By Kevin M

I’ve been writing a good bit in the past few weeks about the virtues of self-employment, based heavily on my own experience in turning this blog into a primary income generating venture. I believe that being self-employed may now be the new preferred way to “creating a career”, as opposed to the more traditional route of jumping on the corporate ladder—mainly since the ladder no longer seems to exist.

Today I want to take a look at contracting, since it’s become an increasingly common path into self-employment. For the record, I’ve done a good bit of contract work over the past few years so I won’t be talking (OK, writing…) hypothetically. And I still do take on contract work under the right circumstances.

OK, so you enter a contract arrangement—they have you sign a thick contract filled with rich legalese, they aren’t going to withhold taxes, you’ll be issued a 1099 at the end of the year (instead of a W2) and you’ll be required to file a Schedule C—Income from Self-employment, on your income tax returns. Wow, you’re self-employed now, right?

Not necessarily. And maybe not at all.

Many contract arrangements have nothing to do with self-employment. They’re mostly watered down jobs that have close to zero chance of ever being converted into entrepreneurship of any kind. They can be a trap if you take them on, thinking it’ll make you self-employed. No only will you not be self-employed, but you’ll be only minimally employed at that. It’s important to know when a contract arrangement really is a form of self-employment and when it’s something else.

When contracting is NOT self-employment

I’m tackling this one first because I think this is the more common situation. Some of the typical characteristics of non-self-employed contracting include:

1. You’re required to work full-time
2. You’re specifically prohibited from working for the company’s competitors (translation: you’re exclusive), a restriction that can even extend beyond termination
3. The company controls where you work and the hours you keep
4. Strict adherence to company guidelines and procedures are required—you have little or no flexibility in performing your work
5. Your pay is entirely dependent on hours, not the results of the job performed
6. The employer withholds no taxes—you’re paid by 1099 and must file a Schedule C with your income tax return (giving the appearance of self-employment for tax purposes)
7. You’re responsible to a specified chain of command, including an immediate supervisor
8. Your work is closely supervised and directed by an employee of the company—there’s no element of freelance here
9. You can be fired without notice or cause, though the process may be called something different
10. Since you technically aren’t an employee, you have no company benefits
11. Since you aren’t an employee, you have no right to sue for typical employee grievances
12. Any and all contract provisions are for the protection of the employer

A recruiter friend of mine tells me that these provisions are becoming extremely common. But a contract situation with even a few of these provisions is not self-employment in any way. And though the stipulations are quite common in today’s contract job market, a situation with even a few of these elements would not qualify as a contract situation under IRS guidelines either. That’s really a job, but one in which we, as the employees, have most of the responsibility and liability.

Employers love this arrangement because it a) relieves them of most administrative functions, including collecting and filing income taxes, b) circumvents providing employee benefits, c) allows them to terminate the “contract” at will, and d) generally denies the employee the right to bring a lawsuit for unfair practices, inadequate working conditions or for wrongful discharge.

Now if you take an assignment like this because you need a paycheck—as I have myself—you certainly have my respect. Just understand that it’s usually mostly a compromised job situation and in NO way self-employment or anything that will lead in that direction.

Your “self-employment” is only in the eyes of your employer, who loves it because it gives them all the advantages while denying you the same. The 1099/Schedule C arrangement is completely cosmetic and in no way proves self-employment status. Neither does the written contract you sign because it establishes an unequal partnership favoring the employer, and is also completely cosmetic.

When contracting IS self-employment

Recognizing that the situation described above is probably the more common contract arrangement, there are contract arrangements that very much are a form of self-employment. How do you know? Here are some clues…

1. You have a written contract with a company to provide specific services that can, but don’t necessarily, require a certain number of hours
2. The assignment is usually temporary, concluding when the specified services have been delivered
3. You are free to work with competing clients simultaneously or subsequent to the assignment
4. The client does not require you to work on site, or allows a certain amount of work to be done off site
5. Though you may have regular interaction with client management, you are not supervised by them
6. You can enter the contract and be compensated under your corporate name
7. You can bill the client for expenses, such as travel, incurred in connection with the assignment
8. Payment via 1099 (no withholding taxes) is legitimate because it’s understood by all parties that you will contract with multiple clients and may have legitimate business expenses to write off
9. The arrangement can be part-time, seasonal or as-needed
10. You have complete or substantial control of how the work gets done—the client specifies what they want done, but leaves it to you as a professional to make it happen
11. The contract itself is a fully negotiated document, prepared by and agreed to by both you and the client

Contracting with these provisions is a form of self-employment. The key element is flexibility—under this kind of arrangement you have considerable flexibility because the client is relying upon your specific skill set. Compare this with the tightly controlled job-posing-as-independent-contractor in the first example and you can easily see why that one isn’t really a form of self-employment.

Why does it even matter?

Employers are concocting all kinds of ways to cut payroll costs, and contracting has become an extremely common method. What’s important is that you don’t get caught up in the employer’s claims that you’re somehow self-employed just because they hire you as a “contractor” or some similar nomenclature.

If you want to be self-employed, then you need to make sure that the contract arrangement you’re agreeing to will be a step in that direction. A contract should allow you to be free to do the work the way you need to do it, and allow you to freely solicit and work for multiple clients. That’s being self-employed.

Contract arrangements that control your time and workflow, and prohibit outside activities are just jobs by another name. If your long-term plan is to become self-employed, either through contracting or by some other method, the first situation won’t help your cause.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to learn the difference between the two contract arrangements. One will bring you to self-employment, the other is really a job—and a job with less security and fewer benefits than traditional employment.

Have you ever done contract work? Have you ever been in a contract arrangement that looked a lot like the first example? How did you feel about it?

Related Posts:

How Blogging Solved My Mid-Life Career Crisis
7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
Income Security VS Job Security – Does it Matter?
The Self-Employed Health Insurance Dilemma
7 Reasons Why Self-Employment is More Secure than a Job

By Kevin M

“Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”—Motto of The Christophers

I mostly make my living on the internet these days but I have a confession. I never worked much with computers until three years ago, least of which the internet. Sure, in the preceding 25 years that I worked in mortgages and accounting I used computer applications, lots of them, but most of us understand the not so subtle difference between that and working in an environment in which your primary means of support is coming directly from working on/in computers or somewhere out in cyberspace.

My career as a paper pusher ended unceremoniously at the end of 2008, a time when recycled paper pushers weren’t in very big demand. Where to go, what to do? Damn computers–#%&*@$g internet—they’ll be the end of the world, you watch!

