Starting in Consulting, Contracting, Temp, or Gig Work | JobSearchTV.com
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Getting back to work, especially for older professionals, can have additional minefields for you to cross than your 25-year-old brethren. My guest, David Schuchman, and I discuss how to find work this way and some of the things you need to be aware of working as a contractor, temp, consultant or gig worker.
So my guest today is David Schuchman. He’s an IT professional with Princeton Technology Advisors, and has a true passion for technology and for implementation, as well as applications design, development, and IT operations. And he’s an active leader with job Hunter support communities in New Jersey.
So he’s the current Executive Chair of a professional services group in Mercer County and Princeton, a co-facilitator of New Jersey, job seekers in Princeton, and on the board of the career support group at St. Gregory the Great in Hamilton, New Jersey, I’m getting a theme here, and The Breakfast Club of New Jersey and East Brunswick, New Jersey. David, welcome.
So we’re gonna be talking today about consulting, gig work things along those lines, folks, because there’s no one clear path. And given that the show is about helping people find work, I thought it was a great topic to work with. So let’s start off with a definition. What’s consultants? What do they do? How are they different from an employee?
So in a lot of ways, as a consultant, we don’t differ from employees where we’re doing work, we’re providing skills or a service or expertise or advice. And we provide that professionally. But I guess what’s a little different as compared to full time employment is we’re working on there a fixed contract, so we know what the project is about, we know our rate is going to be and typically we know what the term what the length of that project is going to be. And then when it ends, there’s a good likelihood is that we will not be with that organization any longer.
And thus, the difference between in terms of the working relationship between an employee and a consultant,
you know, I think, as the way you do your work as a, as the worker, whether you’re the employee or the consultant, then we can say, consultant, contractor, gig worker, I think they’re all kind of the same thing. I think a lot of it is really very much the same, you know, you are an active contributor, you do bring an expertise and wisdom to the position. But of course, there is a little bit of an arm’s length difference of how you are engaged with the organization that’s brought you one board. So that’s, that’s a little bit of a difference.
And I know there’s tax differences between the two. So for example, as an, as an employee, the firm you’re working for is paying half your Social Security and Medicare, different types of taxes, whereas you’re paying the full amount. And there are other nuances from a financial standpoint that someone has to contend with, of course, yeah, so you know, really, for anyone who’s listening, you do need to speak with your own tax professional, because there may be situations for you or in your state or locale that are going to be specific to you. But we’ll talk a little broadly, or I’m just a friend talking to you to you as a friend. But yeah, typically, you know, if you’re used to getting a paycheck, you look at the line item that you grumble about, you know, the taxes that you’ve paid. But on the other hand, your employer, if you are employed, as a full time employee, you know, they’re taking care of that filing for you every paycheck. There another tax item that we pay for with every paycheck, it’s called FICO, which is the federal portion of the taxes. And that’s Social Security and Medicare taxes. And a lot of people don’t know that the employer pays half of our employer tax typically as a benefit, and we pay the other half. But when you’re engaged as a consultant, those taxes are not coming out of your paycheck or your invoice. And so you do need to pay for those on your own, make sure that you cover them. And so it’s typically we file quarterly, estimated tax, and it’s really easy. It’s a little form a slip of paper, and it’s an estimated amount that you’re sending to the different municipalities where you have a tax obligation.
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And, again, federal government state, and in some cases, local governments as well, depending upon where you are in the country and whether or not there is a local tax jurisdiction involved. And just remind you folks, we are not accountants, we are not lawyers. Take this to your accountant and lawyer for verification because at the time you watch this, it’s a we’re recording this in 2022 things may change and We just want to make sure that you take the baseline information and go to your trusted advisors to ensure that you don’t wind up being harmed. Yep, sage advice. So why should someone become a consultant or gig worker? What’s in it for them to do this.
