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20th February 2009: Negotiation and extending or renewing your temporary contract Part 1
Last year I had every intention of writing a little on contract negotiation, as a way of improving your situation, but then the world's economy folded like a particularly cheap garden chair and suddenly it was all about struggling to keep your job rather than getting more money from it.
Despite this shift in focus from more money to extending or renewing your contract the core idea is the same, you're still negotiating a contract just from a weaker position and with a different priority.
In this post I will be covering the factors affecting the strength of your position.
So what's in your favour?
If the job's still needed, and you've done okay work it's probably cheaper for your agent and to the client to keep you in the position.
Hopefully your history with your agent and the client is good, whether it's just good work or a mix of good work, reliability, and personal skills.
The fact that despite the....recession....there are still jobs out there, and depending on the rarity in your field maybe still a relatively high demand.
Now that's not the list it once was, but it's still a reasonable amount to work with.
Unfortunately the things that weaken your position have grown:
The supply of jobs has decreased.
The supply of applicants has increased.
The budget of the client is much tighter.
The agent's commission or margin will be under pressure and may have shrunk.
The perception that there are fewer jobs available will affect you and the agent and client.
Time is no longer on your side, jobs are not staying open as long as they were, because the demand for them is so much higher.
That might seem to be a lot to go against, but as long as you are aware of each factor, you are in a better position to get what you want, even despite the new pressures. It's still no reason to sell yourself short though, you have some leverage, and I will be covering details of how to use it next week.
I've also been asked to make an apology, as at lunch today our main number was offline for around 10 minutes, we are trying to figure out which of our suppliers caused the problem to ensure that it doesn't happen again.
Hugo
20/02/2009