That last line is a fiction (OK, it was a deeply suppressed thought), but I chose to intentionally avoid dwelling on it. Every one who’s ever seen their career crash and burn can point to one or more big picture factors that directly or indirectly greased the wheels of their departure. We can either poison ourselves with bitterness, or find some way to benefit from prevailing changes (hence the Christopher’s quote above). Which route we take will mostly determine our future direction.

Job VS Opportunity

Here’s the thing about computers and the internet—yes, they have been responsible for the permanent elimination of millions of jobs around the world (and almost certainly more to come), but they’ve also created a sea change of opportunity. We should work to take advantage of that opportunity.

Now notice I said “opportunity”, rather than jobs—computers and the internet have created many, many jobs, most of them high paying. But they’ve destroyed more jobs than they’ve created on balance. And let’s face it, unless you’re a highly trained “techie”, getting a high paying job in the computer field is tough.

The opportunities I’m describing won’t be found in a job, but in having your own business.

Scared? Don’t be. I think it’s the wave of the future. Most people who have held jobs all their lives tend to think “job” when it comes to earning a living, but the onslaught of computers and the internet have changed that arrangement. I think that computers and the internet are the 21st Century equivalent of the return to the family farm and shop that provided income for the majority of humanity since the beginning of civilization.

What are some of the ways that computers and the internet are making self-employment more doable?

The entire world is our market

Because of the internet we’re no longer limited to the local community as a business base. Business can be developed throughout the world. The obvious advantage here is a much bigger market, but probably more significant is the niche factor. There are more niches globally than locally, and that heightens the chance of finding business success.

For example, let’s say you’re an art dealer; you can only drum up so much business in your immediate local community. But by selling on the web, you can reach hundreds of larger markets around the world, and many of them may buy proportionately more art than people on your home turf do. Even as a blogger, a significant amount of my income is derived from non-US sources. That’s the nature of the web—a market without borders.

Free and cheap marketing

Every business needs to market, otherwise there is no business. But marketing can be the mortal enemy of a small business, especially a start up. Advertising in the traditional media (TV, radio, mailers and print) is expensive. The big players can and do play this game, and play it well.

Marketing on the internet is far cheaper (and often free) than it is in the traditional media. You can place ads on large websites for less than the cost of advertising in a local newspaper, or you can market for free on the social media, like Facebook and Twitter. Just having and growing your website or blog is a form of advertising.

Networking gets larger—and more important

Networking opportunities are wide open–people are helping people on the web. Most web businesses are small, often one-man or woman shops, so you can market your products through another online business while they market their product through yours. You can also swap business strategies and gain access to valuable information. Networking is the life’s blood of the internet—which is why it’s called the “web”.

More product lines

Product lines are available to us that once were known only to “insiders”. Everything is being sold on the web and that presents some opportunities. Many companies will offer affiliate sales arrangements, in which you get paid a commission to sell their products. And since it’s what they do, the process of signing up and is usually pretty simple. It goes without saying that any sort of import/export business will be easier to build, since it’s all done online.

Online sales are on the rise

Online sales of nearly every product or service you can imagine are rising steadily. What this means is that the resistance to buying online is much lower than it was just a few years ago. More people being more willing to transact business online is a win for the small business. Where you once needed an attractive storefront or office suite to get people to do business with you, now all you need is a good website.

Free, online training

Information on any business you can think of is no farther away than a Google search (YouTube is another excellent source). Most businesses are “seat-of-the-pants” affairs—you learn by trial and error. If you’re tooling along in your business and you hit on a snag, you can usually find the answer somewhere on the web. It’s been said that because of the internet, the average person today has access to more information than kings and business tycoons had 50 or 100 years ago. Use that to your advantage.

Inexpensive staffing

Next to marketing, staffing is usually the most expensive outlay for a small business, but the web can even help you with that. You can find inexpensive outsourcing help with virtual assistants (VAs)—no need to have formal employees. VAs can perform everything from simple administrative tasks to complicated computer applications, and they usually cost no more than a few dollars an hour. There are talented people in less developed countries who are willing to take on some of your work for not a lot of money. That means no W2s, no employee benefits and no employee lawsuits. There out there on the web, waiting for work.

Building a portfolio of businesses

If you can start one business on the web, you can add a second, a third, or as many as you want. You can enter one business and move seamlessly to another—everything just works faster on the web. Web entrepreneurs are a growing phenomenon—once you overcome your apprehension about the web, the sky is truly the limit. This adds an income diversification that a traditional job can never provide. I’d take that over employee benefits and a loose promise of job security any day!

Servicing the online “establishment”

As more businesses develop on the web, so do the opportunities to provide support services for them. If you have computer-, social media-, marketing-, writing- or administrative-skills, there are internet businesses and blogs who could use your services. For example, blogs often use outside services to write articles, manage content, social media marketing and technical support. Any such niche could be the beginning of a new online career if you have such skills.

Start small, grow large

Here’s one of the best parts of working on the web: you can start as a side business until you grow into full-time. That means you can plunge into an internet business without having to quit your job, and you can continue doing so until you’re ready to take it up to full time. This lowers the risk of starting an internet business substantially. This is possible in large part because internet businesses are talent driven, not capital driven as so many bricks and mortar ventures are. You don’t need inventory, employees or even office space, and as discussed above, marketing is incredibly cheap.

All of these advantages make a strong case for the unemployed, under-employed, disenfranchised (that was me three years ago) or even the currently employed to consider some sort of internet-related income generating venture. And because doing it doesn’t require much money, you can try, fail and try again all you like—until you get it right.

This is after all, a new age—the Internet Age.

Have you thought about starting some sort of internet based business?

Related Posts:

7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
5 Tips to Go From a Job to Self-Employment
The Self-Employed Health Insurance Dilemma
7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business
7 Reasons Why Self-Employment is More Secure than a Job

By Kevin M

Picture this: you’re 50 years old, your career is dying on the vine—your entire industry is on life support—and you need to find a new career to carry you through the rest of your life.

Sadly—and gladly—this situation was not hypothetical. It was my reality. I say “sadly” because it was an incredibly stressful situation to go through, especially having a family to support while it was unfolding. But I also say “gladly” because overcoming crisis is an amazingly empowering experience.

Rising out of the pile of economic statistics

I was one of the millions of career casualties of the financial meltdown that you no doubt heard tell of from the news media and assorted talking heads. In fact, I was at the epicenter of the storm, working many years as a loan originator in the mortgage industry. (When I wrote in the first paragraph that “your entire industry is on life support” I’m sure you can appreciate that I wasn’t exaggerating!)