So you know, there’s two sides to that, of course, what’s in it for the hiring company, and what’s in it for you, and not what the hiring company typically likes. as consultants, were easier to bring on board and determinate. They bring you on board without going through the legal department, an HR department. And while the legal department probably helps them write the contract, or reviews your contract, you know when it’s going to end. And so it’s a lot simpler for them. But for you, there could be a lot of reasons, if you’ve been out of work for a while, having a hard time finding that next time, next full time employer, you got a bit of a gap on your resume, and some hiring managers don’t like gaps, they may say, gee, if no one else hired this guy, David, why should I but it fills a gap. Because now you’re you’re you’re have this gig, this little project that you’re working on. And and little, it just means not full time, it could be three months, six months, a year or more. The other thing that’s kind of nice is on an hourly basis, you typically paid more, because your rate that you’re charging typically will cover the other expenses that you may have, whether it’s covering some of your personal time off your cost to buy your insurance and other expenses. And companies 
usually know that for the short term of the contract, compared to employment, there’s a little bit of a premium on your LinkedIn profile, you know, we as Job Hunters, but when I was a job Hunter, we always valued LinkedIn for helping us with job hunting. LinkedIn has this concept called the basical. All Star Status, they now call it 100% complete profile. And one of the requirements to have 100% complete profile is that you have a current position or position with no end date. And so if your last job ended two months ago, it has an end date. And if you post that end date, which I think you should, you are not a 100% complete profile. And while LinkedIn doesn’t really leak out all the information about their search algorithm, one thing we do know from using it a lot 100% complete profile come up a little higher than the people not quite 100%. So those are some of the reasons why someone may want to consider switching or becoming a consultant, whether that’s their new full time position, or until the next full time position comes along.
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And folks in making some money. You know, it is funny, you mentioned, of course, I’m active with the job seeker support community, and we are community of people. That’s how you and I got to know each other. And, you know, a lot of the people that I talk with will say No, I’ll wait as long as it takes to get that full time position because I want that security. And, you know, if you’re unemployed, you notice no security in a full time position. Most states, if not all are at will employee employers. And they may say, it’s time for us to reevaluate our employee status and let people go. So that’s unfortunate. And so can work. Even as a consultant, you can cover any of your expenses that you have with that income that’s coming in.
And it’s interesting. When you’re an employee, of course, you’re expensive getting to and from work, we do remember that there was a time we actually had to go to an office, the expenses of going to and from work are not a covered item, it’s a cost to you, as a consultant, that a gig worker, if you’re in that situation, where you go into an office, or you’re using part of your home, or you know that there’s lots of different variations that the government allows you to deduct. It’s not the entire home, because you’re not using the entire home, you’re using some piece of it, your computer, a variety of other things suddenly become business expenses that are deductible. Again, consult with your accountant and tax advisers for what is accurate in the current times. Yes, certainly at the time that we’re recording this. A few years ago, there was a tax reform federal tax reform in 2018. And a number of the professional business deductions were removed. You know, there were gives them takes and I’m not here to comment in general about that. But as an employee, employed by a company a full time basis, there are a lot less business deductions that you have available to you. And one of the reasons why is if it’s really important, your company should be paying for it. Well, when you’re self employed, even if you have a home office, and in my case, I’m in a corner of a spare bedroom. So that’s how big my home office is. But I have business expenses just like the employer does. And so my monitor that I’m staring at my my camera, my computer, those are all business deductions, and I’ll just make them numbers. You know, if I made $100,000 This year, and I had $25,000 in business expenses, my taxable income would be 75,000, not the full 100,000. And you mentioned commuting, that’s a gray area, because if you’re commuting daily for consulting, it may not be a deduction. But if you have to visit a client from time to time that may be deductible. So you do speak to someone who could talk about your situation specifically, you know, maybe half your cell phone gets deducted half your internet bill, you know, because using it at home office, for work and for home, so you can find a lot of deductions to save yourself some money. So employers, what’s the deal with them? And why they like consultants or gig workers, versus, at times the employee, and we know they like employees, they seem to hire them with regularity. But why would they want a consultant as well as an employee?
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You know, what I mentioned a little bit earlier with that, you know, easier to onboard and off board, somebody this typically No, no expected long term commitment. And a lot of us can argue there’s no long term commitment with being employed any longer. But it’s already it’s not just implied, it’s known you will be on a six month contract, it could go longer, it could go shorter. Generally, my observation is that hiring managers, you know, the people that will be your boss, they hire with a different mindset, where they onboard people with a different mindset between a consultant, and an employee, for instance, as a consultant, they want you to be an expert, they want you to come in with the skills they don’t have. But I’ve seen with employees, they kind of have this mindset, can I work with this person for eight hours a day? Can I work with this person in overtime, I think I like this person. And if there’s a skill or two that he or she missing, we can cross train on that. So it’s a little bit of a mindset. And ultimately, because it’s project based, long term, it does save the company money. Because when the project is over, you’re employed, you’re still there. As an employee, as a contractor, they’ll say, thanks very much, we’ll leave you something nice on LinkedIn, and but our relationship for now is over. So even though there’s some initial higher, or high increased rate that they’re paying long term, it’s really much more beneficial. And there’s probably different ways on the books that they account for those expenses, capital versus current year, and their accountants would have to talk to them about the benefits of that as well.
