January 18, 2006

Contractors on PeopleSoft Projects

As an independent contractor working on PeopleSoft projects, I've been thinking lately about contracting in general. I have enjoyed working this way for several years and hope that I've provided great service to my clients, but there are some obvious problems with both the process of finding jobs and finding other people to staff temporary positions.

I routinely receive inquiries about my availability and/or requests to provide people or referrals. Some of these are labelled "desperate." Some requests come from my own clients. It would be nice to be able to help out with these requests, but in many cases it's very difficult.

First, the chances of a good fit are small. There are scheduling differences—the need and the availability often don't match. Since PeopleSoft technical support involves a large number of different skills, there are problems finding people with the right skill set for the project. There can be issues of geography; although many independent contractors are willing to travel, expenses and lost time may be too high when the job is thousands of miles away. There are huge variations in hourly rate expectations. And both the contractor and the client can be unknown quantities to each other.

Of course, there are hundreds (thousands?) of placement firms whose business is to mitigate some of these problems. Unfortunately, they range from highly professional full-service firms down to boiler room operations who have no idea who their contractors are. Many of them take a huge (and usually undisclosed) "cut" from the rate, such that the client thinks the contractor is too expensive and the contractor thinks the client is too "cheap." In one recent case I was approached by one firm that was working through another firm to find a candidate for the client. Both of these staffing firms had factored in their own large hourly fees, and it turned out that the grand total was too high for the client. No surprise!

There must be a better way to match clients and contractors without always requiring an entirely separate staffing industry to do so. If independent contractors could form a network to refer each other, there could be numerous advantages for both the contractors and the clients. Besides the obvious cost savings for everyone, it might be easier to evaluate the other factors that make for a good fit. After all, contractors already working on a project will know exactly what types of skills are needed and could also tell prospective contractors about the overall project environment.

Yes, I know about traditional networking and about social networking web sites. But to be truly effective, I'd think this referral network would need to have some modest financial incentives built in. There are a few creative staffing sites, but they are mostly geared toward full-time permanent employment. Are there any solutions to this problem in existence, or do we need to create one? If you're an independent (or even just thinking about it), I'd like to hear from you.

Until next time...