That was my situation at the tail end of 2008/beginning of 2009. Now at the dawn of 2012 I have a career designation unlike any I ever expected to have in my life: professional blogger. Not a common job description, especially for someone over 50, but I blog and I make money doing it.

How much money? Enough to make a living! That’s plenty—for now—for a guy who based on age and career circumstances could have easily been considered to be “washed up”. But there’s something I’ve learned about blogging—something much more encouraging: it’s one of those fields where the farther you go, the farther you can go. Think of it as “success breading success”. It’s very real in blogging.

Oh, and here’s something else I’ve learned from this experience: you’re only washed up if you think you’re washed up. But let’s get back on topic…

Hundreds, maybe thousands of people are making money blogging—but what IS different in my case is my highly unlikely background. I don’t fit the description of the usual professional blogger, who is typically in his or her 20s or 30s, has grown up with computers the way people my age did with TVs, has few inhibitions in regard to “transparency”, navigates the social media with ease and confidence, and generally has at least some professional connection to the IT universe. I can lay claim to none of that.

For me, entering, continuing, and extending my blogging career has been akin to building a brick wall—one brick at a time. But the take away, I hope, is that you’ll see that you can turn something as casual sounding as blogging into a legitimate career. I’m telling my story in the hopes that it might motivate you if you feel trapped by economic or employment circumstances. There is a way out—there always is.

What do you do when all the doors are closing?

A career crisis is a disaster at any age but once you reach the half century mark all of the problems are magnified. You’re too young to retire, but too old to start a new career.

Going back to school to get a new degree costs time and money you don’t have, and the time horizon to use the new skills learned is too short if you could. Employers in new career fields are unwilling to take a chance hiring you into an entry level position when they can easily hire younger people who are uncorrupted by previous experience and generally willing to work for less money. And that jumping-into-a-parallel-field thing is vastly over-rated, especially in the “worst downturn since the Great Depression”.

And there’s one other thing that any refugee from the mortgage business will tell you: we were widely viewed as “damaged goods”. I even saw ads that said something to the effect of “If you’re coming out of the mortgage industry we don’t want you”. I’m not kidding!

When you’re facing a conundrum like that, you can either cave-in, lose your self-esteem and “settle for what ever you can get” to carry you to the day when you’ll be eligible to collect a meager Social Security check—or you can come out fighting.

I chose to come out fighting. It wasn’t even close. But one of the most difficult things for a suddenly disenfranchised person (a description I never thought would apply to me) to do is to find a way to think long term in a world where your economic underpinnings have been virtually annihilated. The only rational course in that situation is to make an end run around the immediate problem—the very real prospect of permanent un- or under-employment—and to take a chance on something completely new.

I chose blogging. In my world, that’s as new as it gets.

The 21st Century equivalent of the Wild West

Blogging doesn’t top the list of places to find career salvation—I’ll be the first to admit that. More typically teaching, government jobs, IT or “something in the medical field” come to mind when people look to re-tool. Then there are the usual mid-life rest stops: real estate, insurance and car sales, or the various assorted “franchise opportunities”—all of which seldom work for people who have no entrepreneurial background. But blogging has one quality that none of those have: it’s the modern equivalent of the Wild West. It’s a world so undefined that even a complete but determined novice like me has a chance make a go of it.

Chaos—that’s where I chose to cast my lot, but not without reason.

I think it was Ted Turner who said something along the lines of “If you want to make money, find the place where the action is, jump in the middle of it, and money will come to you”. That’s a very loose paraphrase and I might not have it completely right, but it actually makes sense when you don’t know what else to do—and I didn’t. Blogging seemed to be that place.

Being an analytical type, I actually sat down and did T-account analyses to determine what my next “gig” would be—positive qualities to the left, negatives to the right. If a given field seemed to have a much higher number of positives than negatives, it was in contention.

Some of the qualities the new field had to have were easy entry, low or no capital investment, abundant room for growth, ready adaptability to self-employment, geographic mobility, and little or no government regulation—I was coming out of the mortgage business and saw it regulated into oblivion, but that’s a story for a different day. Blogging came up better than any other field I could think of, making it the “logical choice”, if you can believe as much.

The new field also needed to fit my skill set, and that wasn’t as apparent. As I’ve already revealed, I didn’t fit within the blogging “demographic”, didn’t have any IT familiarity and came from a generation where bearing our souls (and personal information) to others was considered out of bounds.

But I did have some skills that I thought would help. Though I’d never made money writing at any time in my life, I always thought of myself as a closet writer. I’m also a deep and generally unrestrained thinker—that fits well in a Wild West environment. And I had business and finance related experience from my mortgage career, and an earlier stint in public accounting. Not a whole lot to go on, but it was a start. I figured that if nothing else, I’d get the content part of blogging down quickly.

And here’s one other seemingly unlikely factor I had in my favor: I literally had no place else to go. That can create a level of dedication that those with more options can never muster.

So I mounted my horse, and rode out into the sunrise of the modern equivalent of the Wild West. God help me in my journey—and I know He did!

The path forward isn’t usually a straight line

Blogging has only been around since roughly the early-2000s, so it’s very much a field that’s still in its infancy. Because of this newness, it’s very much a blank canvass, a place where a novice is free to take chances, and quite literally as many as he wants. You can even mess up, and still move on.

This is very unlike the current employment scene where work flows and procedures are becoming increasingly precise and technocratic, even in the simplest of jobs. That’s the whole reason blogging appealed to me. We all have hidden talents, and blogging looked like the place where I could tap mine.

But chaos has its price too. I read as many blogs and published sources on the business of blogging as I could find, and one thing became clear in the early going: blogging is NOT an exact science. What works for one blogger won’t necessarily work for another. Damn—no road map!

You should gather all the information you can, especially from successful bloggers—some of it WILL work for you, just don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t. Blogging is a work-in-progress and much of it will depend on plain, old trial-and-error.

What DID work for me

Finding success is often a matter of creating order out of chaos, and that seems to be the general rule in blogging. This is not the easiest climb in the business world, but here a few pieces of advice if you’d like to make the trip yourself:

Drop any thoughts of “get-rich-quick”. When you’re down and out there can be a tendency to look for quick solutions and you might begin thinking in terms of rages-to-riches scenarios. Don’t waste your time and your money. Get-rich-quick and building a business are not at all the same thing—especially when it comes to blogging. With that thought fresh in mind…

Adopt a LONG-term view. I didn’t start making even a few hundred dollars a month until I was blogging for at least a year. It took me two years to hit the $1,000 monthly level, but it’s grown quickly since. Some people start making money after just six months, but understand that these are exceptional cases. The vast majority of blogs never make any money at all, and most fail within the first year. I didn’t fail because I didn’t quit!

