How one contractor gets his training paid for by going permanent
A bloke I worked with (both of us permies, a few years back) came up with an ideal solution to this problem, if somewhat a little mercenary.
His case may not suit everybody, because he predominantly works in the sh.. (er, sorry), the city. I bumped into him at Euston station (you know when the trains were actually running).
I asked him how it was going, and he said great. He told me that he was now doing a lot of work using Oracle 8i, Business Objects, and Java.
I said that that was a big swing from being a VB, C++ developer. He told me that there was "money to burn" in Java development. I mentioned the fact that it must have cost him a bomb for the training (my indication being that he had taught himself, poorly).
"Yeah, it's expensive. I think it was £2,500 for the Oracle/Bus' Objects, and, £2,000 for Java.", was the reply.
"What did you do - take out a loan!?"
"What for?"
"The training."
"Oh. Here's the secret Chris, me old mucka'..."
And here it is...
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In the (sh)city, the average length of time people spend within a particular permanent job is around 12 - 15 months (for the rest of the country I believe it's about 2 years). So it's a highly volatile work place, people moving in and out all of the time, it's accepted - live with it (he said).
So if you're clever (he is), permidom is an open door to you (and starting on a good wage too if you've got a couple of years good experience). So - he says - you move between contracting and permanent. Contracting for the pennies and permanent for the training. Once you've done the training you simply (his words) "F**k off back contracting, but for more!"
"But, what happens if you don't get the training?"
"After the first month you moan, bringing up promises of training, blah, blah! In the second month if nothing is done - hand in your notice and f**k off back contracting for a bit anyway!"
"Won't that get you a bad name?"
"I use agencies for contract work. But I get my permie jobs off my own bat, so if I leave early I don't snub my bread and butter agencies. I always finish my contracts so that keeps them sweet too. For companies, just don't try and go back to the same one (ha, ha). There's plenty of them out there who don't know you from Adam (or want to know you, they just want your work skills after all)."
"Does that work?"
"It works for me!"
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Mercenary, but apparently practised by a number (I won't say a lot) of people. Myself, I would like to afford my own training and learn at my own pace. Besides I tend to buy a number of books on the subject before I go on training courses - I don't think you can learn much going 'raw' to any training course.
It was difficult to afford the time/money for training before IR35, now it's even tighter. You can easily spend £150 on three good books, in reference to a particular subject - and that also comes out of the 5%.
If training for permies and contractors was on a par before IR35. It certainly isn't now. Anyone who thinks that it is, is misguided, or, actually believes the Paymaster General's spin.