contract

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Contract Work Is More Lucrative

Most members of the current American labor force were raised during an age when long-term, full-time permanent employment was considered not just an aspirational goal, but the gold standard of employment. Beyond the reward of a regular salary, benefits and job security, the position offered a certain symbolic significance – a preferred status among employees. The reality for today’s workers, however, looks much different than that Norman Rockwell-era portrait of employment where contract work offers more upside.

Not only have some of the typical perks of permanent employment fallen by the wayside over the years, but at the same time options for contract work have improved dramatically. And although there may be advantages on each side, there’s an argument to be made that contingent labor has actually become more attractive and lucrative for some employees than traditional permanent employment.

Every company is different, of course, and certain employees will find value in a permanent position where others don’t. But by and large, today’s labor market favors the enterprising contract worker. Consider why:

Raises. Put simply, with contract work, you can raise your rates whenever you choose. That isn’t as easy for a staff employee who agrees to a salary, then finds their income shackled to annual reviews, company performance and who knows how many other whims. Often, a full-time employee deserves more, especially as they gain experience and build a quality portfolio – yet they simply aren’t aware of it. A talent cloud offers contractors a platform and constant negotiating flexibility, connecting them with interested employers and empowering them to earn what the market will bear at any given moment.

Overtime pay. Many of us have worked full-time, salaried positions for employers who expect us to put in whatever time is required to get the job done. Even if you are required to work 60 or more hours in a week, for most “highly-compensated” employees, you will not be entitled to any incremental compensation for the overtime. With contract work, however, employers are required to compensate you for each hour worked, including overtime. You could be working side-by-side with a salaried employee doing the exact same job for 60 hours in a week. They would get paid for 40 hours, but you would get paid for all 60, and most often, overtime is paid at time and a half. For jobs that customarily require employees to work overtime, it is not uncommon for newly-minted contractors to double their previous compensation solely on the basis of having to be paid for their overtime hours.

Ratings and reviews. Talent cloud performance reviews hold different currency – and tend to be more democratic – than those attached to full-time positions. A salaried employee, for instance, may receive glowing reviews for five years running and still be denied a raise based on their employer’s profits, department restrictions or any number of other factors. A contractor working through PeopleCaddie, on the other hand, has a profile that features all of their ratings and reviews from previous employers within the talent cloud – a profile automatically aggregated for every hiring manager in the network looking for a contractor like them. Talent clouds don’t just help contractors put their best foot forward – they’re on a constant search to find your next great gig.

Benefits. For many, the argument for full-time employment has been an open-and-shut case: benefits. But health insurance, short- and long-term disability and 401k matches are no longer the exclusive purview of companies offering salaried employment. Many talent clouds, including PeopleCaddie, offer benefits to contractors who work within their systems. Often, they’ll even set aside taxes from a contractor’s paychecks to make their annual filings with the IRS less of a hassle – and help them avoid any budgeting issues.

Some workers find comfort in the routine and familiarity of full-time employment, and that’s OK. But many of the internal and external pressures a contractor once felt to find “steady” or “stable” work as a W-2 employee no longer apply. For highly-skilled contractors, the professional job market is a bold – and more lucrative – new world.

Looking to take advantage of our talent cloud? Check out our jobs page.

Contingent Labor Is Having Its Moment – and It’s Not Going Away

Industry is evolving. And as the fundamental nature of business has changed in recent years, the makeup of the workforce has had to change, with more of an emphasis on contingent labor.

An economy once based on industrialization, mass production of goods and high-volume labor has transitioned into a data- and professional-services-based economy, one that is more reliant on specialized, project and temporary work. Naturally, an influx of freelancers, contractors and consultants into the workforce has followed. There’s no doubt contingent labor is currently having a moment – but it also appears to be here to stay.

The rising contingent labor trend grew into a full-blown movement during the pandemic, which drove many former “traditional perm” workers to seek alternative employment or convinced them it was time to finally give freelancing a try. Forty percent of the American workforce today is made up of contingent labor, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and one estimate suggests that half of the working population in this country will be freelancing by 2027.

Yet how we arrived here isn’t as important as whether the new paradigm is working. The consensus: a resounding “yes,” on both sides. Employees who had grown weary of office life, the daily commute and grappling with child-care logistics have embraced contract work wholeheartedly. Others who were initially less certain of its merits have learned how the flexibility of freelancing has improved their work-life balance. A recent Upwork study found that 60 percent of freelancers said no amount of money would convince them to take a traditional job, even after the pandemic ends.

