Job Search or Self Employment: What is right for you?

Job Search or Self Employment: What is right for you?

by

Varesh Sachdev

Have you been a victim of corporate downsizing?

With half-million people losing jobs every month in United States, an unusually large percentage of people and families have become victims due to this downward spiral of economy not witnessed by our generation ever before. Each one of us knows at least one person among our close families and friends who has been directly impacted by this. While, most of us have been through some recessions where people lost jobs but were able to find new jobs in a short span of time; this is the first time when a large number of people have not been able to find a new job after losing their previous job even after many months of extensive job search. This is the first time when we know with certainty that a large percentage of jobs being wiped out by Corporate America are not coming back for different reasons.

I experience this every day because for every new open position that we advertise on Dice, I receive over one hundred resumes from well qualified candidates but I can offer the job only to one person. You are competing with hundreds (sometimes even over 200) of equally qualified candidates for every open position you apply for. This is the reason you do not even get interview calls even though you are applying for so many jobs every day.

But for how long you can let that happen to you? You have to feed your families and you have to find a way to do something about it. No one will bail you out.

So, what should you do? You will have to change your strategy! Do not let the corporate world shape your destiny and your professional future. Take control in your own hands.

If job search is taking you nowhere, ask yourself if being self employed is an option for you?

HOLD ON!

Some of you just thought that it is not for you and are about to close this article. Don’t just close this article without reading even if you think being self-employed is not an option for you due to your specific circumstances. Because it certainly is an option for you and I know that for sure!

• Whether you have just couple of years experience or you are a former CTO or CIO or had a similar management level position in the corporate world and were downsized;
• Whether you are a very strong technical specialist with mastery in certain domain(s) or you are more of a functional expert than technical expert;
• Whether you cannot afford to invest even one hundred dollars or you have a million dollars to invest;
• Or maybe you have spent all your professional life working in other companies and even the thought of being self-employed seems too unrealistic or too risky;

Whatever may be the case, if the pain of job search has become unbearable, Talk to us because we understand that when you are without a job for many months, investing just one hundred dollars may seem an uphill task.

If you are fighting for your survival as a Professional:

If you are fighting for your survival as a professional, start as a one-person consulting company. When job market is not in your favor, you have to change your approach to make it work for you. Being self-employed does not mean you have to make major investments to setup your company but still you have to market yourself.

Finding a new full time job with all benefits has become extremely difficult and will continue to get from bad to worse for at least the next couple of years. Most companies – small, medium, as well as big corporations are thinking of ways to cut down their expenses. So, the preference for hiring consultants for short term periods for specific critical assignments will be the norm instead of hiring fulltime staff with all benefits; at least for the near future.

Also, if you have noticed that having extensive experience in your field of specialization (which also means age factor) is becoming an obstacle for you in your job search for fulltime permanent positions, it is important to know the “having extensive experience in your field of specialization” becomes a big plus in the consulting word. When a company hires you for a specific project as a consultant, they actually want someone who has mastery in his or her field. So, your experience and even age becomes a huge plus for you when you enter the consulting world.

Due to frustration, one big mistake people make is that they apply for every consulting job that is advertised anywhere and most of the time these consulting jobs are advertised by consulting companies for their clients. And if you notice carefully, every single consulting position is advertised by multiple consulting companies because all these consulting companies are talking with “same client for the same consulting position”. If multiple copies of your resume reach same client through multiple consulting companies, it results in your resume being discarded by the client before any one even looks at your profile only because of multiple submissions even though you may be an ideal candidate.

The right approach in the consulting world is to get associated with just one or two consulting companies because if you are a one-person company, you cannot market yourself aggressively which becomes more difficult when economy is collapsing and no company wants to hire anyone unless it is necessary for their survival and that too for mission critical projects for their clients.

So, the strategic solution is to get associated with just one or two consulting companies and let these companies do the marketing for you. Pick the companies that you can trust. And pick the one that gives you personal attention. Never associate yourself with a consulting company if you get a feeling that you are being treated just “as one of thousands looking for a consulting job”.

DBA Web Technologies can help you in more than one way.Talk to us about your situation. Not only, we will help you get your first project, we will also push your candidacy for other incoming projects with other clients before your current projects ends.

If you are a one-person company with plans to expand but facing obstacles:

If you already have been successful as a small-time one-person consulting company, you face a different problem. You can only take one project at a time because you do everything yourself. At times, while you are still working on a project, you come across multiple projects within your domain expertise but you are forced to refuse the new projects because you don’t have time to work on more than one project; mainly because your current project needs your 100% commitment. Don’t you wish sometimes that if you had one more consultant in your small-consulting-company, you could have accepted “that new project”? While the second consultant would have worked on the new project, you could have enhanced the reputation of your small company and at the same time could have made some financial gain. And then maybe few months later, you may be in a position to add additional consultants in your small consulting company and in few years grow from one-person company to a small scale business depending on how much you want to expand in the future.

Only thing that stops you from adding a second consultant is that you do not have any infrastructure in place to manage the additional consultant that you would like to hire. When you are a one-person company, just one laptop is enough for you to successfully accomplish and deliver the ongoing projects and meet all client commitments. But with one more person on your small company payroll, now you need to worry about some additional commitments and responsibilities. Investing in setting up a new infrastructure for your very small company may seem unrealistic because you never know how things will turn out six months later. You cannot afford to invest thousands of dollars in setting up initial minimum IT infrastructure due to so many uncertainties.

You cannot afford but you still need a minimum set-up if you choose to add some additional consultants in your small company. To begin with, you definitely need a website to be effective and stay ahead of your competition in the business world, no matter which industry you are in even if you are a one-person company and now adding your first consultant on your staff. To market yourself effectively, you need a place to showcase your credentials and what your small team of consultants can do and accomplish. Every new prospect would like to know more about you, your consultants, your skill-sets, your previous as well as current clients, some evidence of the quality of your work and the depth of your knowledge & capabilities. And let’s face it; your resume is no longer enough to market yourself and your small company with two or three consultants. Every new prospect in the consulting world wants to see your online portfolio. You also need a small server so that you can manage your small staff. Also, keep in mind, now that you are slowly expanding, you want to avoid having your small staff to use their personal gmail or yahoo email addresses while communicating with your clients. You want to provide them with a corporate email addresses because you want to start building a brand-name for yourself and enhance your small company’s reputation as you look forward to what you can accomplish within the next one to two years.

This is where; we lend a helping hand to small and medium businesses with our On-Demand IT Support Model.
DBA Web Technologies offers the following IT Services:

* Website designing, Logo designing, and Website Hosting and maintenance Services for small and medium companies.
* Support to small and medium companies on our Infrastructure without you having invest in setting up IT Infrastructure.
* Cost effective alternatives to set up, host, maintain and support IT infrastructures.
* IT Consultants on hourly basis for short-term and long projects in all IT domains in every state across United States.

If job search is leading you nowhere and last few months of unemployment are resulting in frustration and desperation, don’t give up. Start thinking like an entrepreneur and DBA Web Technologies will help you with initial support to move forward. Accept the realities of the new job market and take control of your professional future in your own hands. Talk to us because we understand and know what you are going through. Listen how we can help.