Find a way to support yourself while you’re building your blog. I was done with the mortgage business, but I took all kinds of temporary and contract jobs while I was building my blog. Some of them interfered with my blogging, but I needed the money. There’s a definite “starving artist” quality to building a blog, but if you think of the outside jobs as supporting the building of your business it can actually turn it into an adventure that also provides you with material for writing content. Footnote: I still work side jobs when I can.

Be open to what ever comes your way. I’ve been describing blogging as chaotic and while that can certainly confuse and even sabotage your efforts to succeed, it also presents opportunities. Once your blog begins to get traffic, others in related businesses begin to notice. Advertising and affiliate deals, partnerships, networking arrangements—you name it—will begin showing up in your email. Many of them will be a complete waste of your time, but some will be serious and profitable.

Carefully consider as many as you can. Because the web is wide open, blogging can take you in all kinds of directions that you never expected. For example, about a year after I started my blog, Paul Van Lierop at Fiscal Geek offered me a paid staff writing position for his site. I accepted, and within a few months I had paid writing gigs on several sites and was making a nice side income. I still do this, but now that most of my income is from my own site, I’m doing less of it than before.

Network, network, network. Part of finding success on the road into the unknown is finding people to make the journey with. One of the greatest blessings of the blogging world is that there are so many people you can team up with. I’ve met dozens, and I’m going to say without reservation that this is the greatest group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. All are succeeding in their own ventures, all are entrepreneurs, and all need one another to make it work. I’m in a networking group now where we think of each other as “co-workers”—with all of the benefits of co-worker support, but none of the burdens. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Be relentless. If I could pick one quality that separates success from failure, it’s definitely this one. You have to become almost single-minded, blocking out and even ignoring distractions. No matter what, keep moving forward! While I was working in contract assignments—and enjoying the money of the moment—I never lost sight of the fact that the assignments were temporary but my blog was permanent! Constant forward motion has a way of getting you to where you want to go, even if it takes longer than you expect.

The Payoff

That may seem like a lot to summon up, especially if you’ve never built your own business in the past. But as difficult as it seems, the payoffs of succeeding are even greater. Here are some of the many benefits I’ve gotten from my blogging venture—you can expect the same if you decide to give it a serious try.

1. I have my own business. An income generating blog is a legitimate business—some are even selling for substantial amounts of money. In today’s economy, being self-employed is more secure than being on someone else’s payroll—especially as you get older.
2. My future is unlimited. I’m making money blogging and I haven’t even ventured into wide areas like affiliate marketing or multiple site ownership. While other people my age are worried about keeping their jobs, I’m working on growing my business. At an age where so many are planning on folding up their tents, I’m contemplating the infinite possibilities…
3. I love what I do. I’ve never been able to say that about any job or career I’ve had in the past. When you love what you do, it doesn’t even feel like work.
4. I don’t have to retire. The whole idea of “putting in your time” to retire at a given point never sat well with me. If I retire I want it to be because I want to, not because I have to.
5. Blogging flows with my life. If another opportunity comes along, I can slow my blogging to a side business—or ramp it back up if the opportunity turns into a bust. I can take time to tend to family or personal matters, and I don’t have to ask HR for permission. All I need to do is pack up my laptop and go.
6. I have geographic mobility. Since I’m no longer job dependent, I can live anywhere in the world that has electricity and an internet connection. No office to report to, no buildings to maintain, no inventory or heavy equipment to keep—my entire business can be “stored” in my head or on a flash drive. And both are portable.

I’m here to tell you that you can make money blogging, even if you don’t have any “prequalifications”. Or even if you think you’re too old. I was 50 when I started and I’m no whiz kid of any kind. But here I am, working through my mid-life career crisis with a plunge into what was—until three years ago—the complete unknown. If I can do this, so can you.

Have you ever thought about blogging as a business? What keeps you from moving forward with it?

Related Posts:

7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
5 Tips to Go From a Job to Self-Employment
The Perfect Side Hustle: Freelance Blog Writer
7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business
Starting a Side Business – Why Now is the Time

Guest Post

The single defining factor of the 21st century job market will be automation. Technology is driving us to a point where human hands and minds are no longer needed for a wide variety of relatively simple tasks.

Once upon a time your average high school graduate could find steady work in a factory. Those days have been mostly over for years, and for the last several decades the once-optional college degree has become the key to finding work. But as we enter a new century, it’s becoming abundantly clear that a degree itself is not enough. Ambiguous higher education simply doesn’t cut it anymore in a world where automation is cheaper than paying someone a salary.

Higher education needs to be specific—and technical

Higher education was once merely a metric for judging someone’s ability to stick to something, at least for the most part. It’s different now – those two-to-ten years spent in school better have been used to study something that made you something of a computer yourself, a finely-tuned workhorse that can perform at something very specific very well. The reason being is that when it comes to the automation of labor, the most simple and easy-to-replicate jobs have been the ones that computers and machines have replaced.

But it’s not just automation that’s causing careers to become more complex and specific – it’s also getting more bang for your buck through the use of advanced communications methods and other leaps in information technology.

There was a time when knowledge was acquired, maintained, and decimated by humans only. Thanks to software, improved electronics, and less emphasis on geographical boundaries, teachers and other such vessels of human understanding are no longer needed in the quantities they were before.

The “secret” to career success: Making yourself irreplaceable

Yet for those who are career-bound as we enter this new age of employment, there is a silver lining around the cloud of technological progress. It’s apparent that two forms of work are still going to be available to humans throughout the first half of the 21st century:

1. Person-to-person specialty labor that machines and computers simply cannot replicate, and
2. positions where you yourself are the one behind these technological leaps forward.

As far as the former is concerned, careers such as being a pharmacy technician or a social worker are still likely to be available en masse. The reasoning, as previously stated, is simple: technology will struggle to match the most important aspects of these jobs, which mainly entail having a sense of compassion and emotional understanding for other people in certain situations, and customizing your strategy based on the behaviors of those you work for.

The latter is much easier to understand. Simply put – we still have a long time before computers and machines completely take over the world. In the meantime, careers that specialize in the math and sciences are the most likely to maintain the onslaught of automation and technological progress itself, as these are the careers that will be driving this progress forward.