At the same time, more employers who previously had resisted contingent labor are discovering that it can be a sort of skeleton key to productivity, with lower associated cost and far higher flexibility than hiring a full-timer outright. It is, however, the best bridge to a staff position, offering employers the ability to gauge a contractor’s skills and cultural fit prior to assuming the additional risk of extending an offer for permanent employment.

The macro need for contract work isn’t cyclical, making it one of the most recession-proof areas of HR. Whether pre- or post-pandemic, no matter the ebbs and flows of the economy, contingent labor will be in demand. And with the stigma of freelance work having nearly evaporated, more employees are not only accepting – but will expect – contract opportunities from companies of all stripes. Even if contingent labor weren’t the most efficient means for generating margin from a workforce (though, to be clear, it is), gig work is being sought out by more employees than ever. A professional relationship that registers as a win for both management and labor will continue to have a lasting – and growing – presence across every industry.

Interested in using PeopleCaddie to source your next contingent need? Check out our jobs page where your company can feature an opportunity.

Talent Cloud Breathing Life Back Into References

Identifying the perfect on-paper candidate for any role is a critical step in the hiring process. Of course, it’s just the first one. The trickier maneuver for a hiring manager is often background verification. Why? Because that piece of paper describing a potential hire – the traditional resume – is designed to tell employers exactly what they want to hear. Candidates will always look for a leg up in the hiring race, so it makes sense that any employee-created profile would paint that candidate in the most favorable light. Sometimes even embellish. Occasionally, outright falsify. Vetting that profile, following up on a candidate’s job references and confirming resume claims is all part of the process for a hiring manager. But a talent cloud makes that process easier and more reliable.

PeopleCaddie is already a step ahead, having already developed that technology. A third-party talent cloud that manages candidate profiles, employment history and job references, PeopleCaddie doesn’t just take the heavy lifting off the shoulders of a human resources department – it also delivers more accurate and valuable information about job candidates in a fraction of the usual time.

Consider the usual slog through a pile of resumes. Even after exhaustively reviewing each profile and plucking the best candidates from the stack, there’s still the matter of confirming credentials, lining up phone calls and having conversations with other busy professionals – some of them even competitors – who aren’t necessarily ready to speak cogently and in thoughtful detail about an employee who is no longer with the company, if their company policy doesn’t prohibit them from saying anything at all.

A talent cloud cuts through this laborious ritual, soliciting employee ratings and reviews from a comprehensive list of past employers, completed on their time. The design is superior to previous job reference practices because it ensures a higher quality and quantity of information, along with a level of credibility – as information provided by the candidate can quickly be digitally cross-referenced –- that can’t be assured through a traditional resume.

Imagine hearing opinions from every previous manager of a contractor, not just the former employers a candidate has shared as contacts in their resume. As a hiring manager, you’re looking for the full scope of a candidate’s experiences – good, bad and in between. What are the common themes that can be found across multiple reviews? Which skills or characteristics are mentioned most often? In the same way a diner can use Yelp to learn about a restaurant’s food, customer service, prices and more, a hiring manager can get a quick read on a contractor or drill down for more granular information, gathered by invested reviewers.

And, yes – these reviewers are invested. Because a talent cloud like PeopleCaddie is a shared candidate pool, it’s in the best interests of employers to be considerate, honest and thorough in their reviews, with the expectation that others will be as well. Crowdfunded employer opinions offer a far wider range of feedback than the average resume, and the information they provide is often more incisive. Think about it: What could be more telling than an open-ended review from a former supervisor, with no agenda beyond contributing to the robustness of a shared talent cloud?

Hiring managers don’t always know the best questions to ask a former employer about a candidate, nor do they have much time during a quick phone call to probe for more revealing details. PeopleCaddie incentivizes employers to be purposeful in their reviews of former contractors, cutting directly to what they perceive to be key information. They can highlight pertinent strengths and weaknesses and include important project work. No awkward phone call, no on-the-spot conversation. Just the flexibility of time and benefit of the written word to ensure a mindful, complete review.