It’s a different budget line for them, and it comes out of so you’re not on the employee budget lines, you’re on a different budget line that has a fixed duration, they know it’s what it costs is a certainty to it for them.
Your cost is approved for a period of time, are they? So it works out? For them very often, they certainly do need employees, I have the very few companies have no employees. Well, my company will be as busy as employee, but it works out for them in the long run for some projects.
So why wouldn’t someone want to do this versus the nine to five grind of being an employee?
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Well, I think if you’re on a contract, you have the nine to 549 to five ish grind. Anyway, you know, you’re hoping to work, you know, a regular job. My background is I spent 30 years working in corporate America worked for a few different companies. And I had no desire to be a consultant or be self employed. I don’t consider myself an entrepreneur, I still don’t consider myself an entrepreneur. But what I found is that this becoming at the time I lost my job, the 50 Plus person, I was a little less, I was getting less interviews, it was harder to convince people I didn’t know to consider speaking with me, however, I was getting these small gig assignments, they were really very small. I was helping someone with a website or little work like that. And I was getting more of these gig projects that I was getting interviews. And I realized that this was sensible for me, maybe sensible for others. So I think people are in the mindset, I’ve got to have that job until I’m ready to retire. And, you know, maybe their parents, you know, worked for a long time in one company or had that commitment. The marketplace has changed a little they hire differently now for lots of different reasons. And I think it helps us if we can be as flexible and respond to the way the market hires agree. And I’ve got to imagine like, if you’re a younger professional, let’s say 20s 30s. And you’ve got some training around I use technology as an example you have you ever in recognize you have a tech deficiency of some sort and you want to start gravitating to the new field and you’re paying for your own training, you might be able to pick up a gig or consulting assignment that allows you to get that experience. So then you can transition to full time. Does that work?
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Yeah, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for that there are contract to hire positions that we hear about. And there are people that will say, Well, I don’t want to be a contractor, but I want to be a contract to hire. But some companies don’t know they need to hire you until they’ve contracted you for six months. So you certainly do need to be open to being a contractor or be open to contract positions. And so I think that could be very beneficial as a means for transitioning, as well as a means for filling a gap.
And I, I want to be clear with everyone, when they say contract, hire or attempt to perm, there is no guarantee that they’re going to hire you at the end of six months, or whatever the term is, you know, it’s a possibility. They’re evaluating you, their needs may change, they’ve put out a carrot to bring you on board. And there’s no guarantee that this or the project got cancelled. Halfway through, I happen to work for a company a time that did that we had a lot of consultants and a goal of building new software. And then in the end, the company pulled the plug on it, and we let the contractors go. Yeah. Awful. And it happens. And it does. Yeah, it’s on both sides. Yeah.
So does someone need to be incorporated to do this? Or can they just kind of operate as a human being?
