Contract Employment Hassles

Umbrella!!!! Isn’t that what you use when it starts to pour? Well there are other meanings to this word I discovered today.

I have been for sometime now engaged in a futile search for jobs, everyday I apply to at least a dozen and half vacancies and every day I get rejected as much! Bother!! Wonders to my self confidence too! Well the reasons could be many and since analysing the world rejection of my skills is not right on top of my list I guess we can safely skip that part.

Today, however, was different from other days. I actually had a call which was not from my husband, relatives or friends or the irritating (sorry) marketing guys. It was from a recruitment agency. No voice has sounded sweeter to me and no call more important!! Its not as if I was getting a job and all that but the very fact that someone was calling up to verify my skills and my availability was more than enough reason for the big smile on my face.

The call was going smoothly till I got into the Umbrella glitch! The recruiter asked me since the position was a contract one, would I please specify if I had my own limited company or otherwise was part of which umbrella company?! Duh-huh!! On request the recruiter did repeat her question but my response remained the same!

Alright, nothing much to do about this than to confess my absolute ignorance on what she was talking and so I did that. The explanation dear friends is that when you are on contract you need to take care of paying taxes which the company contracting you will not do and neither can you do as an individual. You either set up a limited company of your own and pay taxes through it or you can join a company which would do it for you – that company is called the Umbrella company!

Basically the umbrella company has systems of its own such payroll invoicing and timesheets. So when you join somewhere on contract you fill in your timesheets with the umbrella company and put in your expenses report there. The Umbrella company on your behalf invoices those timesheets, pays taxes to the government from it and then credits the amount to your account after taking their cut out of it!!

So now I have a list of umbrella companies which the recruiter out of pity provided me with. I now have the option of visiting the websites of these companies and requesting for a “No Obligation” call back where they give me their sales pitch and I have the option of listening to it, agreeing to it or banging the phone down. No obligation!

And i thought the IT industry was filled with meaningless jargons!!

Anyways, as per popular websites, I need to check out for stuff like their fee structure, payment frequency (how often will they process my invoice and pay me?), Insurance cover, expenses process and what qualifies as an expense, what web technology the use for timesheets and others and last but not least for any hidden costs!!! Of course all this doesn’t matter because if I am not happy with them I could just kick them out and take my business elsewhere.

Provided I get a job first!!!! :(