that you’re making good progress.
Build a clear and honest picture of your current situation. Figure out your financial situation and where you’re at in your career.
Research your ideal career and job. Make sure you can forecast the evolution of the role in the next 5-10 years. Talk to people who work in this industry as well as other people who changed careers.
Take your time to ensure you’re doing the right things and divide your move into several smaller stages. That way, you’ll stay motivated and on top of everything. This will help you make sure you commit to the change.
Changing careers is a challenging process that requires a lot of preparation and commitment. Equally, this is a rewarding step to take in order to live a more fulfilling life. It’s completely normal to have a myriad of questions when you’re about to take such a leap of faith. That’s why we are sharing our tips and insights in our Career Change series – to help you navigate through the process as smoothly as possible. The best way to do that? It’s to make sure you are completely on top of market trends and know everything there is to know about your chosen industry and ideal function.
Browse new opportunities to stay on top of current market trends and requirements. Sign up on Movemeon to see what companies in your industry are looking for the most and what skills they require from ideal candidates.
Congrats on the new role, Saikat! In your own words, could you tell us about your new role?
I’ve just joined IncentiaPay, an ASX-listed group that operates the “Entertainment” business and brand. Founded in 1994, as The Entertainment Book, our company has evolved to become Australia and New Zealand’s premier offers and rewards marketplace.
My role is all about understanding our member and merchant partners’ needs, their objectives and their challenges, and then making sure that Entertainment always puts its best foot forward to help them address these.
How do you view your experience at Accenture as a phase in your early career?
When I was in college, Accenture was the only company I had ever wanted to work for. After completing my MBA I applied to only one company and was lucky enough to spend three years working in the best environment a fresher can ask for. Looking back, I’d say that strategy consulting was a great move for me – everything I learnt during my MBA had a real-world use, and I enjoyed using my skills to make an impact for clients. There’s no other career that provides such diverse learning in such a short time.
I found the skills I honed in consulting set me up really well for founding my own digital marketing business. Which in turn set me up perfectly for this new role at IncentiaPay!
What are you hoping to accomplish in your new role?
I’m looking forward to applying what I have seen and experienced across different industries and business models to help the team find solutions to their particular challenges. I am hoping to accomplish our next phase of growth using the principles I’ve learnt over two decades in similar domains.
When you are not working, what keeps you engaged?
Having moved to New Zealand just a few years ago, I am still discovering the wealth of outdoor activities this country offers. When I’m not working, you’ll find me kayaking or fishing on the waterfront, tending to my garden or trekking on one of the Great Walk routes.
How did you find out about Movemeon?
Through word-of-mouth, I was referred by a friend who had just completed a great freelance project for an Australian company, which he found through Movemeon. It’s a great offering, I’m not surprised the word continues to spread!
Keep in touch with our network of over 55,000 consultants and alumni by subscribing to our newsletter below:
The gender pay gap in UK startups & scale-ups is 25%, way above the national average of 15%. In the past, it was not uncommon that men and women would be paid different salaries despite holding the same role. Now the gender pay gap is driven by two main drivers.
If you’d like to receive a full bespoke benchmarking report covering specific and personalised insights into salaries, pay rises, equity, diversity and much more, click here.
Not enough women in leadership positions
The first of these drivers is a skew in seniority levels; men tend to be in more senior positions than women. In a salary and benchmarking dataset provided by our partner business Payspective, we see that across UK start-ups and scale-ups, the gender distribution across all employees is nearly equal (48% women vs. 52% men). However, once we look at the gender distribution in leadership positions (Director and C-level), the representation of women drops down to 33%.
When only looking at the very top (Founders and C-level), the representation of women drops further down to 19%. A key driver for this is that C-level positions within start-ups are commonly taken up by the founding team, and 80% of start-ups in the UK are founded by men.
A positive trend in the start-up space that’s currently unfolding is that the number of female founders is on the rise, having doubled over the last decade – while 21% of funded UK startups had female founders in 2018, this figure was only 11% in 2011.
Not enough women in tech roles
The second primary driver of the gender pay gap is a skew in terms of role by function that men and women work in, with men more frequently holding highly-paid technical roles such as engineering, software development and data science positions.
This driver holds even more weight in the start-up economy than the wider UK market as a whole as start-ups tend to have a higher proportion of technical roles than traditional businesses and so the gender skew within these roles has a larger impact on the gender pay gap.
What startups and scale-ups can do
So what can you do to close their gender pay gap? There are 4 main levers:
(1) Create transparency
Companies with less than 250 employees aren’t required to report their gender pay gap in the UK, but internal transparency around gender and pay within your business is a positive step to take nonetheless. It’s critical to understand how your businesses pay gap compares to similar companies and what the drivers of this gap are.
Transparency also helps in the recruitment process – including a salary range in job advertisements is not just a good practice in equal recruitment but also increases the number of applications you can expect.
(2) Support equitable progression of men and women into senior roles
Ensure that your culture and processes support women being hired or progressed into senior roles. For instance, think about whether a senior role you’re hiring for could be part-time. Flexibility to work from home and flexibility around working hours help ensure that work commitments can be combined with other duties, and allows candidates from a wider background to apply and be considered.
(3) Hire women into tech roles
Hiring women into tech roles is a challenge that many companies struggle with – and it’s an especially important one for the tech-dominated startup and scaleup scene. What can you do?
Make a conscious effort to recruit female tech talent. Go to women in tech events, focus on diversity and inclusivity on your blog and recruitment pages, and highlight success stories of women in tech roles within your organisation. The effort you put into hiring women into tech roles early on will pay off tenfold in the long run – hiring your 10th woman into a 20 person developer team will prove much easier than hiring your 1st woman into a 20 person developer team.
(4) Ensure you have the right processes for recruiting, salary negotiations and pay rises
Finally, make sure there are no structural or cultural issues with pay differences in your organisation. Men tend to be more comfortable asking for a pay rise than women so you’ll have to make sure that you have robust processes around salary reviews and pay raises in place (don’t just give pay raises to the people who ask the loudest).
Men also have a tendency to apply for a job even if they’re not a perfect fit with the requirements whereas women tend to only send off that application if they’re sure the job is a great fit and they meet all the expectations listed in a job description. So while a man who wants a part-time job may simply apply to a full-time position and try to negotiate it down to 80%, a woman would be less likely to do so. If there’s a potential for a role to be part-time – make sure to include it on the job spec.
Working for a UK startup or scaleup and looking to hire? Get in touch!
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
Strictly Necessary Cookies can include cookies to improve your security set by our third-party partners Sucuri and Cloudflare.
3rd Party Cookies
We use third-party cookies to understand how customers use our services and to send targeted ads. Some of our third-party partners use localStorage as part of tracking.
We use retargeting and marketing cookies to send our users relevant ads and content. We use third-party for this purpose for retargeting via Facebook, Linkedin, Google Adword, AdRoll and other similar applications. Emails and marketing campaigns using Outfunnel, Pipedrive Web Visitors and Mailchimp.
Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.