Well, human beings can be corpse to this. Oh, that sounds funny. Well, we’ll put that aside for another podcast, I suppose. But typically, no, typically, you don’t need to be an incorporated entity or an LLC. There are a lot of legal entities that each state has, and you wouldn’t need to speak to someone look in your state’s red treasury department or revenue department to see what’s available in your state. But typically, you don’t have to be. And so some of your options may be if you’re not interested in forming your own corporation, is you can work for a company that is a consulting company, and they have the clients and they will employ you, but it’ll be a short term employment, from the perspective of they have a six month or 12 month contract, will maybe have a friend who has a company because he Hey, can you do me this favor, hire me, you know, cover my, my income taxes will come out of the the rate or the wage, but you’ll be the legal entity between myself and the client that I’m bringing you. They’re actually professional employers, there are cold split placement companies. These are companies that are kind of consulting companies, but they don’t have clients with projects, what they do is they wait for their clients or their consultants, and you come to them and you say, I’ve got this contract, will you be the company that hires me, and then you’re employed by them on a W two, and they arrange for, you know, the employment or the contract between them, and the contract company or the employer and put you on the contract. So there are other options. But of course, if you feel comfortable, or if this may be something you’ll do a little bit more long term, or you appreciate the independence. And certainly when you’re working for someone else, you may be giving up a little bit more of the rate to them, because they have administrative charges that they’re entitled to get reimbursed for. You certainly can form your own company. And you would need to, again, look at your own state’s treasurer, your revenue department to understand what that is. But I believe now all 50 states do have what’s called an LLC is called a limited liability company. And so it is a legal entity in your state. And so I am my company, Princeton technology advisors, LLC, an LLC in New Jersey, that could be some Princeton technology advisors in another state, and that’s fine. And, you know, there’s different tax reporting, if you go into more of a traditional corporate for the C Corp, where there’s a separate corporate entity to files taxes with an LLC, the tax difference, it just shows up on your, your own schedule C, it’s in Miscellaneous Income expenses, 
but if you have a corp, certain structures, it’ll file its own tax return and employ you and you’ll file your personal income tax return. And that’s really I’m talking at a very high simplified level, you know, a tax professional can talk to you and to people listening about what their own situation will be.
But back to something you described earlier, and that is for the individual who’s may not be planning on doing this long term. It may be simpler for them to work through another company and calm track through that company to the ultimate clients. So that, yes, there’s a cost that takes place and doing that. So I’m just picking out random numbers, if you’re not getting seven, if the top number is 70 an hour from the client, for that firm to bring you on to their payroll, you may receive, again, I’m picking a random number 50. And for them to do administrative costs, I know when I did recruiting, we generally work with a 1/3 margin or more to bring someone onto our payroll, because that dealt with the financing costs. Because we were financing lots of consultants on payroll, and it allowed us to be able to book all those people knowing we’re going to receive delayed payment from the end client. And that’s always something to consider. It’s not like every Friday, you get a check as an employee, that’s right, that’s you’re sending an invoice to a company. And like any company that may take 30 days, they may take 60 days, or longer. As an employee, w two employee, the company has an obligation to pay you. And so if you’re paid weekly, bi weekly, monthly, you’ll get that paycheck, as a contractor or independent, they’re obligated to pay you but the terms are different. And so I’ve had that before where I’ve been a subcontractor, and I’ve waited a couple of months, because my hiring organizations client took a long time. And so that was, you know, at that it was the first contract that I had, and I wasn’t really aware. And I guess you could build terms into your contract, you know, pay in 30 days? The but yeah, so there are certainly differences that way. And yeah, you’re right, you know, the hiring company, you know, if you’re on board with one of I won’t name them, but the big consulting companies that are around and each industry has their own, they tend to take a big piece of that nut rate wise. And it’s, I don’t necessarily think it’s unfair, they are doing the recruiting, they have a risk that you don’t, they’re putting a lot of effort with no guarantee that they’ll place somebody. So there’s a lot of administrative costs. So you know, if, if they’re billing you out, it would just say 70, and you’re getting 50, that’s probably a pretty good spread for you to get that $50,000. And by the way, I’m sorry, $50 an hour $50 An hour on an annual basis is still about $100,000. So you’re pretty good. And yeah, and most professionals, I guess it depends on the region of the country you’re in. But most professionals are getting at least 50, if not more an hour.
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If you have a wife, husband partner that has insurance at their employer, you don’t have to deal with insurance costs for your health insurance. If they’re The Stay At Home individual, yes, you have the cost of health insurance, if you want to do that, you also are not going to be paid for vacation time, because you might as an employee, and our goal here is to lay out a case. So you could make good choices for you. As a baseline, it’s great to fill in gaps, rather than sitting home watching TV.
You know, and also, if you are employed by the consulting company that puts you in contract, they may give you benefits. So they may say benefits are available after six months or 12 months a longer gap than what might be typical employment, but it may be available to you or you can buy health insurance at our group rate. So it may be less expensive for you than going out to the healthcare marketplace or may not depending on your income level because the healthcare marketplace does have credits that they offer you as well. So but you may get benefits from being employed by a consulting companies that may not be available as an independent. Right.
