What Is a Consultant?
Merriam webster's collegiate dictionary, 10th edition, defines consultant as "one who consults another... one who gives professional advice or services." It can sometimes be hard to see the difference between a professional technical temp and a consultant today. In fact, many staffing services who hire professional technical temps call them "consultants," thus adding to the confusion!
The major difference between a consultant and a professional technical temp is that a temp works for a staffing service. A professional technical temp may be called a consultant, but is still employed by or works for the staffing service. A consultant typically works for himself or herself.
Herman Holtz says in his book How to Succeed as an Independent Consultant (Third Edition, © 1993, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), "Many independent consultants hire themselves out on the same basis (as technical or professional temporaries), bypassing the job shop or broker." Holtz goes on to say, "Defining yourself as an independent consultant depends primarily on what you choose to be and on what types of assignments or contracts you choose to accept and on how you deliver your services, but not on what you call yourself. In fact, only you can define the term for yourself and what you do."
If you want to know more about becoming a consultant as opposed to a professional technical temp, there are many sources available to choose from. One is become a Top Consultant, How the Experts Do It by Ron Tepper, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., in 1985. The book, according to Tepper, "examines 10 of the most successful consultants in the country." Tepper goes on to say, "These 10 is in industries ranging from management consulting and data processing (information systems) to sales training, headhunting, and civil and electrical engineering."
Again, for the purposes of this book, consulting will be treated differently from professional and technical temping. This book is based on the premise that the professional technical temp works for a staffing service and a consultant is self employed.
Benefits
There has been a great deal in the news about benefits as they relate to temporary employees. Benefits are the extras people earn on a job in addition to salary: health insurance, life insurance, holiday pay, vacation pay, pension plans, 401(k) plans, tuition reimbursement, merits awarded raises, and more.
Many people believe the temporary employment industry has grown so rapidly because companies are downsizing and laying off employees in order to avoid paying benefits and therefore save money. Companies still need the work done, so they turn to staffing services to provide the temps. The companies are not responsible for providing benefits to the temps because the temps are not employees of the companies.
Who is responsible for providing the benefits? The starring services who hire and place the temps on jobs. As more and more people turn to temporary work, benefits are becoming more critical especially for those professional and technical people who may temp for a long time. Some staffing services are working as a team with businesses that hire temps for long periods of time. The staffing service and the business where the temp works may together offer a special package of benefits to a temp who agrees to stay on a job. The business and the staffing service see this as an added value they can offer the special technical temp to keep the temp from taking his or her skills elsewhere.
Ultimately, it is up to the professional technical temp to decide how important benefits are. Do you, the temp, want to make more per hour so that you can purchase your own benefits, or do you want to work for a staffing service that provides great benefits? Only you can answer.
Staffing services that want to attract the best professional and technical temps will want to offer the most attractive package of benefits. The people they want to place, those with the most sought after and marketable skills, will want to sign up with the staffing service offering not only the best pay, but also the best benefits.
Unemployment Compensation
People who sign up or register with a staffing service usually cannot turn down a job that is within the scope of their skills and then collect unemployment benefits as an employee of the staffing service. Staffing services keep records of the jobs they offer people, so people are not able to collect from unemployment insurance if they have turned down jobs.
A staffing service could offer a job to someone that did not start right away and if the person turned it down, the person could be in the position to lose unemployment benefits. That means the professional technical temp needs to carefully review the staffing service he or she decides to sign up with and make sure the service is reputable and indeed can provide the jobs at a salary that will compensate the person who may lose a part of a severance package or unemployment insurance as a result of taking a temp job.
