Profile of a contract worker
Sep 9
2009
America was built on the dream of a life where you get a good job, work hard, get promoted, watch your kids grow up and get a better job than you had, retire and enjoy your grand-kids. Well, the only part of that dream which applies to a contract worker is the “work hard”.
Contract workers are interchangable parts, rented at the lowest possible price. Since price is the primary competition-point between contract agencies, the only likely change in a worker’s compensation is downward. At each contract term, the worker can be assured that several agencies will be offering his replacement at a lower cost to the business.
The contract term is pushed ever shorter by the business’ desire for more flexibility – ie: the ability to respond to changing business conditions. Only the cost of negotiating new agency contracts mitigates toward longer contract terms. Even this pressure is lessening with agencies which broker agencies.
The idea of a promotion is not a part of the picture. A person who gains additional skills through, experience or training, can cash-in only at the end of a contract and only if there’s a requirement placed with their current contract agency. Failing that, workers must sell themseves to another agency with a need for the newly-acquired skills. However, since it is a new agency, the worker will probably be hired on probation, at a lower rate.
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Good news?
Sep 8
2009
How is this good news?
From WSJ, Friday 4 Sep 2009:
U.S. job losses softened in August but the unemployment rate jumped to its highest level since June 1983. Employers cut 216,000 jobs last month, compared with a revised 276,000 in July. The unemployment rate, calculated using a survey of households as opposed to companies, grew to 9.7% from 9.4% in July.
I wonder how many of the 216,000 have 3 months of expenses in the bank? I wonder how many of the 216,000 jobs are gone forever?
It’s time, way past time, to make Never Look Again your mantra!
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Don’t lose people!
Sep 7
2009
I spent 30 years with multinational, living several places, working all over the world. During that time I was a rep to two massive user organizations. I met, literally, thousands of people. Some of them became close friends – even across oceans. I’ve recently realized that I know where only a very few of them are; what they are doing; how their lives turned out.
That, is a DAMM shame. Don’t let it happen to you. We all move on to new places and new jobs. Make the little extra effort required to keep track of people you meet along the way. Friends are too few to lose.
There are good tools for keeping in touch (and meeting new friends) an example is LinkedIn
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The Harvard Study
Aug 29
2009
In the book “What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School”, Mark McCormack tells a study conducted on students in the 1979 Harvard MBA program. In that year, the students were asked, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” Only three percent of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; and a whopping 84 percent had no specific goals at all.
Ten years later, the members of the class were interviewed again, and the findings, while somewhat predictable, were nonetheless astonishing. The 13 percent of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. And what about the three percent who had clear, written goals? They were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.
In spite of such proof of success, most people don’t have clear, measurable, time-bounded goals that they work toward.
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What are the options?
Aug 16
2009
If the corporate world is, indeed, moving in the direction of less and less security and “benefits”, then what are the options?
There’s an old saying “If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting”. The implication being that if you want better, you need to get better. Unfortunately, it’s not even that good any more. Time was, you could keep your head down, put up with the crap and “wait for 30″. Ask the folks at GM and Chrysler how that’s working for them!
Today, the nearest to that is getting hired by a temp agency and hoping they’ll keep you “placed”. How does a lifetime of entry-level pay, no benefits and no security sound?
In “Alice in Wonderland”, Alice is trying to decide:
…
Alice: Oh, no, no. I was just wondering if you could help me find my way.
Cheshire Cat: Well that depends on where you want to get to.
Alice: Oh, it really doesn’t matter, as long as…
Cheshire Cat: Then it really doesn’t matter which way you go.
…
Perhaps, a more structured approach is called for. My personal experience, and that of many others I’ve known and read of, is that the place to start is with your dreams and then begin to think about plans. Oh, by the way, Goals come between Dreams and Plans
OK, you’ve decided to do – something. Scary, isn’t it? Odds are you need some new skills.
First, realize that the road you are starting down has been travelled by thousands or millions of others. People who’ve suffered as you have and have said “ENOUGH!”. You don’t know it yet, but those people think well of you for having decided to make a change. They know how hard it was for you because they did it too! They want to help you. They teach, they coach, they write books, they make videos, they do everything they can think of to reach out to people like you.
These new skills fall into two broad categories:
- Personal Development
- Marketable Skills
Can you do what you’ve decided on by yourself? Probably not! And, it’s way more fun and way less scary with help. Where do you find help? Re-read Chapter 10 of “Think and Grow Rich
- Church
- Civic Organizations
- Coaches / Mentors
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