For Talent
A guide for individual professionals, consultants, and contractors using the Illumera platform to find their next federal contracting engagement.
Profile Setup
Your profile is your digital presence in the Illumera network. The more complete and accurate your profile, the better the matching engine scores you against open project slots. Navigate to Profile → Overview to edit your profile.
- Display Name & Location — Your full name, city, and country. Location is used to surface remote vs. on-site opportunities.
- Headline — A concise phrase describing your professional focus. Required for marketplace visibility.
- Seniority Level — Junior, Mid, Senior, Lead, Principal, or Fellow. Honest self-assessment here improves match quality.
- Professional Summary — A paragraph describing your background, focus area, and what kinds of projects you are looking for. Visible to company administrators when they view your profile.
- Target Rate — Your desired hourly rate in USD. Used in the Cost Efficiency dimension of match scoring.
- Avatar — Upload a profile photo. The image is stored in object storage and displayed throughout the platform.
Skills Management
Skills are the primary input to the matching engine. Navigate to Profile → Skills to add and manage your skills.
| Level | Description |
|---|---|
| Aware | Familiarity with the concept; aware of its existence and use cases. |
| Beginner | Can apply with guidance; learning through practice. |
| Intermediate | Independent practical application; regularly uses in work. |
| Advanced | Deep applied knowledge; solves complex problems with this skill. |
| Expert | Recognized authority; designs systems, teaches others, sets standards. |
Add at least 3 primary skills to meet the profile completeness threshold for marketplace visibility. Be accurate — proficiency levels are a direct input to match scoring and companies evaluate candidates against them.
Availability Status
Your availability status controls your ranking priority in company searches — all statuses remain visible in search results, but lower-availability statuses receive a reduced Availability score that suppresses your overall match ranking. Keep it current — stale status is a common reason for missed opportunities. Navigate to Profile → Availability to update your status.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Available | Actively seeking new engagements. Appears prominently in searches. |
| Limited | Partially committed; some hours available. Visible in searches. |
| Booked | Fully committed. Still appears in search results but receives a near-zero Availability score (0.1), which significantly lowers your overall match ranking. |
| Not Looking | Not seeking work at this time. Still appears in search results but receives a zero Availability score, which heavily suppresses your overall match ranking. |
Set your hours per week available alongside your status. Slots define required weekly hours, and the Availability dimension of match scoring compares your available hours against the slot requirement.
Work Environment Assessment
Illumera uses the Competing Values Framework (CVF) to measure work environment compatibility between talent and companies. Complete your assessment from Profile → Culture & Values.
The assessment asks about your preferred working style, decision-making approach, team dynamics, and pace. Your responses are mapped to four archetype dimensions: Collaborative, Innovative, Results-Driven, and Structured. This becomes your culture vector. When computing match scores, your vector is aligned against the company or slot reference weights using a weighted dot-product, scaled and adjusted for work-mode, travel, clearance, and schedule compatibility.
Completing the assessment unlocks the full Culture Fit dimension of match scoring. Without it, the culture dimension defaults to a neutral midpoint, reducing your overall match score quality.
Marketplace — Finding Projects
Navigate to the Marketplace tab to browse open project slots across the network. Results are sorted by your overall Match Score — the slot that best fits your skills, availability, culture alignment, and rate appears first.
For each slot you can view:
- The overall match score (0–100%) and a six-dimension spider chart
- The project description, required skills, and rate range
- The posting company (name and culture archetype)
- Start date, expected duration, and hours per week
Engagement Lifecycle
An engagement is the formal record of your working relationship with a company on a specific project slot. Engagements move through eight stages:
- Shortlisted — You have expressed interest and the company is reviewing your profile.
- Invited — The company has formally offered you the slot. You will receive a notification to review and respond.
- Accepted — You have accepted the invitation. The slot is now marked as filled in the marketplace.
- Active — The engagement is underway. Your availability is updated across the network.
- Paused — The engagement is temporarily on hold (e.g., project delay).
- Completed — The engagement concluded successfully.
- Declined — You or the company declined the invitation before it became active.
- Terminated — The engagement was ended early by either party after becoming active.
Track all your engagements from the Engagements tab in the Talent Portal.
Financial Tracking
The Engagements section shows the rate and hours associated with each active engagement. Invoice generation and direct payout rails are currently in development — the platform tracks engagement hours but does not yet process payments automatically.
Stripe Connect payout integration is in development. When available, accepted invoices will trigger automatic payouts to your connected bank account.