Contract Rangers

Pardon me while I get metaphysical.  I’m continuing from my last post about keeping a positive attitude, and turning it inward a bit more.  This has probably happened to everyone: 

• You’re a perfect match for the job
• You met or exceeded every qualification
• You came in to the interview bright and perky
• You were even willing to take less money than you wanted
• You really thought you had this one in the bag, but–

You didn’t get it.  They didn’t cancel it. They hired someone else who was ”a better fit.”  You think, “a better fit? I was perfect for that job! What happened?”   Consider this:  people can sense negativity in even the most positive-appearing person.  Your attitude is one thing–what kind of vibes are you putting out?  Wait, don’t click off and call me crazy yet.  Read on. [Read more →]

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Contracting can be tough. There’s no doubt about that.  There are a few companies out there that think of contractors as disposable employees or handy scapegoats.  I’m not saying that all companies are like that, because they most certainly are not, but if you contract long enough, you could run into it.  And if you do, the resentment and pride you swallow can start to build up like tartar on your teeth.  Before you know it,  you can become defensive and bitter.  And there is no better career-killer than a bad attitude.  So time to take out that contractor floss!

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If, like me, you are contracting in the United States, you probably aren’t paying attention to what contractors are doing in other countries. It may not have even occurred to you that there are contractors in other countries.  But there are.  And recently, contractors in the U.K. won something they’d been fighting for a long time: the same rights as full time, salaried employees.  But while contractors across the pond are doing high fives in the pub, I have to wonder: will equal rights mean equal opportunity?

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There’s a dirty little secret in the contracting world.  Sometimes, you take a contract and you don’t like it.    It could be for a lot of reasons, maybe none of them to do with you.  Many times, you accept one job description, and you get on the job and you find out that the company really wants you to do something totally different.    What if you find out that the company is doing something that is incompatible with your own morals?  What if you think that you just don’t fit in? What do you do?

First, don’t blame yourself. (That’s going to be really important later if  the company decides to agree with you.) Sometimes, companies change direction quickly and you get swept up in the tide.   It can leave even the most experienced contractor confused and frustrated.

“I don’t get it,” one exasperated contractor said, when he discovered that the  management position he had been hired for had suddenly turned into an administrative assistant role.  “I have an (expletive deleted) MBA. I know what I’m doing. But they don’t like what I do.  Of course not. Why should they? What do I know about being an admin?”

The most important thing to remember in this kind of situation: remain calm.  Assess the situation.  Can you do this job, even if it isn’t what you thought it was going to be?  Is it worth ruining a relationship with the company and your agency if you bolt?  What are the consequences of leaving? What are the consequences of staying?

 Another contractor found herself in that very conundrum recently.  She also took a contract for high-level role, but when she got there, she discovered that there wasn’t much for her to do.

She told herself–all contracts eventually end, so I will not be doing this forever.  But what will I tell future interviewers when they ask what I’ve done? How can I explain this gig away?    The consequences in the long run were a greater danger to her future than the consequences of the short term.

But if the consequences in the short term would cause you greater harm, you might consider sticking it out.  If, for example, you work for the type of agency that places you in different short-term situations, keeping you on the payroll between assignments,  you would be better to do what is expected of you and wait for the next assignment. That is not a relationship you want to damage.

Maybe you’ve decided to grit your teeth and slug it out, no matter what.  That’s a perfectly valid decision, and your agency will love you for it.  But if you make that choice, don’t complain about how you hate the job.   Just do the best job that you can, and chalk it up to experience.  This may be the best decision if you have taken a job that is exactly what the job description said, and you just don’t like it. 

In the contracting business, you don’t want to burn bridges.  The best advice I can give in this case is to try to avoid this situation if you can.  Do your homework.  But if the company changes the rules on you,  you may have no choice.  In this case, you won’t have any advocate but yourself.

So be good to your only advocate.

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Many of you have been faced with the same conundrum: where do your boundaries as a contractor end, as opposed to the boundaries of an employee? What, really, is the difference between you and your employee co-workers other than different colored badges?

At first you say, “Easy. I have an end date.” Well, so does your employee counterpart. The difference is, you know yours.

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If you watch the news, there is a pounding drumbeat that says we’re in a recession or inexorably heading in that direction. In fact, it was recently reported by the Associated Press that unemployment has started to climb.

ay make employers reluctant to hire new “permanent” employees, especially if the economy continues to contract.
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I was home from work yesterday with the flu.  Don’t get me started on the flu shot. I had one. It didn’t work.  As a contractor, that was one expensive day in bed.  But I knew that was part of the deal.  When you’re sick, you don’t work, and when you don’t work, you don’t get paid.  Fair enough.

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This is going to be a short post because I am actually writing in Safe Mode, trying to figure out what’s wrong with my computer.  But I couldn’t let this story pass without commenting on it.

Last week, the nation was scandalized by the fact that someone at the State Department snooped into Barack Obama’s passport files.  My first thought was, ‘what the heck were they thinking?’  Then, when I found out that the alleged snoopers were contract employees, Contract Rangers just like us, I got really upset.

As it is, too many companies do not understand that we are the same people they used to hire full-time and trust, only now we have a different and alternative workstyle. 

And then it turns out that the alleged snoopers at the State Department were contractors. Arrgh!  It’s all over the news, and now stories are starting to appear about how this incident raises questions about outsourced contractors and security. 

We don’t need this, folks.  If this story is factual in every respect, it could set the contracting model back twenty years.  Some of us actually like contracting–it gives us more money and unparallelled flexibility we never had before.  Let’s not screw it up, please.

The message I’m sending with this short post is this: if you are working a contract, please be respectful of the kind of work you’re doing. Honor your non-disclosure agreements, even if you go to work for a competitor of your last company. Don’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong.  We have a burgeoning industry here and we need to continue gaining respect as professionals.

As contractors, we represent more than just our agencies and ourselves. We represent an entire industry, and we need to make a stand for our professionalism. Let’s do all we can to prove our honesty and integrity, and to show the world that contractor security breeches are only an anomaly.

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It isn’t an easy concept to grasp, even if you’ve been a contractor for awhile. But it’s the truth–your “contract” isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. That’s because you as an individual don’t really have a contract at all. The only legal and binding contract is between your agency and the company. You, if you are an employee of an agency, are (in most US states) “at will.” That means no matter what anyone says about the duration of your assignment, it can end at any time–either by your company or by you, with or without cause. A lot of contractors don’t really understand this. A contractor may ask, “This three months is like a probationary process, right?” Wrong. That’s your end date. If you’re doing a good job, it might be renewed. If your project is completed, it might not. I like to explain it in terms of soup.

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I recently started a new assignment, and that led me to thinking about what made my last one a success.  I didn’t have to look far. As I left my previous contract, I asked my boss to recommend me on LinkedIn.  Almost 90% of what he wrote was about what I did during my first weeks with the company–and I was there for a year.

As I sat in the lobby waiting to be met by a representative from my new contract, the answer was clear–it was all about first impressions. [Read more →]

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