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Contract work brings rewards and challenges
If you have expertise or skills that can be used in a variety of settings, you may be a good candidate for contract positions. These jobs are short-term, ranging from a few weeks to a couple of years.
There are two main ways that a person can work as a contractor: by selling his or her services to the companies that need them or by signing on with a firm that places contractors into companies with project needs. In the second case, you may be an employee of the contract house (or consulting firm), or you may be on call with them, ready to work when a contract is available.
To decide whether your skills would work in a contract situation, determine whether there are one-time projects that come up in your field or whether there are cycles of work that might make permanent staffing difficult.
Working as a contractor generally means that you can command higher per-hour rates than if you were on salary, you usually enjoy some scheduling flexibility and you get the status of being an expert.
On the downside, you always have the sense of being an outsider, even in the friendliest organizations. You also bear the brunt of tough deadlines: As the contractor, you're expected to make things happen, no matter what.
And, if you're working through a contracting house or consulting firm, you may find that you're being doubly supervised. First, you have to answer to your manager in the contract house, who isn't on site and may not fully appreciate the situation; then, you have to report to the on-site project manager, whose only real power over you may be the authority to fire. This situation can make some contractors feel as though they're walking a tightrope.
Oddly enough, working as your own contractor, without a contract house in the middle, doesn't seem to eliminate the tightrope walk. In this scenario you not only perform the work but also communicate regularly with the company liaison to find out what needs to be done differently, which deadlines need to be adjusted and what other work might need to be added to the project.
Another responsibility for self-contractors is handling the paperwork, including quarterly self-employment tax reports. For that reason, your rates should be high enough to cover the administrative work of managing both your employee (you) and the contracts. As a starting point, add at least 15.3 percent to your rates, as that is the amount of each earned dollar that you will send to the government to cover the employee and employer parts of Social Security and Medicare taxes.
If this sounds even the tiniest bit arduous, do yourself a huge favor and arrange with a bookkeeping service to send out your invoices and prepare your tax reports. You can figure the cost of the service into your rates and save yourself a headache.
Speaking of headaches: As each contract winds down, you'll want to gear up your networking (that means sales) to tell other companies that you're available. While bringing in new work is not rocket science, it's tricky enough to drive some people from the field of self-employed contractors.
If you know that you don't enjoy the marketing process, plan for it in advance. Join professional groups in your field and get your name into any directories or Web sites that they sponsor. You also can consider hiring an agent. Or you could put in an application with an established contract house or consulting firm and let someone else handle the marketing.
Whether you decide to work as a self-employed contractor or on staff for a contract house, remember that nothing lasts forever. Keep your resume current and your eyes peeled for the next opportunity.
- Amy Lindgren owns Prototype Career Service, a career consulting firm in St. Paul, Minn. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com or at 1071 W. Seventh St., St. Paul, MN 55102.
