Reply to: Consultancy Consultant VS a One-Man-Band Freelancer.

[juststarting]

Feel a bit sorry for some of them as they seem a bit disillusioned -- they have been body-shopped for years on paltry wages and now things are tough they actually have less job security than us contractors

Oh please , anyone who has at least 10 months backup in the bank can reskill re-train , grow brains , learn plumbing , whatever .

[juststarting]

Difference between Contractor and Consultant is about £300 a day.

HTH

Cute eyes.

[swamp]

A big consultancy are being thrown off the public sector project I'm on. Pure reason is cost, I'm led to believe. They've been milking it for four years so they've had a good run for what has essentially been "bums on seats" work for them.

Apparently there are redundancies in the offing at said consultancy, and being "benched" is a very bad career move right now.... Feel a bit sorry for some of them as they seem a bit disillusioned -- they have been body-shopped for years on paltry wages and now things are tough they actually have less job security than us contractors

[bobhope]

Have a read of:

Rip-off!: The Scandalous Inside Story of the Management Consulting Money Machine (Paperback)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rip-off-Scan.../dp/1872188060


Funny book for anyone having worked with Accenture and co.

[pmeswani]

Difference between Contractor and Consultant is about £300 a day.

HTH

As little as that? I would have thought a man of your talent would be boasting about £1500 a day.

[Robwg]

With an Oracle consultant that is more like 700!!

[swamp]

Difference between Contractor and Consultant is about £300 a day.

HTH

[JoJoGabor]

I'm working as a consultant now after contracting for the ast 5 years (how did I end up here??)

I have to agree, my bonus is entirely made up of being "self-sufficient" which means how much business I bring into the company. My speciallist field is VMware nowadays and I feel that my level of technical expertise has gone down since contracting as I am not working on it day in day out. About 50% of my time is doign sales meetings, proposals and designs.

If I was a client, I would choose a consultant to do a set piece of work (up to 3 weeks), but any longer I would use a contractor. A contractor is much more integrated within a team Despite what we all say about IR35) and will pass knowledge on much more effectively to the team. A consultant has defined a number of days based on how quickly the job can possibly be done while still winning the business from other consultancies, so there is no time to do things fully, its pretty much a rush job every time, but as long as this is managed propoerly by the client it works well.

[juststarting]

I was interviewed by a few of the biggies last year and the experience made me decide to go as a contractor.

Basically they weren't interested in my experience as much as whether I had "sold anything." One, whose been mentioned a lot in the news the last week or so, actually asked me outright in the interview, "When was the last time you sold anything, what was it and how did it make you feel?"

In short what they were most keen on is having a team of consultants who could sell knock-on services to the client or actively promote and sell their licensed software whether or not the client actually needed it.

I really got the impression that the role was first and foremost a sales position with actually helping the client a little further down the list. In fact your bonus was based largely on how many knock-ons you had successfully sold the client, or how much of an extension to your original contract you had secured.

It is horrible isnt it ? After being there I swore I'd never ever work for a consultancy business, which happily opened my eyes to contracting.

[Scotchpie]

I was interviewed by a few of the biggies last year and the experience made me decide to go as a contractor.

Basically they weren't interested in my experience as much as whether I had "sold anything." One, whose been mentioned a lot in the news the last week or so, actually asked me outright in the interview, "When was the last time you sold anything, what was it and how did it make you feel?"

In short what they were most keen on is having a team of consultants who could sell knock-on services to the client or actively promote and sell their licensed software whether or not the client actually needed it.

I really got the impression that the role was first and foremost a sales position with actually helping the client a little further down the list. In fact your bonus was based largely on how many knock-ons you had successfully sold the client, or how much of an extension to your original contract you had secured.

[NotAllThere]

...

Mine take is: One is more sought after when the client wants to integrate someone in their team i.e there is partial in-house expertise pertaining to the project. Two is sought when the project is more complex and there is no existing expertise in-house.

Is that what it boils down to ?

Not at all. With my current client, they had a requirment for new technology. Their consultancy partner had no one with those skills; they'd do it, but couldn't guarantee a fixed price. They asked me if I could do it - I responded "I don't know the technology, but it can't be that difficult", negotiated a price, and then did the work.

Your view seems to be more like the difference between a "bums on seat" contract and a consultant.

The difference between an independent consultant and a consultancy employee is obvious from the word "independent". When I work for a client, my interests are closely aligned with the client's. With a consultancy employee, their interests are in keeping their employee happy. Now that may be aligned with the client's, but may also be, as has been pointed out, working in such a way to get more billable hours and more consultancy employees on site.

[juststarting]

at my last permy job, we employed lots of Accenture bods in lots of different roles, dev, test, PM etc

their primary objective was to get more work, and more bodies on site

No matter whether the client actually needs it ? Yeah I have the same experience.

[BrilloPad]

Big consultants get the job. They give massive back handers.

HTH

[jmo21]

at my last permy job, we employed lots of Accenture bods in lots of different roles, dev, test, PM etc

their primary objective was to get more work, and more bodies on site

[cojak]

Reason for employing big consultancies - someone to point the finger at when it goes t!ts up...

The prime motivation of the employees ('consultants') of these organisations is to get a bigger slice of the client's project budget, I'm fairly sure that their annual bonus is based on 'value-added' - more work-packages = more money...

I don't think I've been in a project that employed these types without there being bad blood at the end of a project.