Anyone have any experience with this? I was contacted by a recruiter for a position that would be right up my alley, and the pay is significant--even after considering the insurance that I'd have to pay for, and the lack of a 401k. 3 months. No guarantee of anything after that, but there is possibility of an extension and a possibility of a direct hire.
Anyone have any experience with this? I wasn't looking, but like I said the recruiter contacted me and made things interesting.
I’ve done a little contract work that led to perm at a previous employer. I used double my hourly rate when a permanent employee, as a starting point for my rate when contracting.
We use contract workers regularly at my current job. Many started with 3-6 month contracts, but are still there going on 2 years. But some have only lasted a month.
The high pay offsets the lack of security and benefits. Some people do very well with it, so it could be a good move. The risk is that contract employees are easy to cut if budgets get tight, or work slows down
You hit on the insurance cost, but also need to take into account the taxes. Depending on if you get paid as an employee of the agency, or as an independent contractor there will be tax implications. As an independent contractor you’ll pay the full 13% to SS/Medicare, instead of the employer paying half of that for you.
Also, when doing the math you will want to estimate how many weeks you would actually work in the year, and take that into account since vacations and holidays are just time without pay for contractors.
W2, work for the temp agency. So that part is at least covered.
Recruiters always make things sound rosier than they are.
In reply to spitfirebill :
Definitely. I always seem to get messages from them about some super high paying maintenance job I'd be perfect for (whether it's electrician stuff, radar, etc).
Companies use contractors in 2 situations.
1- to fill short term needs, rather than long term
2- because they're cheaper in some way than full time employees
Neither of those sounds like a situation that would entice me out of a decent, more stable gig. I don't deal with a bunch of contract positions but when I have, every contractor I've been around has hoped to land a permanent role at the company, but I'm not sure if that's ever occurred.
MazdaFace said:In reply to spitfirebill :
Definitely. I always seem to get messages from them about some super high paying maintenance job I'd be perfect for (whether it's electrician stuff, radar, etc).
Years ago I would get calls asking me if I knew anyone who would be interested in a certain job, not getting it that they were asking ME if I was interested. One guy thought I would be perfect for a research chemist job because I was in research and development with an ag-chem company. I was in the field, never in a lab.
In reply to mtn :
My fiancé has done this and just got resigned for another 2 years.
Fantastic pay and full benefits. Read the contract to find out if you get those. Plus paid holidays sick days and vacation. The company paid $75 an hour which she got $53. The rest went to the contractor. Sometimes the company will hire you directly and the take a commission from the contractor . After a couple of years you can expect to get pay raises of 10% or more if they remain happy with your work.
In addition if you agree to have them withhold your taxes etc you then qualify for unemployment. Don’t poo-poo that, it’s saved mine and her a z a few times.
You don’t actually work for the company you work for the contractor. But if you don’t do the job you are just as fired.
The last job was a work from home deal which she loved!!!! She’d wander up to her office with breakfast on a tray in her nightgown and slippers and log in. Meeting meeting work. Break and go take a shower etc. work work and go downstairs for lunch. Meeting netting work break and do a little hobby stuff work work and log off, oops maybe she should have changed out of her nightgown.
The commute consisted of walking up the stairs, once the cat left she didn’t worry about traffic.
Different contractors are wildly different. One she worked for was so sleezy she didn’t get her first full paycheck for 9 weeks and at the end of her contract had to pay a transfer fee to get her final paycheck drawn on the owners personal bank account.
Others start looking for a better job 6 months before your contract ends. Don’t whatever you do sign up with contractors who threaten to go after you personally if the terms of the contract aren’t filled.
Nope, nope, nope.
Done it twice, won't again. Of course, unless it's like the second time when I was laid off and needed something just to keep the money coming in.
Then again, in my area, the don't want to pay Tech Writers on contract what they should. If there were enough contract gigs and they actually paid what they should for my level of experience.......$80-100/hr........then I'd consider it.
z31maniac said:Nope, nope, nope.
Done it twice, won't again. Of course, unless it's like the second time when I was laid off and needed something just to keep the money coming in.
Then again, in my area, the don't want to pay Tech Writers on contract what they should. If there were enough contract gigs and they actually paid what they should for my level of experience.......$80-100/hr........then I'd consider it.
Sadly the companies that should be using $100/hr tech writers will choose to hire $20/hr fresh college grads to pump out documentation that will then be proofed by the customers as they find problems. Eventually it will cost enough sales that the initial savings on the docs will be wiped out. But by then the manager who made the decision to cheap out will have already gotten a promotion and the problem will fall to the new person in charge.
z31maniac said:Nope, nope, nope.
Done it twice, won't again. Of course, unless it's like the second time when I was laid off and needed something just to keep the money coming in.
Then again, in my area, the don't want to pay Tech Writers on contract what they should. If there were enough contract gigs and they actually paid what they should for my level of experience.......$80-100/hr........then I'd consider it.
Care to tell me more about this? Was it just the pay, or were there other horrible parts of it?
Pay, stability, lack of benefits, no PTO, etc.
And the 2nd contract job working for Spirit Aerosystems..............union shop, way too much middle management...........it was the kind of place that literally made me want to make a quadruple screwdriver and down it in the parking lot before going in. It was toxic.
Remember for contract jobs, recruiters are telling you whatever you need to hear so they can get their commission.
When they are doing it for full-time jobs it's different, because you have to last X number of days before they get their commission on your salary.
slefain said:z31maniac said:Nope, nope, nope.
Done it twice, won't again. Of course, unless it's like the second time when I was laid off and needed something just to keep the money coming in.
