Consequences of accepting contract jobs

Contract jobs can be lucrative, can give you varied work and enable you to switch jobs frequently and get different experience at different employers without getting bored.

We already spoke awhile back about how I turned a contract job into a fulltime one early in my career.

We didn’t discuss consequences of taking contract jobs though and you might not be aware that some consequences do exist…

1. Employers often notice. As an IT recruiter, I’ve seen plenty of IT professionals take contract work because a lot of contract jobs exist and in tough economic times, companies might prefer hiring a temporary staffer than committing to a fulltime one. The issue is that when employers see that you’ve taken short term work or contract work, they often assume that you are a contractor for life and might not consider you for fulltime work preferring to go with someone who has a more stable work history with only fulltime jobs. This is especially true in IT where lucrative contract jobs can entice people to take the short term contract route rather than a more stable (hopefully) fulltime job. Many hiring managers have taken the chance hiring a longtime contractor for a fulltime job and then seeing the employee jump ship and quit when the first contract opportunity arises elsewhere. They normally don’t want to get burned again.

2. You can lose out on fulltime jobs. If you commit to say a 6 month contract job, you might be losing out on the possibility of a fulltime job that might arise during the contract. I’ve seen cases where a person takes a contract job and within a few months and long before their contract is up, a fulltime job opportunity opens up that they’d prefer to have. If you have an opt out clause in your contract and can leave after 2-3 weeks, perhaps it’s not an issue but if you are bound to stick around for the length of the contract, it might mean you lose out on a fulltime job that you’d much rather be working in. If you quit anyways without giving proper notice and leave your contract employer in the lurch you’ve probably burned your bridge with that employer, the recruiter (if you worked with one) and in the contract world, word can get around that you did this.

3. You might spend time on the bench. A friend of mine started taking contract jobs 2 years ago and for the first year, was able to finish one contract and have a new one lined up. This is often true with contractors who build up a good name and are in a line of work that is busy and that requires staff on an ongoing basis. Once the global economy started turning sour last year, he noticed it was harder to get a new contract and had a few weeks off work before he found a new one. Today, he has been out of work for 6 months and counting and hasn’t had a contract since then. He’s getting some interviews but no job. Taking contract work usually turns into a process where you start looking for a new contract before your current one ends and roll from one into the other smoothly. In this economy and in other times when work is scarce, this isn’t always possible and you might end up unemployed for awhile or taking less-than desirable jobs just to get back into the work world.

Jobs on contract or for a temporary period of time can certainly be lucrative and viable options but it’s best to know ahead of time what you’re going to do next when this work inevitably finishes and consequences for taking this sort of work over a fulltime role.

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