7 Step Consulting

Earn Side Income, Show Off Expertise

You’ve been working in the same industry for seven years. You have worked on multiple projects with multiple clients. All of them have been happy with your work. You’re building up a reputation in the industry; things are really starting to go your way. You don’t have to look for that next assignment. People are calling you instead, seeing when you would be available to come join the team.

An easy way to earn some side income is to blog or do Book Publishing about your experience. Especially if you have a good network of former colleagues who might be interested — or could help push your book. You can self-publish these days, something I didn’t know. Of course you could self-publish on a blog, but there is still a large market for actual books that you hold in your hand.

Maximize your profit potential!

How to take a vacation as a consultant

You’re an integral part of the team. You’re getting paid good money. This is a long term assignment.

Should you ever take a vacation?

Obviously, yes. Working a year straight without and rest and relaxation is just silly. You will end up burned out, and your efforts will slow for the client. Taking a week off may be the best thing that happens to you and the client. You come back refreshed, possibly with new ideas to tackle the same old problems.

How do you do it? Carefully, but just ask. Build it into the contract you sign. Do whatever it takes, but do take some time off here and there (especially if you are away from family).

Finding great deals on technology

I work in the IT recruiting industry. Almost always, the consultants that we work with are very, very tech savy. And that makes sense, right? They work in IT. Every gadget, gizmo, and next-best-thing-out-there that comes out, someone will have it.

The only problem with gadgets is they can be quite expensive! You don’t want to pay full price, do you? Let’s take the example of an LCD TV. I’ve been wanting one of these for quite some time, but I’m holding off due to the cost.

So! To avoid paying full price — or to simply find the best deal — I’m going to look online to see who provides the best incentive for me to come in and buy the TV. And I may not pick the lowest price — customer service and added bonuses (say, a free quality TV stand) would sway my decision.

What if your recruiter is out of the office?

I’m off work today. It’s glorious. Combined with Memorial Day, I’ll get a 4 day weekend. We’re headed out of town and plan to have a lot of fun.

But what about my consultants that are still on the clock today? What if they need me? What if it’s urgent?

There are few things your recruiter should be doing when he/she goes out of the office:

• Setup voicemail explaining when you will be out and when you will return
• Setup e-mail to automatically reply to any e-mail with an out of office (OOO)
• With any OOO e-mail reply or voicemail, explain who the alternate/backup contacts are.

That’s exactly what I’ve done today. I’ve listed one fellow recruiter and my account manager as my out of office contacts. If anyone has an emergency, they can handle it.

And hey, guys at the office… don’t call me. I’m on vacation!

Baby Announcements

Several of my co-workers are expecting or their wives are expecting. It’s an exciting yet nervous time. I don’t have kids, and know pretty much nothing about having them. Apparently when you have kids you send out announcements just like you would for a wedding. One company to consider is Doodlebug Dezings. They have some photo birth announcements you may want to check out. I had a co-worker last year send out photo birth announcements and it just makes sense. If you just send a plain text one, you’ll get calls and e-mails for pictures. Combine the two and be done with it. An example is below (try not to goo-goo gah-gah too much).

Combative Human Resources Departments

What do you do if the HR department you are working with takes a combative stance with you as a consultant? It can be a pretty ugly situation. You feel like they have all the power because they are “HR! Ra’ar!” and they have all the hiring and firing power.

Well, that isn’t always the case. Here’s a few tips to dealing with HR when HR isn’t very friendly:

• Be professional. Never drop the professional mentality. Be cordial. Any slip up in this area only adds ammunition to them to justify firing you.
• Don’t be annoying. This gets hard as you get more frustrated. Don’t irritate anyone in HR, again, that isn’t helping your case.
• Work with your manager. There are many departmental managers within the organization that may have more true power than human resources. If you are working with or beside one of them, make them aware of your situation.

Other than that, try to ignore it.

Use coupons to save money

I love saving money. I actually write about personal finance on another blog.

One fantastic way to save money is to use coupons. It’s simple. You want an item. Someone — either the retailer or the manufacturer generally — offers you a discount to buy the item. You can either pay full price, or pay the discounted price. Which one do you want?

The hard part is finding coupons. I have a really hard time finding groceries coupons locally. I’m still looking for a reliable source.

For other things though, there are some easy ways to find coupons. You can get free shipping promotions, discount codes and weekly steals. That’s one way to save.

However, if you are reading this blog, you are a consultant. Let’s look for some coupons that will truly save you some hard earned cash and apply to your life:

• Save on travel costs with Expedia, Travelocity, or Orbitz coupons (I love Travelocity — we booked our honeymoon through them, but all three are pretty much the same idea.)
• Don’t forget to send your spouse/significant other/Mom/child flowers while you on the road with ProFlowers discounts (I’ve seen them get delivered here in my office and they look great, and ship surprisingly well).

Just a few ideas. Remember, you don’t have to pay full price!

Human Resources: May Not Know Anything

We discussed last time that some companies don’t want to pay up for job skill sets that demand a premium. In my industry this is skills like .NET or Java programming. If you are good at what you do, you can make a ton of money… if you can find the client that is willing to pay for it.

Human resources is another problem with many organizations. I’m not sure how human resources got this stigma, but often you think “Hmm, HR. They are more of a hindrance than a help.” People in human resources don’t normally really know what the manager is looking for or what technology is being used. So they ask for very odd requirements in their job descriptions, making filling the job very, very difficult.

In other words, if all of the candidates in the market place are round pegs, the human resources department will have a job description that is a perfect fit for square pegs. It just doesn’t work.

Granted, some HR departments work well with the managers of the company to find quality candidates. Some work with their vendors very well.

Others? Well…

Again, if you need hosting…

I’ve talked about it in the past. To write a blog, get a domain, get some web hosting, and get started. Don’t bother with “free” web hosting / blog hosting services like Blogger, Wordpress.com, Typepad, etc. In those situations the company maintains control of your blog. If their servers go down and wipe out your data, you’re up a creek without a paddle.

What you need is to get some webhosting that you are paying for — hopefully very inexpensively — every month. You maintain most of the control at this point as you are someone’s customer. You can take your business elsewhere. With the free hosts, they aren’t charging you anything so if you go somewhere else it doesn’t bother them as much.

The website above I linked to is webhostingchoice.com. They help you find an affordable host and compare the different companies. One caveat — a lot of the companies offer “unlimited” storage and bandwidth, but I think we all know unlimited is actually impossible. Even my GoDaddy account (which is listed on the site) for 1,000 GB transfer bandwidth and 100GB of storage seems to be a stretch. If my site spiked and had 900MB worth of transfer bandwidth in one day, I would guess GoDaddy would close my connection off.

But! If you’re just getting started then a cheap webhost is definitely the way to go. Get the domain, and get going.

Note to Clients: Pay Up for Sought-After Skillsets

One of the major problems that we run into in the IT recruiting industry is clients don’t want to pay what the market expects for a skill set. I’m guessing this applies to other industries as well, but this is where my experience lies.

No doubt that in the past we’ve had a client that wanted a network admin with MCSE, CCNA, A+ certifications for $30,000 to $35,000 per year. That’s absolutely ridiculous. You won’t find someone like that in my market for less than $45,000.

What happens is HR doesn’t really know what they’re looking for so they just start throwing certifications into the job description. Very frustrating.