So there’s so much more I want to make sure we’re covering lots of different things. Now, from a business standpoint, I always think in terms of, you know, there’s the lunatic client who’s going to, you know, act crazy and threatened to sue you. Do you need any sort of insurance protection when you’re doing consulting or getting work?
So, yeah, you may and so what is Insurance insurance covers you from any risk, you know, a lot of us know automobile insurance. And the risk would be if you have an accident, you say I’m a good driver. I’ll never have an accident. But yeah, it could be the lunatic driver who runs the red light and hits you. So you need the insurance. So you have to think about what is your tolerance for risk, what is your involvement in an area for risk. And so when you have the, if you want to protect yourself from the lunatic plant, there are two things one is have an out clause in your contract, that, you know, I can end this contract with two weeks notice, and they may be upset, but you have an out clause, and that will give you some level of protection. But there are things called errors and omissions insurance. And it protects the worker from any kind of professional liability. Even if you have a corporation or an LLC, which is called limited liability, it may not limit all of your liabilities. So you may need these errors and omissions insurance, which is a type of insurance that protects the workers and the companies from any claims or negligence. That could be your financial adviser and the company and you made a recommendation the company lost some money and they want to hold you responsible for that loss, or you are the company so you may want to have an errors and omissions insurance against some of your business practice. Or maybe you broke the copy machine, and they want you to pay for it. So they I wouldn’t think that that would be an issue they should hold you for. But if you know if you got upset, and you kicked the machine and knocked it over, that may not be covered by their insurance. So you have to speak to you know, your own business professionals around you, whether it’s your attorney, your insurance professional, decide if that’s needed. And each industry has its own rates, because you know, the underwriters of insurance deems certain industries more or less risky. And so the rates are going to be more or less. And should you have 1,000,002 million, 3 million again, you have to decide what your tolerance is for the risk and what you think the potential of risk is. Now, in
certain fields,
I know the deed marketplaces exist. So for example, if you do digital related work, like you’re an SEO person, or you do AdSense, or, frankly, there are people who do recruiting for these marketplaces, they get assignments, that way, you can work with sites like Fiverr, Upwork, freelancer, these are all.com sites, folks. upwork.com fiverr.com freelancer.com and be able to pick up some games where you’re bidding against other people, but you’re able to pull in work. And they’re of course, taking a cut. Are you aware of other places where people are able to pull in work from any of these marketplaces, and no, is a perfectly valid dance.
You know, there, there are many, many websites that will promote or advertise gig work. So if we just start from that perspective, any of the job boards are going to have gig work employers hire through job boards all the time monster, indeed, zip recruiter, Career Builder, I was like Career Builder, because they had the goofy commercials with the chimpanzees. So just from the commercials, and LinkedIn is also another place where you’ll find the opportunity. And typically, they’re not fees that you the contractor are paying. They’re there a couple of others, some of them have subscriptions. Some of them are free. One is called Flex jobs, FL e x jobs. So try that freelancer.com You can try them solid gigs. I know the contract. And I’m sorry, the costs for all of those flex jobs is something like 50 or $60 a year. So not terribly expensive if you use it and of course, it’s likely going to be a business expense anyway. So tax deduction. Another way you can find a positions are hanging around where there are people. And so join meetup groups meetup.com, if you are not forming a meetup group, but if you just someone who is looking is completely free. So build a profile for yourself. It’s completely free, and find groups. And what you may want to look for are groups, not of people like you. So as an IT person, I don’t mind going to IT groups I make contacts there, maybe I can find the subcontractor, but I typically don’t find work there. I like to do a lot of work mostly for small business and not for profit organization. So I’ll join groups when small business hang out. We’re not for profit organizations where possible, clients would hang out. Then the same with professional associations. Some professional associations have big fees, but maybe you can attend one meeting for free. And again, find the professional association of the industry where you’re looking to work rather than in your your own job specialty, and you may find opportunities for contractors and work there. Now, one place where I’ve always encouraged people to go is, especially for technology professionals, I always say About accountants, groups of accountants because they got clients that need support services. And the accountant of the account who’s healing the complaints of their client, about their tech operation, I don’t know what to do. They’re always willing to send out a recommendation.
