Dear Glenn,
You r 100 % correct.
U can roam anywhere around the world as free bee before marriage only.

N also last but not the least with good money in the A/c at the end of the month.

Cheers,
abhi

Well, I believe it depends on the contract role you intend on moving too. There are positions for Junior Planners or less experienced planners available. These come up because some companies refuse to pay market rates for planners.

Like others have said experience is very important but you can gain experience working on projects as a freelance contractor. Permanent positions will give you training courses etc but both types of employment will give you experience in the project environment and communication with project teams. Learning how to extract information out of people is a key skill planners require.

As previously said there are a lot of contract planners out there that aren’t very good. They earn a lot of money and can be very poor. They work in a contract role for a period and then before their poor handy work is discovered they move on leaving a new or existing planner a big mess. In my experience this occurs across a wide spectrum of planners - planners with minimal experience and in a lot of cases planners who have been doing it for years.

It is important to know the basics very well and be confident in your ability. Good Luck!

To work for yourself or someone else??????

I spent many years working for someone and then decided to go self employed. Now looking back I wish I had done it earlier but it’s not for everyone.

Depends on how risk adverse you are: if you want a steady income, the money arriving in your bank account every month, (maybe you have familly and other responsibilities), then maybe contracting is not for you. It takes a while to get a regular client base so that work keeps coming your way although I know some people that go from job to job and don’t worry too much about getting client base - which is ok when things are good but risky when there’s a downturn.

On the upside, the money is generally better and you have a degree of control over what you do and when. There’s lots of reasons for and against, that said, if I had only only 1.5 years experience I’d probably keep employed for abit longer until I had more experience. Just change jobs, you don’t have to jump into being self employed.

If I was going to employ a contract planner, I’d be looking for someone with at least 5 years experience, preferably 10, aged 30 plus, preferably over 35 - experience counts, I know it’s the chicken and egg situation but there are too many contract "planners" out there that haven’t really got the experience required and as they have to pay for it, are not going to do much further training to improve themselves. Some will, but most won’t.