Job Woe

When the Door Closes, An Even Bigger Window Can Open.

It’s been a while.  I’m sure all five of you have really missed my words of wisdom.    Well, a month after starting this blog and my e-book webpage, I found contractual work as a brand manager – which has kept me busy for the past 8 months, thankfully.   Contract work is becoming popular with many companies because it eliminates the high cost – and risk – of hiring someone under a permanent status.

In the past, when I applied for jobs, I would only place an ‘x’ next to the ‘full time’ positions. I scoffed at the thought of contract/consultant/temp/freelance work.  However, I’m now older and wiser by 8 months.  Working in this capacity has been a fabulous ride.    In addition to assuming full brand management duties for one brand,  I support a second brand,  drive our social media strategy, and launch new products for additional brands.  I report directly to the VP, Marketing who truly cares about her employees’ professional trajectories.   So, my current contract role  is a step higher than  my earlier permanent position.

So, here’s an important distinction between 2 types of contract jobs: Independent Consultant and Temporary Hire.  You can be an independent consultant, meaning  1) you have your own Tax ID, 2)  you must pay for indemnity insurance which protects you against being sued by your clients/employers , and   3) you set up a sole proprietorship.  However, the restriction here is that you must have your own fully functional office, and cannot physically go into your client’s office 5 days a week.   Depending on the nature of your work and your own resources/what stage of career you are in,  this can be a fantastic fit for you or a hindrance.  Also, you typically get paid project-by-project basis and must keep a strict track of your billable hours.  This is different than getting a steady a paycheck every month, because your earnings fluctuate with your level of projects.  The dynamics of your contribution  may change, because you will not be given something  an internal employee  can handle, even if it’s something you’d like to do – because you have billable hours.

On the other hand,   if you are a temp, this means you get a 1099c  form (I think, but I need to verify and get back with you),  and you get paid overtime if you go beyond 40 hours.  You also are assured a steady paycheck if you are a full-time or even a part-time hire.  You go into the office every day, and can be well integrated into the team.  Yet, if you need to travel for your job, there can be serious red tape.  Your company can run into legal trouble if you are being treated too similar to an internal employee.

Insert Caveat Here: I’m not a Legal or HR expert on the subject of contract positions.  I just wanted to share my experiences/research with you.  Each company has it’s own policy, and may be subject to different legal criteria.   And with every rule, there’s definitely the ability to bend it within legal limits.  So, please just take this as a guideline and not as gospel – and absolutely fact check me. If you know something more or want to provide a correction, I’m delighted that you would take the time.  After all, the point of this site is ‘information exchange.’

Please note that  Freelance and Contract are terms that I use loosely- as some companies will fight to go around the red tape, so you are classified between an Independent Consultant and a Temporary Hire.  So, I term this gray area as a Contractual Role/Freelance.  Just my non-scientific opinion, that this area is potentially the best of both worlds.  For instance,  perhaps you are able to enjoy the traveling privileges of a consultant without having to set yourself up independently.

There are some people who love the autonomy of not being a permanent hire, and they make a  life long career of independent consulting/contractual roles.   And maybe you are one of them- to each their own!

Is a contract status something that  I want indefinitely? Not at this stage of my life. Perhaps, when I’m 15-20 years into the game.   Right now, I would prefer to be a permanent hire, so the company invests in my training, gives me a 401K, etc.  (With most contract roles, you cannot partake in the training programs for permanent employees.)  However, in the interm, I’ve been engaged in solid career and resume building projects, while growing industry specific knowledge.  As long, as I’m giving this role my absolute best efforts, it can only lead to two things 1) preferably becoming a permanent hire withing my existing company – or if that doesn’t end up happening  2) giving me time to comfortably search for a permanent position elsewhere, while building my credentials.  So, my $0.02 is, don’t necessarily turn down a job because it’s not ‘permanent.’  This recession has redefined and expanded the roles of contract positions.

Since companies are still laying off people by the tonnage, those left ‘intact’ have double or triple duties.  They need help but the company can’t afford to hire, obviously.  This type of overload is not sustainable long term for a company’s growth.  So, smart companies fill their need through contract/temp/consultant/freelance  workers.  And, smart person that you are,  have strategically positioned yourself to fill their need – and yours.

As always, here’s to wishing you the best in your job search.  And please keep your fingers crossed for me, too!

Generation Y…Why??

