In a follow-up to my blog post Low-rate recruiters – The bane of my existence, Michael Bramante (website) wrote me a hilarious email that I wanted to share, with his permission. I have had many similar experiences as his: I’ve … Continue reading →
I have had a few questions like this: “I was wondering if there is a reason the vendor/broker/head hunter forces a contractor to go on W2? As per many vendors, lots of big banks are insisting that contractors should be … Continue reading →
When I talk to people about switching from being a salaried employee to an independent consultant (see my presentation How to make a LOT more money as a consultant), the most frequent question I hear is “I worry about having to … Continue reading →
As a consultant I am often starting from the ground floor on a new data warehouse/business intelligence project, and usually one of the first tasks is to interview business users from various groups. During these interviews I am doing an … Continue reading →
A vendor management system (VMS) is a web-based application that acts as a mechanism for businesses to manage and procure staffing services (temporary and permanent) as well as outside contract or contingent labor. Typical features of a VMS application include … Continue reading →
Unfortunately in my line of work as a consultant, I am contacted far too often by resume hoarders, who are “recruiters” who sole job is to collect resumes, with no attempt at all to try to match the right person … Continue reading →
Every week I get a bunch of emails from recruiters about jobs that I am not qualified for (see Low-rate recruiters – The bane of my existence). Some obviously use keyword searches and just spam any person who has that … Continue reading →
If a recruiter sends me a job description, the first question I ask is, “What is the pay rate”. If it is not in the ballpark of what I make, I shut the conversation down as continuing would just be … Continue reading →
I have heard large placement firms say they are better than smaller firms because “They offer the client a guaranteed replacement in case the resource doesn’t work out or leaves project early “. I asked my recruiter friend about this. … Continue reading →
I literally get 10-15 calls and emails a week from recruiters asking if I can help them to find a data warehouse or business intelligence person for an opening at a client they have. And another 10-15 emails for positions … Continue reading →
Why do companies use placement firms to find IT contractors instead of using internal recruiters? Who better to answer that question that a recruiter who has been in the business for many years and now has his own small placement … Continue reading →
There is nothing more annoying to me in my profession than getting calls and emails from recruiters who are looking for senior-level BI people at ridiculously low rates. A common example: they want someone with 10-years experience in BI to … Continue reading →
The Big 5 IT consulting companies (Accenture, Deloitte Consulting, PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP), KPMG, Ernst & Young) have various titles given to consultants along a career path. Wikipedia had good descriptions of the titles, and using that and a few other descriptions I … Continue reading →
I asked a recruiter to check out my blogs about consulting, and his response is below. He had some good points on billling rates and what recruiters do behind the scenes: I really enjoyed reading over your blog you have … Continue reading →
One of my pet peeves is seeing a top-notch BI architect/developer working as a salaried/perm employee of a consulting company where they are making a good salary but are being billed out to the client at a rate that is … Continue reading →
This is something I just heard about recently, but then experienced it for myself. This story was told to me: A client is looking for a contractor and contacts a staffing firm to find candidates. The staffing firms sends a … Continue reading →
To expand on what I talked about in Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?: If you are a consultant working through a placement firm, should the markup percentage (client bill rate divided by consultant … Continue reading →
Here is another response to my blog “Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?” (the first response was Billing rates – other side of the fence). My purpose of these blogs is to give more understanding … Continue reading →
As an independent consultant who has a higher bill rate than average, I would hope it is obvious to clients that the extra money spent would be well worth it. But that is not always the case, and sometimes who have to … Continue reading →
The following is a guest post by Tim Morgan from Sullexis in response to a resent blog of mine: Thanks for letting me reply to your last post, “Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?”. This … Continue reading →