What do you guy's think about Contract jobs while going to school?

Armymanis

Need another piece of thought from you guys. I hope I am not annoying you yet.

So I am currently employed with a recruiting firm who specializes in IT Healthcare technology. This is a contract position, which I should only be at for four months. The reason I left my other job, which I stayed at for almost 9 months was because I needed to get some experience as an IT professional in the field.

Now I am going to be continuing at this company, but only working summer times, or whenever I feel like I have a light quarter and they have a contract job open. Is it bad to have jumped around so much when your a college student? I am mainly only working the summertime so I can finish my bachelors degree as many of you know.

The recruiting firm I am with so far is great and the people are awesome. Any job I do, people are always glad to have me as an employee because I work hard and get along with everyone. I feel that is important in today's economy.

My question to you is, do you think its bad for someone to do contract jobs during the summer and go to school? Also, I hope leaving my last job will not hurt me. Keep in mind, I have never been fired from a job or let go. The people are always sad to see that I want to do something else.

I plan to be with this current recruiting firm a long time, and I am even going to try and get on their full time once I finish my bachelors. They mainly set up hardware and don't deal with software to much.

Recent job history:

Since Junior year of high school I have had 5 jobs, including the one I have now. First one was 10 months, second one was 2 years, and while staying at that job for 2 years, I picked up another job for 5 months. After not working for a year, I decided to go back and work so i picked up another job for almost 9 months. After getting sick of being in retail, I finally made the switch to IT.

I hope this does not hurt me. I would really like to move up into troubleshooting software and opening up computers. I have done 6 months volunteer work troubleshooting software and opening up computers to repair them, but it is nothing compared to a real world work environment. I am also very enthused about IT and really want to learn and someday be a systems administrator.

blargoe

I think what you are doing is great. I wish others would do something similar. The most important advantage you can gain over your peers who are also in school earning a degree is actual work experience in IT.

Changing jobs is not really perceived as much of a negative anymore. The career counselors that are telling you probably came through school 30 years ago when that we the conventional wisdom. Particularly in IT, it is pretty common to jump between contract gigs. This will absolutely not be looked at as a negative with you also being a student.

Now, if you were changing every couple months or had huge gaps in employment that couldn't really be explained, then you might have a problem.

Get that work experience in, however you can. You are on the right track.

Armymanis

blargoe wrote: »

I think what you are doing is great. I wish others would do something similar. The most important advantage you can gain over your peers who are also in school earning a degree is actual work experience in IT.

Changing jobs is not really perceived as much of a negative anymore. The career counselors that are telling you probably came through school 30 years ago when that we the conventional wisdom. Particularly in IT, it is pretty common to jump between contract gigs. This will absolutely not be looked at as a negative with you also being a student.

Now, if you were changing every couple months or had huge gaps in employment that couldn't really be explained, then you might have a problem.

Get that work experience in, however you can. You are on the right track.

Awesome! Yeah I usually stay with an employer longer then 9-10 months. The only reason I quit once the 9 months were up because A: got sick of working at a grocery store and B: An IT Contract job opened up that I knew I had to take in order to get experience.

WafflesAndRootbeer

Look carefully at the contract, your terms of employment, and talk with the contract manager before you sign on the dotted line. A lot of service providers will expect your availability to be "as needed", even if it's completely unrealistic for you to be, and they will drop you like a bad habit if you can't make them happy.

Armymanis

WafflesAndRootbeer wrote: »

Look carefully at the contract, your terms of employment, and talk with the contract manager before you sign on the dotted line. A lot of service providers will expect your availability to be "as needed", even if it's completely unrealistic for you to be, and they will drop you like a bad habit if you can't make them happy.

I already talked to them about that and they said I can only work summers and be a Contract Type III employee.

Ryan82

Sounds like a good plan. You will have the added benefit of having some relevant work experience under your belt when you finish your degree and are looking for something a little more long term.