Finding contract work

When network engineer Barry Katzman decided to become a consultant in 1994, cash envy had a lot to do with it. "All these guys used to brag, 'I make twice as much as you do,' " he says.

Katzman didn't get mad; he got even. He asked a friend to put him in touch with a contract recruiter. Before long, "I basically doubled my salary," says the Long Beach, N.Y., independent who specializes in networks for financial-trading floors.

If contract agencies brought him such lucrative work, why did he cut them out of his consulting practice about four years ago? Katzman says it was simple: He didn't need them to get the work, and without the middlemen he could make even more money.

Indeed, a dynamic strategy for choosing channels to obtain contract work - through an agency or via your own professional network - is critical to the business plan of anyone who wants to quit his job and start an independent consulting practice.

For consultants, the primary advantage of contract agencies is that they find work for you. "We start marketing people [for new projects] three months before their contract ends," says Christine Warren, CEO of ITProfiler LLC, a placement firm in West Chester, Pa. So you've got to be honest with yourself and ask, "When was the last time I started planning a career move that far in advance?"

Some believe that agencies also offer a quality advantage. "A lot of the more interesting work will only come through an agency," says Jai Shekhawat, a former contract programmer who is now CEO of Fieldglass Inc., a Chicago company that makes software for managing contingent workers.

Many employers prefer to have a recruiter prequalify candidate contractors. "When we have a candidate dropped in our lap [by an agency], 80 percent of the work is done," says John Runnels, CTO of WebSite.ws, a domain name registrar in Carlsbad, Calif. For this reason, and to avoid legal exposure, many Fortune 500 companies prefer to hire contractors through agencies, according to Brian Newkirk, vice president of recruiting for Comsys Information Technology Services in Houston.

So why not get all your consulting work through agencies? For one thing, in many arcane niches of network engineering, recruiters just won't appreciate what you have to offer. Many network consultants do work that is "far more specialized than any staffing agency could begin to understand," Shekhawat says.

Are you a "top gun" Unix specialist with a lot of experience in VPN and PKI? Many recruiters will just scan your acronyms into their databases and hope for the best. "I've never used an agency, and I don't know of any network integration agencies in the San Diego area," says Matthew Strebe, owner of consulting firm Netropolis and author of From Serf to Surfer: Becoming a Network Consultant.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

• Email
• Print
• Share
  • Slashdot
  • Digg
  • Stumble
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine