“I don’t want to make contract placements. I won’t earn as much money.”
Stop right there. You can make more money through contract placements than you might think—and you can do it in more ways than one. Start with, of course, temp-to-direct conversions. Once you place a candidate on a contract basis, the company could convert them to a full-time employee. If that happens, you’ll receive a conversion fee (basically a direct-hire fee), in addition to the contract money you’ve already earned.
Then there’s the possibility of an extended contract, which can further increase the amount of your fee. In some instances, company officials are pleased with the contractor, and they have another project they want the contractor to work on. So the hiring authority extends the contract indefinitely, meaning more money coming in, month after month after month.
Then there’s contractor re-assignment, in which you can place the same contractor multiple times. For example, a New York-based recruiter placed a programmer analyst six times during a 10-year span. When the contractor’s assignment was nearing the end, the recruiter would always communicate with him, find out what new skills he may have learned, and then look for his next contract assignment. During this 10-year period, the recruiter earned a total of $140,515 by placing the candidate—which averages out to a decent placement fee each year ($14,051).
And placing the candidate year after year wasn’t difficult, either. After all, the recruiter already had the candidate. Not only that, but the programmer analyst appreciated the fact that his “career coach” was always ready to provide him with his next great assignment. So you might want to think twice before dismissing the possibility of adding contracting to your business model… because you might be dismissing the possibility of earning more money at the same time.
