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Contracting positions - pros and cons
Hello all. It's been a long time since I have posted and I am usually a lurker anyways, but thought I would get your input on the following situation.
My husband lost his job over 7 months ago and has been job searching ever since. He has had a ton of phone screenings, a good amount of in-person interviews and even a decent amount of final round interviews. Yet, he hasn't gotten a job. He has 4 in-person interviews in the next two weeks with various companies. One of them was today for a contracting position. The contracting company that he met with today wants him to go meet with someone who works at the actual company he would be working at later this week and if they like him, he could potentially start as early as next week. It is even a 2-3 year contract position (so they say). Great, right? Well it is because he needs a damn job, but the contracting company today was honest with him and said that he would be going into an extremely chaotic situation. She said "take the most chaotic situation you can think of and times it by 10" because this particular company just went through a merger/take-over. My husband would most likely take it, no matter what they said (that is, if he isn't offered a permanent job at a different company that he interviewed with last week), but has never done a contract position before. I know he will find out all the info he needs to know (taxes, benefits, etc), but if you have had experience working as a contractor before - what is your take? What do you like/don't like about it?
TIA
Re: Contracting positions - pros and cons
In my industry there are a lot of contract positions. Every recruiting company you go through offers different benefits so that's something to consider. Some offer you nothing and you have to be able to get insurance on your own. Others give you vacation time and some give none. You really need to be able to negotiate what you want. In my industry though you can make more money being a contractor than an employee a lot of times. So that's a plus. If you have good benefits that he can be on then it's worth considering (and he should try to get more money too if he tells them he doesn't want their benefits).
In some companies I have worked in, contractors are treated like second class citizens, but in my company now they are treated the same as employees so that just depends on the company culture. If he will be there for 3 years that's something to consider I suppose. Contractors also usually have less flexibility. My company is really flexible, but contractors need to have set hours and cannot work from home.
Also remember he can take this job and keep looking for something permanent. I took a contract job and left 2 weeks later. We get a lot of turnover with the contractors we hire now.
Are you in the US? Usually contracts are a lot shorter so 2-3 years sounds really great and stable, but still remember they can tell him at any time to not return tomorrow, something to consider if this company is reorganizing.
This is just my view/experience from my industry but hope it helps!