Anyone wondering what to devote their lives to should seriously consider careers that are expected to see growth. If you think the job market is bad now, just wait until automation goes into full swing over the next several years as companies attempt to adjust for the poor economy. For the chance of a better future for yourself, it’s critical you plan with the frame of the full future in mind.

This career update was provided by Amanda Green. Consideration was given for this article.

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Nursing Your Career Back to Health

By Clair Schwan

Okay folks, this is the home stretch for this four-part series on starting a consulting company on a shoestring budget. We’ve looked at startup considerations and how to handle them, expenses associated with running the business, and the many and varied hassles that really are more imaginary than real. In this last portion of the series, let’s look at income – the fun part. If you’ve done your planning well, and are mindful to minimize expenses, you ought to be able to make a decent return on investment.

Let’s take a look at what one might create for themselves, but let’s also be cautious and realistic.

Waiting for Income

If there’s one thing a frugal person is good at, it’s handling income and building wealth. Before we start rolling around and giggling amidst our big pile of cash, there are some realities that need to be faced.

First, the bad news. Unless you’ve cultivated your first few jobs, you’ll have to hold your financial breath until you land one. That could happen in a few weeks, or it could take a couple of months or more. Plan on at least a couple of months for the cycle of business development, focusing on prospects, writing proposals, getting a contract signed, and then getting the work scheduled to start.

Even then, you’ll work for 30 days, invoice a couple of weeks later, wait at least 30 days to be paid – probably more like 45 to 60 days – and that means your first dollar will come through the door about three months after you start your first job, and that might be six months after you start your business. Now, it’s clear to see why careful startup planning can be both wise and frugal.

To weather this portion of your career change, you’ll need a pile of money. That money will need to cover your personal and business expenses for about six months, and then you ought to have some working capital set aside in addition to that so you have a financial comfort zone. You don’t want to be distracted in your new business because you’re worrying about getting down to the bottom of the peanut butter jar.
Once you build a relatively steady stream of revenue, you’ll be able to relax a bit. After a year or so, the business development, customer work and billing cycle will become much more clear and you’ll be better able to predict revenue. You’ll also be able to project expenses with much more accuracy, and that will allow your return on investment to become clear. Only then should you start counting your money.

Enhanced Income

The good news is that all of the overhead built into your previous billing rate as an employee is now yours as gross revenue, much of which can be turned into profit. For example, let’s say your billing rate at your previous employer was $130 an hour. That means you probably were paid about $65 an hour for your time. That additional $65 per hour went to overhead expenses like management, administration, property rental, and unapplied time associated with business development. Now, you have an important choice to make – what to do with the additional $65 per hour that your customer is accustomed to paying for your services.

Here’s my suggestion. Lower your billing rate to $120 per hour and your customers will enjoy a break in the price of your services. At the same time, you’ll enjoy a $55 per hour increase in your income. That’s nearly double what you were making. So, you make a lot more, and your customer enjoys a price break. You’re “a deal” in the marketplace, but you didn’t have to take a financial hit to make it happen. Over the next couple of years, you can inch your rate back up to $130 per hour, and now you’ve doubled what you were making back at Acme High Management Overhead Inc, and you’ll still be offering a lower rate to your customers because the folks at Acme will have cranked up their prices as well.

If you do it right, what you’ll quickly find is your ability to accumulate wealth will take a giant leap forward. This means you’ll have plenty of cash to carefully invest in the business, because you’re frugal, and you’ll be able to engage the services of an investment advisor to help grow your nest egg. You can see it now, early retirement is on the horizon. You won’t need to remain part of the rat race until you reach “official” retirement age according to the government. Oh boy, this is going to be good.

Cash Attracts Others

Of course, there are others who have their eyes on those bushel baskets full of money you’re making. It’s our friends at the Internal Revenue Service. And, they’re out to provide you with a type of “service” by helping themselves to your enhanced revenue streams. I’m reminded of the song, This Isn’t What the Governmeant, by the 1970s group Bread. They sang, “The more you make, the more they take, you never seem to get ahead.” It’s true, so you’ll need to know how to minimize taxes on what you earn by investing wisely inside and outside of the business, and maximizing useful deductions.

Generally, anything that you regularly and exclusively use for your business is tax deductible. And, you’re in charge of the business, so you’ll decide what array of things are required for business success. Things like laptop and desktop computers, special software, still and video cameras, a GPS unit, a color laser printer, and other fancy gadgets might be necessary to do your work and win more billable work. You’ll also need to remember that paper, batteries and mileage are all deductible as business expenses when they’re put to work to earn you more income.

Wrapping it Up

So, the income earning potential of your own consulting business can be very attractive, but you need to be aware that it won’t come immediately, it doesn’t necessarily come regularly, and others want their share of your entrepreneurial efforts. Just because you have rid yourself of the corporate money leach doesn’t mean you’ll be successful at avoiding the long arm of the government. Take heart, you’re in good company among those who know how to create wealth. If only someone would start an enterprise that gets rid of those who simply consume wealth, now that’s a job I want to put in for.

Clair Schwan hosts Self-Reliance-Works.com where he encourages others to live a more self-directed and self-managed life focused on their own self-interests. It’s just the kind of spirit that makes for a good entrepreneur.

Related Posts:

Micro Frugality VS. Macro Frugality
How Frugality Becomes Counterproductive
7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business
A Successful Online Business Requires Realistic Expectations
Frugal Entrepreneurs – Start a Consulting Company
Frugal Entrepreneurs – Expenses Associated with Consulting
Frugal Entrepreneurs – Apparent Problems with Running a Consulting Business

By Kevin M

An excellent post appeared on Financial Highway dealing with the various considerations faced by a working couple when a child arrives in the family. In Which Spouse Should Stay Home? Miranda Marquit does a stellar job of presenting the variables involved in making the right decision. And that’s not at all surprising since Miranda is on the frontline of this issue herself as a work-at-home mom.

There was a time—only a generation or so ago—when it was considered the natural order that the wife worked until the first child came along and then promptly exited the workforce to assume the role of full-time mom. Today however, the situation is complicated by (at least!) two major factors:

1. Most households need two incomes, and
2. Instability in the job market has led to dual incomes as a necessary component of family income security.

Each reason is compelling by itself—but I think that the second one has become the more important of the two, at least in the past few years. It’s easier to lose a job than it has been in at least 60 years, and harder to replace one for all the same reasons.

Why does either parent need to be home at all?

Despite the clear need for two incomes—and the jobs that supply them—there are equally compelling reasons for one parent to be home with the child(ren).

