Contractor Contract Options
Contractor Contract Options – Choosing contracts and cashing in when you have an acceptance for two IT Contracts.
Part 7 in the series Hitting Agents for Six.
Desperate Agent
If you get a better offer elsewhere, you will, of course, be a bit nervous about telling the first agency.
You want to delay choosing contracts. So the best way to do it is to examine the contract that they have sent you, See if there are any clauses that you don’t like.
An obvious one is the clause where they can give you a month’s notice, whereas they don’t allow you to give notice at all. There will always be something that you don’t like.
Tell them that this is the reason that you are turning the job down.
Changing Your Contract
By this stage, they are desperate. They will take anything out of the contract. It’s good to remember this. They will suggest that you cross it out and send the contract back.
You have the choice of either coming clean and telling them that you have another job, or of telling them that the fact that the clause was in the contract at all left a bad taste in the mouth, and you were not going to sign with them.
If I were to choose, I would go for the first option. Tat’s because they knew you were doing this all along. This will end the conversation quicker, which is all you want now.
The chances are that the agent will suggest (if you do this), that they will go back to their client and try to get some more money from them.
Chance Your Arm when Choosing Contracts
The chances are less than 50/50 here. But if you are interested, you might as well add 50-100 a day onto your rate and see what would happen.
Most times, you will not get away with it, but you are in no lose situation, and sometimes it comes off.
If you go the other route and say that you are not signing because of the contract, they will badger you, as they’ve offered to take out the offending clauses.
They are also less likely to hire you in the future.
Although the first method will annoy them, they will consider it fair game (most of them anyway).
IT Contract Changed
The second method will be considered outside the rules of the game when choosing contracts.
They don’t mind ‘subterfusion’ (they do it all the time), but they don’t like outright liars (sic).
Even if you indulge in ‘subterfusion’, the rules of the game are that you always finish up by admitting the truth.
Those are hard and fast rules and they respect that.
How to get the nasty bits of your IT Contract changed is the next instalment in our series Hitting Agents for Six.