A talent cloud doesn’t make the hire – and that’s as it should be. Ultimately, you’re the best judge of a candidate for a role at your company. But by empowering a hiring manager with smarter, more comprehensive contractor information, a partner like PeopleCaddie can supercharge the quality and speed of your decision-making process while bringing you the peace of mind that you’re always connected to the best contractors available.

Interested in learning more about the PeopleCaddie talent cloud? Contact us!

Hiring Efficiency Improved By Digitized Credentials

Communicating and collecting work histories, qualifications and achievements is a critical component to hiring efficiency. The delivery method for those details – a paper printout handed to an interviewer or a static electronic file emailed to a human resources department – went virtually unchanged for decades. Recently, however, a new mechanism has emerged.

The resume is dead. Long live the resume.

The concept of the employee CV isn’t going anywhere, of course. But in order to keep up with modernization, and with the aim of improving hiring efficiency and organization on both sides of the worker-employer relationship, it has had to change. Digitization has supercharged the ability of hiring departments to identify, vet and bring aboard new employees, while providing candidates with a dynamic platform to communicate their value to employers.

Consider the limitations of the traditional resume. Its shelf life is short and its flexibility nil, diminishing its usefulness. Particularly in the contractor economy, it’s an enormous hassle for employees to update a paper copy of their work history every time they work with a new client or add a competency to their skill set. The old ways also assured employers that they’d wind up spending inordinate amounts of time filing away and later combing through reams of outdated CVs. Digitization allows for changes to be made easily and instantly, and shared universally.

Resumes of the past, frankly, were also easy to fudge. Candidates would occasionally embellish and, every so often, outright falsify information. The burden of proof lay on hiring managers, who would be stuck verifying which details of a candidate’s resume were true, false or possibly just outdated – all with the clock ticking.

LinkedIn, for one, attempted to address some of these problems. A web platform that allowed users to quickly update their profile, and which linked to the pages of previous employers and affiliated organizations, offered more flexibility and a format that could help employers improve hiring efficiency. But even this model was open to misrepresentations and, for the most part, provided only the nuts and bolts of users’ work experiences and qualifications.

The next step in the evolution of the resume has been a quantum leap: PeopleCaddie. Company-focused and built on a dynamic closed-loop model that incentivizes both employee and employer to operate within its network, PeopleCaddie acts as a comparative and verifiable database of contractor candidates, removing the hiring guesswork for employers. As a third-party talent cloud that helps connect contractors with new gigs and rewards them for good work, while directing employers to the right workers for their projects, everyone is motivated to work together. That closed loop allows PeopleCaddie to confirm and maintain accurate employee records, while leveraging feedback from previous employers to help other network clients make their own smart hiring decisions.

Think of how other companies have used digitization to dust off and soup up an old model: Uber made standing in the rain to wait and hail a cab a thing of the past. Amazon allows you to shop from your bathtub and enjoy direct-to-door delivery. Recent shelter-at-home restrictions opened the door – or in this case a window – for Zoom to reimagine the traditional office meeting.

By harnessing the powers of digitization, it’s already been proven possible to bring similar innovation to the hiring process. With an elegant platform featuring a deep pool of contractors with updated and accurate work histories, comprehensive ratings and detailed reviews, a talent cloud like PeopleCaddie saves time, instills confidence and puts the right candidates at the fingertips of hiring managers.

Are you in need of contingent labor? Reach out to our team and get your job posted.

Job Hopping: Has Employer Perception Changed?

Corporate America long ago left behind the era of the gold watch. Once proud to work entire careers with a single company, employees are no longer incentivized or motivated to stay in one place in most of the ways they were in generations past. One remnant of that time, however, seemed to persist longer than others: wariness over worker “job hopping.”

The tendency for workers to change employment every year or two has indeed become a more widespread phenomenon across the job market. But the nature of the employer-worker relationship has changed dramatically over the years, and of course not all employee movement can be attributed to wanderlust or ladder climbing. Has this influenced current views? Are so-called job hoppers, once red-flagged by employers, regarded differently today?

In years past, a job hopper was believed to be a flight risk – a person who lacked company loyalty, who chased salary, whose performance issues led to frequent moves, or perhaps all of the above. Even an attractive candidate with a history of frequent job moves could give a hiring manager pause: Would this candidate jump at the first better, or more lucrative, offer that comes their way? Would they be too focused on determining their next landing spot to give their best effort in the position being offered? Would the investment in screening, onboarding and training this employee be wasted if they aren’t motivated to stick around for the long term?