Savings on daycare costs. Daycare costs can easily rival an average house payment and that by itself is a major reason for one parent to be home. My kids are teenagers now, but it cost over $1,000 a month for us to have both in daycare on a full time basis when they were pre-school age—and that was over ten years ago! No, we didn’t have them in any kind of premium facilities—that was the price for a run of the mill daycare, and we live in an area (Atlanta) that hardly qualifies as high cost. I can only imagine what it would cost to have two kids in daycare in places like San Francisco, New York or Washington, DC.

Having at least one parent home with the kids. Any time you hire someone to take care of your kids you’re engaging in a compromise. Yes, someone else can take care of your kids, but let’s be honest–no one will love our kids as much as we do or will take care of them as well as we’d like. There’s a definite peace of mind that comes from being home with your kids—all other complications of the arrangement aside.

Playing “deep safety”. When you have children you quickly learn that emergencies and near-emergencies are a routine part of the parenting job. Kids get sick, they get injured, they have problems at school—when both parents work outside the home either you’re forced to ignore a lot of situations where you probably should be there, or you show up for all of them and jeopardize your job. That’s a no win choice when the stakes are high for you as a parent. At a minimum, every parent wants to be there when emergencies come up.

The considerations

OK, so you decide that one parent needs to be home with the kids, but which one? This is where things get complicated. This is just my opinion, but since the family’s survival is at stake, the decision as to who stays home with the kids shouldn’t come down to something as vague as who wants to stay home more. Objective factors need to be considered, including…

Earning power. This is the traditional defining factor in the decision, and it makes abundant sense to minimize the financial fallout of one parent leaving a job. The higher earning parent continues to work, while the lower earning one comes home to be a full time parent.

Who has the stronger career prospects? In today’s employment scene that isn’t always the husband. While it may seem more “natural” for the wife to be home, many women have stronger career skills and prospects than their husbands. Even if one parent does earn more than the other, the family’s long term financial prospects may actually improve if the lower earning parent with strong prospects remains on the job.

Who has the better benefit package at work? Benefits are always important, but when you have kids, they’re that much more so. Kids mean frequent trips to the doctor or worse and you need to be prepared. A better benefit package by the lower earning parent may even offset the loss of the higher earner’s extra income.

Who has the greatest ability to create a work-at-home situation? The loss of the income from a full-time job can be at least partially offset if the stay at home parent has the ability to work from home through their job, or has the type of skills that can create a work-at-home business. A family that might struggle on a single income could thrive on one-and-a-half incomes.

How my wife and I handled the choice

For my wife and I the deciding factor was the last one—who has the greatest ability to create a work-at-home situation—and that was me. (A close second was benefits—my wife always seemed to have the better package.) My wife works in banking, and that isn’t a field that translates into work-at-home. My situation was and is different.

At the time I was working as a mortgage originator (mortgage sales) with a large mortgage company, a position that lent itself well to working from home. The company, however, tended to discourage working from home so I moved to an independent mortgage brokerage company where it wasn’t a problem. Once I got that up and running, the kids came home for good.

I readily confess that I would almost certainly have made more money working a job outside the house. Yes, you can make as much or more working from home as you could working in an office, but it’s infinitely harder when you’re also the primary care taker for your children. Much of the time I was working no more than 75% of the time, and it could be as low as 50% when the kids weren’t in school. Even so, half an income is better than no income and at least some of the loss was covered by not having to pay for daycare.

Was it a perfect arrangement? No, not at all. There will always be trade-offs when you try to balance work/income with child rearing, but here are some of the things we didn’t lose as a result of deciding that the work-at-home parent would also be the stay-at-home parent:

• One of us was home as the primary care giver for our kids—in their own home—and we didn’t have to wonder what was going on with our own kids when they were being cared for by others
• I was always there for the emergency/near-emergency situations, with no delay as often happens with daycare facilities
• We were able to keep two incomes coming in, even if mine was often inadequate
• We were never without health insurance and other important benefits that my wife’s job provided
• We were able to eliminate daycare and it’s attendant costs and complications

And this one is a bonus—work-at-home has a way of growing on it’s own, and even though our kids are teenagers, I’ve continued on the work-at-home path—which has included contract work and now professional blogging!

It’s interesting how things work out—if you choose the right path!

 
Have you and your spouse been faced with who stays home with the kids and who continues working outside the house? How did you resolve it, or how do you plan to resolve it?

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By Clair Schwan

Continuing with this four part series for frugal entrepreneurs, we’ve already looked at some startup considerations for those who might desire to create their own consulting company. We’ve also examined the issue of expenses. Let’s now look at the general “hassle factor” of starting your own business in the world of consulting. More often than not, this area serves as a ready-made source of excuses for those who are looking for justifications for not starting an enterprise of their own.

The List of Problems

It amazes me each time I hear that someone doesn’t want to start their own enterprise because they don’t want the hassle associated with getting themselves incorporated, processing time cards, and taking out taxes each paycheck. Many also don’t like handling invoices, dealing with insurance issues, negotiating contracts, and wrestling with local officials about business licenses and other incidentals associated with starting an enterprise. To some, it’s all very mysterious and daunting. Well, it’s not.

If you peek behind the curtain, you won’t see the Wizard manipulating levers, pushing buttons or adjusting dials. What you will see is a bunch of clerks pushing papers. I can do that. Can’t you?

Easy Solutions

Let’s look at each of the “problems” on the list and examine them in more detail. They’re really not problems but excuses, so let’s expose them as such and be done with it.

You don’t need to be a corporation, you can just be a sole proprietorship. Being incorporated doesn’t protect you from anything. If you’re going to be sued, a one-zee will be sued as a corporation and an individual. The only thing that protects executives of large corporations is a team of lawyers and gobs of money.

Time keeping isn’t so tough. Your time card can be a notepad, a calendar or an organization tool.

Dealing with taxes is simply a guesstimate on your earnings, doing a little math problem, and writing a check four times a year. Around tax time, it’s just another schedule added to your personal return (if you stick with a sole proprietorship.)

Invoices aren’t a hassle either. They’re a pleasure. When you send them out, you know that money will be sent back in return. And, what comes your way will never be diminished by bloated and self-centered corporate overhead. Ahhhhhhh, it’s so very satisfying, indeed!

Insurance is simple, just like getting car insurance. There are lots of agents out there who will get you liability insurance, health insurance or whatever other kind of insurance you need. That’s their job, so put them to work for you. But you like the idea that an employer sets up and pays for your health insurance. You think it’s high value. Well, it’s not. You can pay for a much better program of insurance by simply dedicating one of your workdays each month to pay for the premium. That’s it. So, you were going to stick around as an employee of another, with a crummy health insurance plan, and collect a meager wage just because it’s too much hassle to find an insurance provider on your own? Not me.

