Self-Employment

Are you considering becoming self-employed? Or are you an entrepreneur seeking to move to an employee role? Or a self-employed contractor seeking to return to a full time role with a single employer?

The potential to gain greater career control and even financial independence through self-employment attracts many executives and professionals – and can become especially alluring at a time of career stress.

Conversely, the demands of self-employment – including financial pressure, risk and long hours – lead many who are self-employed to seek the stability and perceived security of a full time employee role.

In both cases, misconceptions abound. Decisions are frequently made under pressure and are ill-considered. Such decisions frequently lead to long-lasting adverse consequences.

It’s vital to understand that neither self-employment nor an employee role is inherently the ‘better’ path. The only questions that matter are those that relate to determining which path is right for you.

Many who choose the entrepreneurial path never look back. Others lose their life savings or their most precious relationships pursuing it – sometimes both.

The variety and higher daily pay rates of self-employment as a contractor suit many people. Others become disenchanted by the uncertain income stream, the constant search for the next contract, or the lack of a sense of connection and of common purpose within a team.

Amongst the self-employed seeking to return to the perceived security of a steady pay cheque, there is often a sense of being ‘sadder but wiser’. Yet without professional assistance, such a decision may come to seem all but impossible to implement. Employers are typically reluctant to hire someone who has been self-employed, seeing them as simply ‘seeking shelter from the storm’, unlikely to be satisfied – and perhaps unlikely to be manageable, as well.

Whatever the reasons or circumstances of your interest in entering or leaving self-employment, the implications of this decision deserve the highest levels of self-awareness and of awareness of market realities. And they deserve the most careful planning and implementation.

The stakes are high. In no decision in your working life is a strategic approach likely to be more important.

Your best next step: arrange a free consultation with an EPR career management expert. Our Consultants can help you to determine your suitability for self-employment or for a move from self-employment to a ‘steady job’, and can help you to develop the strategy essential to a successful transition, if this is what your situation requires.

Click here to arrange a free, no-obligation career consultation now.