Revenge Of The Contractor

December 2012

5 min read

One of my favorite comedy’s growing up was Revenge of the Nerds. Maybe because I was a bit of a nerd. Maybe because it was an underdog story. Either way, in today’s corporate world, there won’t be Ogre saying “let’s get those nerds” but there is a natural predisposition against contractors. However, given today’s market dynamics, utilizing contractors may be practical and inevitable. In this installment, we contemplate the top reasons why workers are executing their career on a contract basis:

1. Job Security

This may sound like a misnomer. The reality from a worker’s standpoint is that no job is guaranteed. Job security is a state of mind. The only way to truly obtain job security is do your best; work hard and build a reputation of adding value to your company / client. This is the only form of security available to the modern worker. As Daniel Pink pointed out in his book, Free Agent Nation, contingent work has evolved into a deliberately chosen non-traditional employment arrangement.

2. Develop New Skills

Contingent workers want to obtain new skills, develop relationships with people and companies, and experience different cultures and organizations. They also see business processes and varying systems and technologies. Naturally, resumes are bolstered given the broad spectrum of tasks performed and projects executed.

3. Becoming Best Practices

The reality is that best (or better) practices come from delivering rubber meets the road solutions that are customized to the dynamics of the company. The best people to deliver this are contractors that are brought in to tackle specific issues of the business and roll up their own sleeves to get the job done. Contractors that execute their career in this fashion thus become the conduit of best practices.

4. Focus on Work, Not Politics

A contractor has the ability to get work done because there is no agenda but to get the work done. Instead of having to work on navigating thru political waters, contractors can focus on the tasks that they were brought into do.

5. Balance Personal and Professional Life

People want balance in their work and professional lives. Experienced workers may want positions that have a specific endpoint because they prefer to work only part or the year or a limited number of years in a particular project based assignment. Younger workers may be using contingency to build a skill portfolio or pursue a personal passion. The new reality is that contingent work has become a free-form career strategy that stems from an individual’s desire for flexibility, autonomy, and freedom.