Why I’m no longer taking up contract positions

This post has been a long time coming, one that is close to my heart. Five years ago, on this day, I would have thought otherwise. Five years ago would have been 18 October 2014, a few months after graduating from one of the local universities at that time. The job market wasn’t doing well, like it is this year. I was keen on taking up any job so that I can start chalking up some heavy weight experience on my otherwise empty resume.

However five years down the road, having gone through three contract jobs, I feel it is more than sufficient to say that contract jobs no longer cut the grade for me. Contract jobs not only not provide job stability, there are times contract jobs are also quite open to having your job responsibility revised more than you are comfortable with.

I have nothing against contract jobs, in fact they are actually a good way to start working at an industry you are interested in or help you get started at work. Furthermore, in its essence, they are also a source of job opportunity. I have known a friend and a colleague, both of whom were offered a full-time role after a contract stint.

But it is important to realise that when a company hires for a contract staff, there is usually a certain frame of mind that the company has toward this headcount. They usually present themselves in either one of the two scenarios.

One, their business are going through a period of change or are expecting competition from the business or political environment. As a result of this, flexibility is high on their list. In this case, the contract role could be with a pre-existing department made up of a sizeable team of permanent staff. The company might already be undergoing several major structural improvements, and moving forward, the company might foresee that they would need less staff to keep the business going. So therefore, they decided to have one contract headcount in the event that the company reaps the benefits of its improvement plan and could use the cost savings that comes with one less personnel.

Two, the company is hiring for a new team or department that they are not quite sure on its legitimacy quite yet. The fact that there is even a headcount, albeit a contract one, goes to show that one or a few managers was able to prove to their human resource department that this headcount is required. You can say that it is like a project that has achieved partial funding but requires results to prove in order to achieve 100% of the funds by their headquarters. This isn’t a bad thing by itself, but it goes to show that after you are hired, you have got a lot of things to prove. Furthermore, this isn’t the only problem. This is likely a major project by one of the leaders, so in essence you have to also trust your leader that this project is here to stay and that your leader is committed to help you overcome problems your department have.

To summarise, being on contract might mean you have a lot more proving to do and might also require you to be willing to stick it out for the long term. It might mean a lot more questions of “does this apply to contract staff ?” and accepting answers that include “We are still working on getting funding for a full-time headcount at the moment”.