Well, you know, there are business networking groups that kind of act as you create your own referral network. Some of these groups could be a small group, 810 people to a dozen people, some can be quite large, a couple of dozen. But in those sorts of groups, there’s a couple of big names out there. One is called BNI, business networking International. I was a member of BNI for a number of years. And although it didn’t work for me, because people don’t like to pay for coaching in those groups, for a lot of people work beautifully.
You’re right, yeah, yeah, so BNI a tip. And then there are local ones, I belong to a couple of local ones, you know, that are not big names. And you know, the broad structure with them is, regardless of the number of people, you’re the only one of your specific profession. So in my case, I might be the only one offering technology services. There might be another person who’s an attorney, but we can have several attorneys if they have different specialties. So we had a business law attorney, and we had an employment law attorney. And while they could refer to each other, they didn’t go after the same type of business. And coaching could be the same thing. You can have a life coach, and you can have a business coach, and your personal coach. And you could say, well, they’re different coaches. So it works out nicely. And you do develop a referral network. So I’ve had the opportunity, either to work specifically for one of my networking, friends, clients, and subcontract by subcontracted or a straight out referral, David, call this person they I heard that they need may need your help.
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It’s a nice setup. So how does one become a consultant?
So it’s, it’s really a very easy process. And if we were live, right now, I’d have everyone say this together, I am a consultant, I am a consultant, yeah, just hang a shingle and say, I am a consultant. So you know, that’s, that’s really all it is. Again, you don’t need to have that organization or that company. And if you feel that you do what would benefit you, you could speak to your business attorney or whatever. Also, if you want to form a company, there are companies like legal Legal Zoom with a company Corporation, they’re kind of legal administrators who can walk you through the process, you can do it yourself. But you really want to make sure you, you’re going to be the expert, the specialist, in an industry in a niche area where you have an expertise, because typically, when we hire, as I mentioned a little bit earlier consultants, we hire them for their expertise. So if you say, I can do it all, that tends to be not as attractive to hiring organizations as this is specifically what I do to solve your problem. So I understand your niche. And then because you’re not employed, the way you used to be, make sure you have a support mechanism behind you. So you know, when you were at at your office, and you had a question, and you didn’t know the answer, you went to a co worker, you went to a boss, you went to somebody another department? Well, if your consulting business is not quite that big, if you’re kind of a solopreneur, you need to know who you can reach out to when you stumble across a question you don’t have the answer to. And it could be as simple as a Google search, or any of your professional network. So make sure you know your target market. And then when you start marketing towards them, or looking for the groups where you’re going to participate. Focus on that target market. And then another thing I tell people who were in this situation, Jeff is name your company, but also get your website domain right away. A website is so important. It’s your digital business card. Imagine if you went to interview somebody, and when you were done. You said, interview maybe like a plumber or an electrician or someone you wanted to work with. He said, Listen, man have your card. If that person said I don’t have a card, you think that’s a little weird? Well, not having a website as an independent person is the same weirdness. But it’s kind of funny, I would say, get your web address right away, even if you haven’t officially named your companies and especially if you’re going to go down the path of registering it with your state, you know, as an LLC or a court because the name of your company when you go through your state is typically in the public record. And why is it because you’re looking to make sure there’s no name like yours. So the name is in the public record. And so there are these people, they’re called squatters. They’re not hackers. And what they do is they look at the public record, and they’ll go, oh, look, here’s a company that just started. Let me see if I can squat on their web address. So if you’re going to call yourself the very big corporation, and that’s very good, they’re gonna go and try and get that web address. And if there isn’t one like that. And now, if you go a few weeks later to try and get your web address, someone may be squatting on it from just a couple of weeks ago, and they typically want to resell it at a profit. And I’ve actually had two prospective clients who wanted me to help them acquire a web address, and then ultimately build them a website. And sure enough, a few weeks earlier, someone squatted on their web address, and they held out for big money. Yeah, what you could do is you could say, well, I could call it thus b dot dash, very dash, big dash corporation, you can put you could change it a little bit, but you don’t want dashes and dots and things like that you want easy.
You know, you can register a website with some of these companies for 10 to $12 a year, you might register two or three of them of the two or three names you’re thinking of. And then in a few weeks or months, when you realize I’m going to pick this as my name, let the others expire and just renew the one that you’re going to use. You don’t buy web addresses, by the way, you kind of lease them or rent them. And as long as you continue to pay for them, you get to continue to use them. So it kind of works more of a lease or rent model. But yeah, once you have it, you have it as long as you keep paying for it. So I’d say make sure you get that web address to his has been a lot of fun and very informative. What haven’t we covered yet, that we really should before we close out? Hmm.