Then again, in my area, the don't want to pay Tech Writers on contract what they should. If there were enough contract gigs and they actually paid what they should for my level of experience.......$80-100/hr........then I'd consider it.
Sadly the companies that should be using $100/hr tech writers will choose to hire $20/hr fresh college grads to pump out documentation that will then be proofed by the customers as they find problems. Eventually it will cost enough sales that the initial savings on the docs will be wiped out. But by then the manager who made the decision to cheap out will have already gotten a promotion and the problem will fall to the new person in charge.
Yep. The current company I work won't even hire Tech Writers that don't have AT LEAST a decade of experience, ie, I have "Senior" at the beginning of my title at 35.
z31maniac said:Nope, nope, nope.
Done it twice, won't again. Of course, unless it's like the second time when I was laid off and needed something just to keep the money coming in.
Then again, in my area, the don't want to pay Tech Writers on contract what they should. If there were enough contract gigs and they actually paid what they should for my level of experience.......$80-100/hr........then I'd consider it.
That describes my first job out of school to a T - writing documentation for a big green and yellow ag company. Worked through a contract pool of authors, most were nosepickers who were either coasting retireees or guys who couldnt cut it in a production shop. Accurate documentation was low priority to speed. I saw the writing on the wall, stayed 2 years and left. Was a good first job and still have some good friends from there but certainly we did not turn out a product that was worth what the customer was paying for the equipment. It was almost all guesses.
Well, I think I'm going to pass on this. The offer price just isn't good enough once I consider the lack of security, 401k, commute increase, etc. Bummer too, as the position is what I'd like to do and the company that I'd be working with (not the temp agency) is one where I could see myself staying for 5+ years.
To continue the conversation though, how does it work if you were to go from contract to permanent hire? Is it always a decrease for the employees wage?
I've done a fair amount of contract work and have done pretty well with it, even though I'm an employee now. I have, however, always staid away from contract to perm, because IME the carrot of a potential perm job at an unspecified point in the future will be used to drive down the hourly or daily rate for the contract part even if they don't come through with the perm position. I also object to was is essentially a permanent probationary period.
The other thing I don't/didn't do was become a W-2 employee of the bodyshop/contractor - I've always contracted through my own LLC. Doing that to a certain extent negates the downside of being a contractor, although you can likely do the same without an LLC. I mainly did the LLC approach as I got burned badly doing business without a the protection of an LLC early on and vowed to never do that again.
A few other things to consider:
slefain said:
This made my day. I've been a contract employee for 2 1/2 years and received an offer letter for full time employment this morning. The pay rate is significantly less, but the benefits are very nice. I have a call in to the hiring manager to try to get more $$$. I was recruited out of the blue for a year long assignment, rate of pay was 20% more. My wife and I have yet to figure out budgeting since I get paid weekly. Our insurance cost went up, my vacation time was cut by 3/4 and I had to pay for a cell phone for the first time in 15 years. I think we figured my 20% increase ended up being about a 5% on the bottom line.
In reply to mtn :
Contract hires are offered a wage and it’s up to you if you take it. The commission comes from the company not you.
Wages need to be enough to entice you. So if they really want you they will offer the market wages.
I have worked contract stuff a fair amount, but mine is mostly in the arts. Acting, scenic construction, tours. I also worked for a construction contractor whenever he needed extra help so I was hired for a few months a couple times a year. That was a bit more informal though.
The whole taxes and insurance part sucked.
I guess it depends on the terms. I will take contract work if I have nothing else to do and want to make a little money, but the whole W2/benefits thing is also really nice.
I've worked a number of contract positions in IT. Having a specific skillset (in my case, SCCM and OS Deployment) meant that I could find jobs relatively easily. This is especially true at the beginning of the year when budgets are refreshed, if you're looking at the end of the year budgets are often much more tight and often you're only called to back-fill for someone who has left.
That said, the job security is a bit rough even if the money is good. Luckily I did it quite a lot when I was younger, so the lack of healthcare and 401K didn't matter to me at the time. After I was married, I was able to be on my wife's healthcare and the contract agency I worked with the most provided a 401K. Once I landed a fulltime job, I rolled it over and kept on going.
If you want to try different companies and industries and can budget well, it can work quite well. Find a decent recruiter to work with (they do exist, but most are of the used car salesman variety) and they'll not blow as much smoke up your bottom as others. I would avoid recruiters from overseas, they seem to be only interested in filling their quota.
The recruiting agency often makes double what you're paid, so always, always push for the most money they'll pay you. You should learn what you're worth and understand that the rule of thumb in business is that if you're busy and the contractor isn't, you're doing something wrong. In other words, they'll work you hard for the time they have you, you won't get overtime (except in rare instances) and the fact that you're an employee, but not, can be annoying when the employees get some perks that you don't (PTO, offsite team building meetings, bonuses, etc.).
Whenever I've been offered fulltime employment after contracting, they've at least matched my contractor rate, of course I would take home less due to often being a salary position, but the trade-off of having a bit more job security was nice as I would often only join companies and teams I actually enjoyed working with.
In reply to mtn :
One final point. I’ve learned the hard way and my fiancée the easy way.
Now days to get a good job you will seldom be hired off a resume. First most aren’t read anymore. They are scanned into a computer that rates you. Even if you are word for word perfect for a job you are not likely to get it. Human resources usually has some key words needed programed into the selection process. Words often left out of the posted job description.
The contractor has those words but he doesn’t really work through Human Resources. He ( or she) knows the person doing the actual hiring personally. May have years or decades worth of close personal relationship with that person.
Now days that is how you get hired. If you are lucky only a few times in your life does a contractor reach that deep into your pocket. But according to the experts in the future the average person will have more than 15 jobs.
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