When it comes to contracts, they aren’t that difficult to read and understand. You don’t need an attorney. There isn’t any big negotiations that are required. Even if you take exception to some of the terms, many companies will work with small service providers to modify the terms simply because the service provider’s role is smaller and therefore the potential risk to them is much less. In any event, it’s usually one set of contract negotiations per customer, not per job, so once you have something hammered out, it’s easy to modify each year or apply to follow-on work that you’re awarded.

Most cities don’t have anything to say about this type of enterprise operated out of the home, so don’t get upset about that either. No customers will ever come to visit your office, you’re not going to hang out a sign that reads, “Larry’s Biotech Consulting Service” or something similar, and there probably isn’t any ordinance against making a living from the comfort of your home anyway.

My time as a one-zee started back in early 1999, and I’m certain that very few where I live know that I’m in business for myself. And, I intend to keep it that way. I operate as a sole proprietor and deliberately fly under government radar. I don’t even look like I’m in business – my Friday casual attire is a robe and slippers, and my company mascot sleeps under my desk.

The Bottom Line

Let’s get to the bottom line on this idea of how challenging it is to start an enterprise like a consulting business. It’s only you. Just you, and no one else. How much hassle could that be?

No matter how large an effort you see this to be, you don’t have to eat the elephant in a single bite. You have plenty of time to investigate and plan and get your mind around the whole concept of being on your own. If you’re currently working “off campus,” then you’re a big step ahead of the game – you’re already used to working on your own, and you can get the ball rolling during regular business hours, not having to be concerned about someone overhearing about your plans to break from the rock group, create your own record label, and start making your first in a series of solo albums.

Recognize that much of what you see as fearful is really only a bunch of uncertainties and excuses looking back at you in the mirror. Sort out fact from fiction. Do your own research. Shine up your crystal ball and make a good plan. Chances are you’ll be successful and experience few hassles in your startup operation if you keep it simple and cost-effective. That’s how the frugal among us like it.

Coming Up

Okay, the next article in the series talks about the fun part – making gobs of money. We’ll look at making money, but we’re also going to temper this with the reality that money from your own business isn’t like getting a paycheck each week or two. There are many variables that we need to keep in mind, so income can be tricky, but when you get it right, it can be highly rewarding.

Clair Schwan hosts Frugal Living Freedom where he encourages others to use their hard-earned money wisely and strive to be more self-reliant in their lives. It’s one of his online projects that comprises his ongoing consulting business. He doesn’t fly around the world any more, he simply pilots a small desktop computer in his robe and slippers.

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How Frugality Becomes Counterproductive
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A Successful Online Business Requires Realistic Expectations
Frugal Entrepreneurs – Start a Consulting Company
Frugal Entrepreneurs – Expenses Associated with Consulting

By Clair Schwan

Continuing with this four part series, we’ve already looked at some startup considerations for the frugal-minded who desire to create their own consulting business. Let’s now look at what might be the most intimidating part of the equation – expenses. The frugal among us are good stewards of money, so we need to understand how best to minimize expenses that will erode our revenue, and as a result, minimize the profit we see from our enterprise.

Direct and Indirect Expenses

Let’s assume you’re no longer tethered to the corporate mothership nor chained to your desk inside that little cubicle. We’re off and running. You know it’s going to be scary because it’s expensive to run your own company. After all, it takes a huge corporate financial commitment to finance the business you just left, doesn’t it? No. It doesn’t. In many respects, you were financing the corporation all along. Huh? Let me explain.

In much of the corporate world, you pay for your own travel expenses until your expense report is prepared, submitted, reviewed, approved, and then finally paid. In essence, you’re giving a loan to your company for the direct expenses associated with project work and overhead travel. The only thing that the company “floats” in terms of expenses is the cost of labor. In your new business, that would be you, and your time costs you nothing – it’s not an expense, it’s an investment.

Besides, most of your travel and living expenses, and many other expenses for a particular project will be what are known as direct expenses. In other words, they are part of the cost of a project and therefore should be chargeable to the customer. When you bid a job, these direct expenses should be itemized or estimated in your bid so the customer isn’t surprised when they show up on the invoice.

Other indirect expenses like computers, printers, personal electronic devices and office resources are relatively cheap, and many have a long life span ahead of them, so costs are reasonable and not recurring. For recurring costs such as Internet and phone, you can get bundled residential service and that isn’t going to cost you anything more than it did when you didn’t have your own office in the house. Speaking of your own office, is it necessary to have one outside the home? I don’t think so. There are many a major corporation that was started up in someone’s garage or spare bedroom. You can do the same.

Labor is a Big Expense

Like most operations, labor will be your single largest cost component for any job. The only time labor is a concern is when you have a large project where you’re hiring help, and they’ll want to be paid. Try floating three helpers at $100 dollars per hour for a couple of months until your customer pays you. You’d be foolish to do so. You’d also be well advised not to consider a loan to help float that expense either. It’s just too much on your back to carry. Your interest should be in meeting your own payroll, not the payroll of others.

To eliminate this expense and financial risk, you simply team with other small business resources that are in the same boat as you are. They’ll understand about the difficulty in meeting a payroll. And, they’ll be much more likely to accept some of the pain and risk for an opportunity to be part of your project. Just propose an agreement that has them getting paid immediately after you get paid. In that way, shortly after the customer check arrives and is deposited, you can write a check to your helpers.

Defray Costs

Another helpful approach is to defray costs where you can do so legitimately. For example, if you’re traveling across the country to do a job, stop off to do some business development work at the same time. At least a portion of your travel will be a direct cost, so you’re defraying the cost of your overhead activities simply by combining trips.

For example, it’s an $800 plane ticket to fly to your customer location, but only $1,000 to make a stop on the way out or the way back. So, instead of paying perhaps $600 for a round trip dedicated to business development, you can get the same thing accomplished for only another $200 in plane fare. The customer gets charged $800 of the $1,000 ticket because that’s the portion associated with doing the project work. The rest gets charged to overhead as an indirect cost of doing business.

As part of your business planning, you need to make a good assessment of the cost of doing business. That includes travel, equipment, supplies and living expenses. If you stay a one-zee, your overhead costs can be very small, and most of the travel and living expenses can be paid for by your clients as direct expenses associated with doing their work.