What to Ask Before Starting a New Job
You know, as an independent, you may be because you’re that expert, you may be someone that may want to make sure you have the proper certifications, or licensing. You know, an employer may say you’re a great project manager, you’re not PMI certified. But we’re going to bring you on board. And we’ll cover your PMI as an independent because you’re an expert. If there are a lot of project manager consultants out there, and they’re certified, you may want to go out and get that certification. So it’s not really the legal licensing requirement that some trades do have or some fields have. But you may want to make sure that you can compete effectively, you know, getting certifications. So that may be important. Yeah. What else didn’t we talk about, you know, if you need health insurance, there are a lot of places if you’re going to be independent, like you mentioned, Jeff, you may be having a partner or spouse who can cover you, and that’s fine. But if not, your state may have a health care exchange. Some states do, if not us national exchange healthcare.gov. New Jersey has their own exchange, New York has their own exchange. So and they’re really the same thing that just administered in the state rather than a federally, or maybe you’ll get your medical, for Medicare, look for Medicare insurance that way as well in the gap insurance. Just keep in mind that if you’re in a household where you’re 65 or older, and Medicaid eligible, the people in your household that are not 65 probably are not eligible for the Medicare, there may be certain exceptions that I don’t know about. So you will have to cover them as well.
Yeah, so my household is, you know, I’m the one who’s over 65. My wife isn’t I pay insurance for her. And is this the price of admission and falling along? This? Yes, it is.
I’m fortunate. My wife does work for an employer. And so we’re covered that way. So that wasn’t a direct expense for me. But if you do need insurance, there are options. The health care exchange program, whether administered federally or by your state provides a lot of options. You can speak to an insurance professional who could speak more specifically for you. And you know, you could also you might find health insurance from professional associations, or very large chambers of commerce that as they create these groups for their members, and then therefore, you can buy the insurance at a group rate rather than individually, that may be a benefit as well. So look into those as options.
In many places, folks, by the way. David mentioned in passing and I forgot to mention earlier, one of the places to network as a smaller business is through the Chamber of Commerce. Yep, in my town, Asheville, North Carolina. The chamber is huge here. People develop great relationships through the chamber. There’s a fee involved with joining. And so you get business. You have opportunities to network once or twice a month with people over breakfast or cocktails, and it’s a nice setup. David, this has been fabulous. How can people find out more about you Given the work that you do, well, if they want to speak with me about any technology projects that are of interest, you can contact me through my website, Princeton tech advisors.com, Princeton Tech Advisors COMM And if you’re a job seeker and you’d like to come visit us at one of our meetings we meet every Friday morning at 10 o’clock, and this is a tele podcast here. So Eastern Standard Time. It’s P SG of Mercer county.org P S g of Mercer county.org. We’ve got a website. So go check us out there and look at our event calendar meetings are always free. You don’t register in advance. We’re still virtual right now. So even if you’re not in Princeton area, central New Jersey, you can come join us and Jeff has been presented to our group a number of times, which thank you so much for being such a big supporter not just for job seekers, but for groups like there’s my pleasure.
And folks, we’ll be back soon with more. I’m Jeff Alton the big game hunter. Hope you enjoy today’s interview. If you didn’t, you’re watching on YouTube, share it, leave a comment, do something that lets people know it was worthwhile. The comments in particular good, so do that. And also visit my website, the big game hunter.us where I’ve got 1000s of posts in the blog, there’s searchable, you can watch listen to or read them. They will help you find work more quickly hire more effectively manage lead and support you with different workplace issues. I’m also doing a twice weekly live stream on LinkedIn, on YouTube and on Facebook on the Jeff Altman the day game hunter page, Career Coach Office Hours beginning March 1 2022 is at 1pm Eastern Time on Tuesdays and Fridays. So come join me ask questions, be happy to answer them. Lastly, connect with me on linkedin@linkedin.com forward slash i n forward slash the big game hunter. Hope you have a terrific day and most importantly, be great. Take care
Can Negotiating Salary Backfire?
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, as well as executive job search coaching, job coaching, and interview coaching. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2300 episodes.
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