For all of my fellow Generation Y-ers, why us?? We’ve suffered a double economic whammy thrown in with a side of entitlement. Okay, maybe more than a side, but we’ll address our deeply embedded feelings of entitlement later. We’ve endured the dot.com boom and bust cycle in the 90s, and some of us are still smarting from the effects of that. Now, less than a decade later, we are witnessing jobs pull a David Copperfield disappearing act, struggling home-owners displaced into the growing communities of tent-cities, riddled with debt, and not an iota of sense of where to safely invest our money. Our generation will be the first who will not ‘do better’ than our parents, as a collective whole. Yes, my generation hosts the largest number of individuals to get really prestigious, interesting-and-impressive-sounding Masters Degrees, who are extremely worldly wise and well traveled, studying Far East art in Beijing or ancient Bacchanalian rituals in Stonehenge, Rome. But currently, there’s a mass exodus that’s taking them from their world travels straight back to Mom and Dad’s house, because they can’t find a job/or can’t afford to pay the bills.

We are a strange combination of smart and stupid. Unlike our parents’ generation, world-travel and knowing about other cultures is becoming more and more mainstream, we are very tech-savvy, and rather fearless. Yet, as a collective whole, we’ve been kinda screwed, and we made decisions to take us where we are. Yes the housing market crash does take some of the blame, but ours is a consumer-greedy generation– the expenses of our shiny gadgets from Apple I-Pods, to Amazon Kindle to multiple stamps on passports. So, here’s where I address the sense of entitlement–we all grew up with a sense of fearlessness which stemmed from a sense of entitlement. This is America. This is the 21st century. If we work smart (different from working hard), we get our college degree, we can achieve anything we can put our minds to.

So now, we’ve acquired our degrees, assuaged our wanderlust through globe trotting experiences, collected shiny gadgets, and along with this- a multitude of debt. What we didn’t count on, is our own lack of relevancy in this economy.

Witnessing First Hand…

My third day running on empty, I figured I’d pushed my car (and my luck) far enough, so I finally stopped at a gas station to fill up my car. By the way, I continue to be grateful that it no longer takes $40.00 to fill up my car. I live in the North Florida area, in a good community, where it’s calm mix of suburbian and small city life. So, I was rooted to the spot when I witnessed this next scene.

Lugging two suitcases was a middle aged, Caucasian woman, flowing red-brown hair and a weathered complexion that told me she dealt with more than her fair share of curve balls. And she was wailing loud enough for the whole gas station to hear. It was not a petty temper tantrum nor can it be categorized as an uncouth public outburst. This woman was crying from the heart, and I could feel her fear and sense of desperation. She was walking with a slightly younger man, and he also had a suitcase in tow. He had a look of unapologetic resign on his face.

In the midst of her tears, they carried a loud, coherent conversation about how she’d lost her job and her home, and she has nowhere to go, and she doesn’t know what she’s going to do. In fact, it was a question she kept repeating as they both walked to the gas station where I was standing. “What I’m I going to do? I have no place to go!” My eyes met with the man’s briefly, and closed to offer a silent prayer for them and all the Americans who are forced out of their homes.

Do you sometimes get that sense of panic? Like, when is it all going to be okay? Whether you are an Ivy League entreprenuer whose invested her life savings in a business that didn’t take off or if you’ve been forced out of retirement-out of the ‘daily grind’ for so long that you just don’t know what are appropriate next steps? Or perhaps you are just a twenty/thirty something who’s just been blindsided by the dearth of jobs.

Please share your thoughts.

Are you ‘productively unemployed?’

Jokes about the unstructured life of the unemployed run rampant these days, from daily pj wearing errand runners to afternoon phone calls to your mom to dish about why Rafe on “Days our Lives” is so clueless.

While we all have our occasional extra Sunday in the week,  how do you stay productive during your forced time off?   Are you taking steps to go back to school or perhaps take a couple of online courses? Or are you persisting in your job search?  Seriously, what do those of us, who are unused to so much unstructured time, do?

Here’s what I did: This was especially challenging to me because I’m used to having every hour of my day booked solid,  because that’s how I prefer it!   So, I made a chart for myself which included long and short term goals with appropriate timelines. I created a holistic approach to it so I included nutrition, fitness, social activities, networking.   I think it’s easy to feel ‘out of the loop’ when you are job searching, and it’s also easy to let yourself go appearance wise- hence the daily pj wearing!   To make sure I stayed current with the news, I still listened to the AM radio show that played in my car when I was driving to work, and I chose certain RSS news feeds. While finding a job was my primary concern,  I also decided to make time for an online course and to write an e-book and blog.

But sometimes, it’s just hard to stay motivated because I don’t know when I will see the light at the end of the unemployment tunnel.  So, I’m interested in hearing about what keeps you motivated.  What are you doing? Tell us!