These were all valid concerns for employers – and, to some extent, remain so. But with the rise of the gig economy, more businesses find themselves in need of contract, temporary or seasonal workers, and over time the workforce has responded by becoming more flexible, more nimble in order to find suitable employment. When considering the modern incidence of “job hopping,” it’s important to note that those doing the hiring have strayed from the old corporate conventions as much, and perhaps more than, those being hired.

And that’s just fine, so long as both sides are benefitting – a case of all boats being lifted by a rising tide. We’ve witnessed an example of this in real time: Most businesses were put out by the COVID-19 shutdown, leading to halts in operations, guarded consumer spending and depressed markets. The effects, devastating as they were, could have been worse. But the moment forced many companies to rethink traditional mindsets and explore new career models and employment arrangements. Not only did “work from home” become an acceptable option in spaces where it once was considered unthinkable, but also more businesses realized the need to build a flexible workforce. Companies got back to business. More workers went back to earning – and sooner.

More than ever, companies are beginning to view employment opportunities on a reduced time-to-value scale. The long-term, unpredictable nature of the pandemic has prompted many businesses to pursue more time-boxed employment arrangements that they can directly correlate to increased revenue, cost savings and improved risk mitigations.

Workers will require a similarly deft approach: In order to market themselves, employees should look over their slate of experience and, for each position, lead with value and closely trail with risk avoidance. Be prepared to highlight tangible value contributed to past employers, while subtly and tactfully addressing any concerns an employer may raise around their departure from a given company. (Example: “As my final contribution, I groomed a successor who seamlessly transitioned into my role and made an immediate impact.”)

With these developments, the stigma around job fluidity is gradually dissipating. As the uptick in shorter-tenure job arrangements continues through the pandemic, the re-balancing of short- versus long-term job profiles can be expected to bring about a lasting transformation. Increasingly, employee movement will be viewed as the literal cost of doing business. It will be up to both workers and employers to find the benefits of a new era that is dictating a different demand curve – one that not only accepts job hopping, but caters to it.

Interested in contract work? Check out PeopleCaddie’s job openings.

Talent Cloud Advantageous for Seasonal, Project Work

Hiring is hard. Managers, human resources professionals and business leaders of all stripes understand the tedious nature of identifying, onboarding and retaining quality talent. For companies whose workforce needs ebb and flow along with the fluctuations of market demand, that challenge becomes doubly difficult. But there’s an emerging technology that is a boon to these businesses: the talent cloud is advantageous for seasonal and project-based work.

To reduce expenses or to enable them to pursue additional revenue, more businesses are employing independent contractors to meet their seasonal and project-based needs, and the workforce continues to gradually warm to the gig economy. But this doesn’t make hiring any easier. In fact, the sheer number of candidates makes tracking and matching talent complicated, slow and prohibitively expensive for most HR departments.

Modern problems require cutting-edge solutions, which is why many businesses are turning to talent clouds to fill their staffing needs. Particularly for companies seeking candidates for seasonal, temporary and hard-to-fill positions, working with a talent cloud may be the most efficient, affordable and hassle-free way to hire.

Here’s why:

Match expenses to revenue. Every company should have at least one clear goal: optimize investment in a workforce to fit with the needs of the business. But in many industries, the work isn’t steady. Take tax accounting. Business heats up in January, when tax documents begin pouring in, and then peaks in April, when the deadline arrives for everyone to file with the IRS. But the demand for CPAs wanes from there, forcing accounting firms to make a choice: pay employees the same amount for less work or adjust the size of the workforce to align with the workload. When skilled contractors are available on demand through a talent cloud, that choice becomes a no-brainer.

Reliability. As previously mentioned, finding capable contractors is an enormous challenge. The antiquated practice of posting a job ad, identifying quality candidates, vetting, interviewing and hiring is as slow-moving and labor-intensive as it sounds. Over the years, it’s also been proven to be a hit-or-miss enterprise. At PeopleCaddie, for instance, our technology platform features a repository of proven, highly-skilled contract workers, matching them with specific client needs based on ideal fit, onboarding, payrolling, then keeping them connected going forward to minimize the friction associated with using a contractor again. A talent cloud helps a business find the right contractor and avoid any lag in production or workflow.

