Looking for a flexible work culture? Think you might learn and earn more as a temp? Then what could be more your style than having a job where you program your brains out for months, push out the product and then hit the slopes for a few weeks of R&R? If flexibility is your main job criteria, then technical temping might be a perfect fit for you.

The Rosy Side Of Technical Temping • Avoid office politics. But keep in mind your supervisor at the client site might be making dramatically less than you are, notes Pete Johnson, president of Virtualogic Inc., and this differential can result in friction and revolving doors. • Enjoy job flexibility. Work when you want to and play when you want to. • Take home a higher pay. You stand to make more per hour temping than you would per hour as a permanent employee. • Negotiate your own employment. You can accept or decline a project – at the risk of aggravating your temp agency, of course.

As a contractor or consultant, employed by an outside temporary recruitment agency, you would work with the client to maybe program the code or package the software. These days popular management theory contends that companies should focus on what they do best and then contract out for the rest. That's where you come in: Johnny on the spot with the right skills to work on projects that last from months to perhaps years.

If you are a savvy self-marketer and a flexible worker with the right hard-core technical skills and experience, you stand to reap the benefits of contracting or consulting, so here are a few tips.



Before You Leap

A: Technical contracting or consulting has a well-developed infrastructure of staffing firms, contract houses and temporary recruitment agencies that serve as the intermediaries between you, the consultant, and the actual client for whom the work will be done. Typically, the agency is a firm with its own recruiters, sales people, and administrative staff to handle the payroll. The recruiter finds you and does a technical screening interview. The agency's salesperson markets you to various clients, who interview you for specific projects. Then you and the agency negotiate your rate with the client. In some cases, the agency will employ you as its full-time, salaried W-2 employee and pay you whether you are working or "on the bench" waiting for new work. At other agencies, you would be paid only when you were actually working for one of their clients. After one assignment is finished, you would need to find new work, either through that agency or another one.

A: First, you can put your resume up on the Web in newsgroups or on recruiter sites like CareerPath.com. Consult Richard Bolles's Parachute Net Guide for more information on posting your resume online. If you're a Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, or Sybase consultant, look on these companies' Web sites for their "solutions provider" consulting partners. On the Internet, staffing firms are easy to find. You can start by perusing the National Association of Computer Consultant Businesses' listing of its 24 staffing firm members in D.C. area.

A: According to Pete Johnson, president of Virtualogic Inc., "In addition to your hourly rate, some staffing firms provide bonuses for people who make contributions beyond their billable hours. There are bonuses for referring new consultants and helping the firm market to potential clients. There might also be opportunities for stock or profit bonuses for consultants, who not only manage an onsite project but also train other consultants." And of course there is the issue of benefits: health, life, and disability insurance, as well as 401Ks and cafeteria-style plans that let you put away pre-tax dollars for certain health and child care expenses. Not all agencies provide these benefits, but many do. If you go with an agency that provides these benefits, expect your hourly rate to be lower.

A: Let's hope so. The IRS employs a 20-point test to determine whether a technical temp working alongside the company's employees is really a consultant or a regular employee. If the consultant fails the 20-point test, then the IRS may reclassify the consultant as an employee, and the employer is responsible for paying the back taxes and penalties to federal and state governments. It's best to avoid this kind of a scandal, so prepare for the test by downloading the IRS training materials on worker classification (look for it under the "Independent Contractor or Employee" section).

A: According to D.C. attorney Harvey Shulman, "to many IRS agents, if you are a computer professional and you are not incorporated, it is almost impossible to work as an independent contractor on a project that lasts more than a few weeks. It's crazy, but incorporated status makes a real difference to the IRS, and even if you become a corporation, you might still need to go through a staffing firm to find work. Client companies just want to be that careful."

So what are your legal responsibilities if you decide to break out on your own and become an incorporated independent consultant? "In that situation" says Harvey Shulman, "the incorporated contractor must provide the documentation that says that consultant is really a valid corporation, with an employee identification number, letterhead and business cards with the corporate entity on it."

Furthermore, the corporation needs to:

• have a separate checking account.
• file a corporate tax return (IRS form 1120 or 1120S).
• withhold and file quarterly taxes (IRS form 941).
• treat the consultant-owner as a W-2 employee of that corporation by issuing the consultant-owner a W-2 at the end of each year.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? Tom Jones, a Visual Basic and Microsoft SQL consultant, agrees, "I'm a permanent employee with Virtualogic. This means I can't deduct my home office, but I would rather someone else do the taxes. On my own, it's one of those tasks that might just not get done."

If you decide to go the sole proprietorship route, find out how to create that tax trail with the IRS Tax Info for Business.

A: Not a chance, say the experts. There are just too many good open positions out there. "Even during the peaks and valleys of a recession and the prosperous economy, being a technical contractor is as stable as being a full-time employee," says Fred Shulman, co-president of AETEA Information Technology Inc. of Rockville, Md. "You'll get into a company and work on a major system or project, and at the end of the lifecycle, when you're not doing new development work any more, you'll start maintaining the system. Corporations tend to pick a technology and stay with it until they get their investment back."

On the other hand, consultants naturally work in a variable environment – switching projects regularly – so you should understand the constant state of flux you would be entering. "Consulting isn't always stable," says programming consultant Tom Jones. "You don't necessarily know where you'll be working one month to the next. If you like to form your circle of close friends at work, then it may not be the right career for you. I like the variety. Consulting lets me change jobs a lot without changing companies. It works for me because I get to learn lots of technologies, which makes me more valuable to my future clients." And it could work for you, too.