Networking

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Comment by Electrical Engineers Network on December 24, 2008 at 7:13pm

To Tom, Doug and Ron,
If you can use our www.MyElecEng.com site to help promote independent consultant services to end-users, please do. There are no costs. You can start New Groups, possibly called Consultants-For-Hire, or just adapt a section of the Consultants Group. Within a group you can have Discussions or Topics where specific capabilities can be listed, or end-users can list Consultant service needs.

If you have other contacts, do invite them to join this site. If we get enough momentum, we can possibly start to attract small, medium and some larger corporations that are looking for consulting help. If we get more EE's involved, the power of all thinking and working together can result in something good for everyone. A Group within our Site can also work together to start a front-end company to provide greater liability coverage if that is an issue for larger corporations. We all know that smart minds working together can result in creative solutions to any obstacle.

I'm also an IEEE Senior Member and would love to see EE's not be taken advantage of by middlemen. In the end, it is our brain-power that is creating solutions.
Gabe Paoletti, P.E.

Comment by Ron Bader on December 24, 2008 at 1:12pm

Tom,
1. The organization I recommended is patca.org not patco.org.

2. Yes a lot of large corporations now require contractors to work through middlemen organizations because of a couple of high profile cases where the client had what should have been employees working as independent contractors and also as a result of a lot of negative and often factually incorrect PR by the job shop industry designed to scare companies into going through them to hire contractors.

In the 28 years I have been consulting however, I have only worked on one electronic product development project through an intermediary company. All my other work has been as an independent contractor so I can tell you that it is indeed possible to work that way.

Some things to consider... you need to make sure the type of assignments you are pursuing truly are independent contractor gigs, and that you satisfy the tests for an independent contractor/client relationship by how you do business with your clients, maintain control of your time, performance of your work and other factors that go into determining if the relationship is truly and arms length business to business transaction or a veiled employment arrangement designed primarily to facilitate circumventing of taxes and benefits on the part of the cilent/employer.

Make sure you know the rules, play by them, and clearly communicate to your prospective clients how you intend to insure that you and the client will satisfy them . It won't help much in a large corporation that has hard and fast rules dictated by their legal department, but it will go a long way toward easing any client's concerns about contracting directly with you in cases where there is an ability to do so, and in defending the arrangement should the client sometime down the road become subject to an independent contractor audit.

If possible, you might want to consider retargeting your potential client base to medium and small companies. Most of them need to operate very efficiently to stay alive and many still hire consultants directly for appropriate assignments..

Good luck and happy holidays!

Comment by Tom Roe, PE on December 24, 2008 at 12:23pm

Great I will take a look at patco. I am IEEE senior member. I havebeen in a number of consultants networks. North jersey is a good one. Others are in it for themselves usually only give out others names to bad gigs and keep the good ones to them selves basically a failure of the networking idea. Also keeping contacts to them selves (the leaders) also makes the selection to the client low and therefore makes them unhappy. I am a member of linklist. I never got much out of it.

I guess a major issue in getting contracts in bigger companies is they want a big corp in the between them and you for legal purposes. I know enough people now to keep working but they always make me go through an agency which bassically takes all my profit. Without a way out of that we probably are stuck with pimps (pardon the french). If we had a strong organization (which should be the IEEE but is not!!!) we could buffer the even the large clients from legalities. I don't have any idea how to do that other then form a job shop that has insurance and all the legal stuff taken care of. I have heard of EE's who try this, one was in Texas not sure what happened to them. We really need an AMA type oganization but we missed that a long time ago.

Comment by Ron Bader on December 24, 2008 at 11:39am

Hello Tom,

Welcome to the group!

Another organization for independent consultants I can highly recommend is the Professional and Technical Consultants Association www.patca.org. I have been a member since 1982, am currently a Senior Member and serve on the board.

PATCA is a non-profit association of independent consultants and small consulting firms which has diverse demographics but is substantially comprised of consultants that provide HW, SW and other engineering services. PATCA has a no cost to client referral service and publishes both a hard copy directory and online directory of consultants. I have received a number of great referrals over the years from the referral service and other members who either had more work than they could handle or who had a skill set that was not a good match to the client's needs.

In addition to Doug's advice, you should also check to see if IEEE has a local consultant's network in your area. I think there is one in NJ and am fairly sure there is one in NY. The local networks have their own directories and websites, and I get quite a few referrals from the Silicon Valley chapter to which I belong (www.californiaconsultants.org).

Comment by Doug Nix, A.Sc.T. on December 24, 2008 at 9:25am

Tom,

Are you a member of LinkedIn? If not, there's a free forum to help in your efforts. There are also a number of groups that may help with your networking there.

Are you an IEEE member? IEEEUSA has a consultant's network that you can join for about $80 that adds you to their searchable list of consultants.

As for job brokering - I don't know of any free services, but I like your idea, and I'd like to hear more about it. Feel free to email me!

Comment by Tom Roe, PE on December 24, 2008 at 9:08am

Anyone know of an organization for EE's by EE's that promotes us without the 30-40% fee. I am an independent consultant but most jobs available are through job shops who take an incredible amount of $$. I have a lot of contacts and maybe you do to. If we were smart we could promote ourselves through a group like this and cut out the agents. I know a job shop guy who makes a Meg off of us a year for hanging around his house working a few days a week - why??? are we dweebs who can't do it ourselves???