Coming Up

In the next edition of this series, let’s examine some of the apparent problems, stumbling blocks and show-stoppers when it comes to getting yourself freed from the mothership of corporate employment. Many of these take the form of excuses. I’ll show you that many of the worries associated with running your own enterprise are overblown and a waste of your time and energy.

Clair Schwan hosts Self-Reliance Works where he and his team of writers support a self-directed and self-managed lifestyle, much like the kind that an entrepreneur would embrace.

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Frugal Entrepreneurs – Start a Consulting Company

By Clair Schwan

As a follow-on to Kevin’s recent articles about how frugality comes into play as an entrepreneur, I’m offering a four-part series to suggest that the business of consulting is a good one to consider. Perhaps this line of work has a limited application for the general population, but it’s a legitimate career path if you’re in any field that one might consider to be “professional” in nature.

Being frugal means being a good steward of resources, particularly financial resources, but it also means that me make certain we’re getting good return on our investment of time and effort. The bottom line is we’re not wasteful. Although consulting can have its expenses, especially in the area of travel, it can be a business with low startup costs, low risk, and little wasted investment, something the frugal among us can appreciate.

In this first part of the series, let’s look at startup investment, and then I’ll use future articles to address expenses, potential problems, and what we might expect in terms of income.

Startup Investment

If you’re like most consultants and other professionals, you’ve spent years with one or more firms learning the ropes, acquiring technical skills, and polishing your ability to sell work, win jobs, and package your work products in a meaningful and attractive manner. You’re not necessarily smooth or slick, but you’re very good at what you do. That’s why you’re thinking of striking out on your own. You’re tired of making money for others; it’s time to build wealth for yourself instead of company management.

Before leaving the “mothership,” to get the best return on investment of your time and effort, you’ll need to busy yourself establishing good relationships with your customers and associates. You’ll want to get “tuned up” with respect to a broader range of technologies and methods, so you won’t be a one trick pony. You’ll also need to become familiar with other consultants in the industry, as they might become your associates. Most importantly, you’ll need to challenge yourself to get immersed in the business and project management aspects of the work so you’re not just a soldier, but a top notch field commander as well.

You’ll also need to have your ear to the ground so you can start to cultivate a number of clients who have needs for services, but are tired of being treated like just another customer standing in line. You’ll also want to strengthen the personal business relationships you have with your customers. If you can’t win work from them, you’ll want to have them as references.

You might even quietly cultivate your first few jobs, or at least the potential for new work, long before you jump ship. One way to do this is to get involved in jobs that are tailored to your unique talents such that no one else can take over the project and be successful. That’s a good way to get your soon-to-be previous employer to contract back to you right away to finish up your work. Voila, ready-made project work so you can hit the ground running.

When to Start

Since you’re going to be a “one-zee” out there, you’ll be fast on your feet, capable of making decisions in minutes, and not beholding to anyone in upper management, unless they’re upper management in your client’s organization. If a good customer or associate is ready to use you regularly, and right now, there’ll be nothing stopping you except your own misgivings about making gobs of money and being your own boss. Gee, that ought to be a tough decision to make!

Another consideration for startup is market timing. If the budget preparation cycle for your customers starts in the fall, you ought to consider a September and October start time as optimal. I used to work for someone who called it the “selling season.”

For many, the key to starting is when they’re ready. It’s good advice. If you’re not ready to put your all into it, you probably need to hold off. Running your own business can be dicey, so you’ll have to be your own best cheerleader when it comes to keeping things moving along, and keeping a positive attitude. It helps to be jazzed; it helps to be sure you’re ready.

Coming Up

Next in the series we’ll take a look at expenses. For the frugal-minded, this may be the greatest concern of all. I hope to show you how the consulting business can be quite a low cost operation, and that’s important because it’s your revenue minus expenses that equates to how much you’ll place in your own pocket.

Clair Schwan hosts Sensible Small Business Ideas where he encourages people to start their own enterprise. He believes that the only business you’ll truly ever be part of is your own.

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By Jessica Wagner

Many schools online offer a liberal arts degree preparing graduates to later become career counselors. Career counseling could not only save others financially, but help them live the financial lives they have always dreamed of living.

Unfortunately, several traditional colleges today either offer limited career counseling services or none at all to their post-grads. This leaves grads searching for employment on their own through various online search engines.

Every job hunter’s dilemma

Post-grads often find themselves sending countless resumes for job openings that might have been filled or to companies that might never respond. Post grads become confused and disgruntled, because they do not even know if the business received their resume and when they do receive a response they often do not know what company or position they even applied for.

Many online databases do not give complete information about a position. Post grads will often consult their traditional college for advice only to find out that they mostly can provide only self assessments that can be done from home. Once completed, these online self-assessments are examined by the school’s career counselor. The career counselor proceeds to detail to the student what careers would be appropriate according to the students’ character and personality traits.

Finding a competent career counselor

Post graduates need to be careful of these types of services that merely offer simple assessments and no other advice or direction, especially if the student chooses to use an outside agency that charges for their career counseling services. With the state of economy, tight job market, and high turnover, post-graduates need to find the most reputable career counselor or service for the most competitive price. A good career counselor will offer at least one complementary service to provide a few initial assessments, but not rely solely on these simple assessments. They should also be examining your past-work history, education, and work skills.

While an educated and reputable career counselor may cost more than a less educated career development professional, post-graduates need to do their research and compare the individual’s education, skills, length of experience, and costs to the post-grad for services. The difference between a career counselor and a career development professional usually pertains to the length of education and the amount they charge for their services.

A career counselor according to the National Career Development Association is defined as

“…the process of assisting individuals in the development of a life-career with focus on the definition of the worker role and how that role interacts with the life role.”

What a good career counselor should be able to do for you

Most career counselors have a liberal arts or psychology background and have gone on to masters work in a more specialized field related to career development and counseling.

Because there are so many companies and individuals capitalizing on the fact that people, especially recent graduates, are having trouble finding steady employment (related to their major), it is important to find a career counselor that charges a fair rate. It is equally important to find a career counselor that is familiar with the eleven skill sets set by the National Career Development Center.

A good career counselor will be able to listen, collaborate, respond, and provide needs based assessments and computer assisted career guidance. They are able to understand how the career search changes across the life-span and willing to work with diverse groups of people regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, etc. Before first meeting with a career counselor or even a career development professional (if money is a huge factor), it is a good idea to become familiar with some of the assessments out there. Some of these assessments, while appropriate for a starting point, merely measure personality traits.

Being a good career counselor means making sure you measure student potential through proper metrics: a combination of data and ambition.
Have you used the services of a career counselor? Would you recommend a career counselor for others who are looking for a job?

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