Ease. Any technological advent is designed to simplify a task, reduce labor or build in convenience. A talent cloud can do exactly that for most professional businesses. PeopleCaddie creates a turnkey relationship, identifying the best contractors for its clients, maintaining that customized labor pool on a digital platform and empowering employers to instantly add proven talent at the push of a button. A talent cloud handles both the front-end sourcing, vetting and the back-end processing of contractors, removing the guesswork for an HR manager and reducing tax and accounting paperwork. At PeopleCaddie, we also provide candidate reviews and ratings from previous employers and allow clients to stay connected to preferred contractors when they click with a company or bring unique talents to certain projects.

With talent clouds like PeopleCaddie, companies have no need to hunt for talent, no haggling over pay, no mountains of paperwork and no surprises. Clients get the contractors they need, for only the amount of time they need them, with none of the hoops-jumping or uncertainty that was once part and parcel to the hiring process.

If you believe that your company could benefit from PeopleCaddie’s talent cloud, please go to peoplecaddie.com to learn more or contact us.

How Contractors Can Get Paid Every Two Weeks

There was a time when you couldn’t hold a conversation about freelance work without a few key phrases popping up: “side hustle”, “supplementary income” and “temp work” come to mind. If you’re a full-time independent contractor, you’ve likely received your share of confused looks and worried glances from friends and family, along with some version of the usual question: “Wait, you want to do this?” Much the trepidation comes from the inconsistency of payment. Contractors are treated like vendors and have to wait on payment. But there’s an alternative wherein they enjoy the same, steady payment cycle as W-2 employees, and PeopleCaddie has developed a framework for how contractors can get paid every two weeks.

Our concept of contract work has changed dramatically in recent years. We’re now living in a freelance world, with an estimated 1.1 billion independent contractors making up more than a third of the global workforce – and it’s growing. As more workers in the U.S. and around the world embrace the gig economy, they aren’t blind to its pitfalls. Yet, even those are changing.

At PeopleCaddie, we aren’t just a staffing agency that sends our clients a bunch of resumes – we’re a conduit connecting independent contractors with the right companies and offering a no-hassle alternative to the traditional grind of gig work. The way we see it, it’s our business to provide contractors with all the benefits of freelancing while reducing or eliminating their most aching pain points.

Consider the typical freelancer-client transaction from the contractor’s perspective:

Create a vendor profile for every client, filling out and tracking paperwork each time a project begins with a new client
Submit an invoice for each project completed
Wait for confirmation from a client’s accounting department, sometimes trading emails or phone calls to ensure that an invoice is being processed
Often wait another 30-60 days for a check to be sent, as many companies follow a Net-60 policy for contractor payments
Gather documents from multiple clients for tax purposes at the end of every year

Paperwork will never not be a pain for freelancers, but PeopleCaddie significantly eases the usual frustrations by handling much of the heavy lifting for contractors. All transactions (and thus all paperwork) funneled through one central office, which is how contractors can get paid every two weeks. The advantage of receiving a steady, paycheck (direct deposit) – no matter when the client pays – is an enormous benefit.

And contractors aren’t the only beneficiaries. In addition to offering companies access to a wide network of skilled professionals, PeopleCaddie’s talent cloud helps them maintain their client-vendor relationships – often reconnecting the two parties – which helps businesses manage fluctuating labor needs, reduce training costs and time, and lighten the administrative burden by cutting down on the overall number of vendors used.

There are good reasons more workers are choosing to freelance: flexibility, variety, opportunity. Skip the commute. Work from home, in your space, at your own pace. See the world, working for nine months and traveling for three. Or cross borders through the work, signing on with bucket-list clients who would have been impossible to reach if not for the freelance economy. Even if your motivation for contract work is at a nuts-and-bolts level, a gig worker has inherent abilities that, collectively, feel like a superpower: find more opportunities while avoiding project burnout and diversifying an employment portfolio to optimize job security.

PeopleCaddie is glad to help contractors meet those goals. By teaming up with skilled vendors and working with good companies, we’re able to help freelancers take full advantage of an increasingly preferred freelance economy, achieve a healthy work-life balance and avoid many of the usual pitfalls and inconveniences of contract work.

Interested in a project on our jobs page? Contact us at [email protected].