Money is of course the driving force behind a lot of things that we do in our life. It is definitely the reason behind the career path we choose for ourselves. I have seen many competent professionals, in the field of IT or otherwise, who have good years of experience in their hand and are well-versed in their field. Yet, earning a six-digit salary remains a distant dream for them. In fact most professionals assume that six-digit salaries or $100+ per hour jobs are fetched by people who are either exceptionally talented or extremely lucky.
Most professionals, even with a considerable experience to back them up, end up earning just around $50,000 a year. Even IT salaries, which are assumed to be high-end, might linger around $80,000 a year. IT or non-IT, if you intend to break through this glass ceiling, you need to choose a career path that is in demand and that offers you the chance to move quickly up the food chain.
SAP consultants
SAP is the number one ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Application. Every mid to big-sized company needs ERP to manage their regular operation. Thus, SAP runs many of the biggest companies of the world from behind the scenes. Professionals proficient in SAP are called SAP consultant. They are hired as skilled consultants to design and implement solutions to run these businesses.
SAP consultants often work for consultancy firms and many a times as independent consultants. Compensation packages for SAP top $140,000 per year for consultants employed with consulting firms. For independent SAP consultants, package easily touch $100 per hour.
IT Consultants
IT Consultants are independent contractors or contractors associated with a consulting company, hired by big companies for their short-term IT requirements. Consultants are essentially subject matter experts. They are sought for their specialization in a particular area, their problem solving skills and their ability to explore solutions and alternatives.
IT Consultants work on contract charging a fee for their knowledge and skill set. This fee is high, in fact much higher than the average salary of a full-time IT employee. However, businesses appreciate the competence that consultants bring along and thus do not mind paying a high value for it. As a result, today the trend for commissioning consultants has become quite common.
Businesses require consultants owning to their ever-occurring need for people adept at new and changing technologies. IT is a challenging field. Time and again, new technologies and applications crop up. How should a company fulfil this new requirement? What if this requirement is not a long-term one but will just last for a couple of months? What should a company do in such a case?
The first option that the business can exercise is to train its current employees for the specialized task. A chosen number of employees can be trained for the new task for a month or two. During this training period, the company will spend money to train the employees and also to allocate employee’s times for that training period. Even after all this investment, it is likely that a few months of training will only make employees knowledgeable and not experts.
The second option is to hire new employee with the required skillset. Hiring takes time – there are approvals to be taken and resumes to be collected; and interviews to be taken and appointments to be made. This again is a time consuming and expensive matter. Hiring also leaves you with permanent employees who you have to pay salary along with overheads such as health insurance, workers’ compensation and other admin expenses. Let’s say a company hired 10 new employees to take care of an important software upgrade. When software upgrade in ongoing, it would require all 10 of these new employees. However, once the upgrade goes through, it would require only 2 out of those 10 for general maintenance. So what should it do with the remaining 8? Can those 8 be simply fired? Firing employees is easier said than done. Firing employees without a valid reason is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
The first and the second option, both have their drawbacks. These drawbacks outweigh benefits. There might also be a situation where quick solution to the task is required. With lingering time-constraints, both the options of training and hiring are impractical as they are time consuming.
There is another option. This third option is also the most preferred one. It calls for hiring skilled and experienced consultants. They are available much quickly. They save time by providing the right assistance at the right time. They come, they solve and once the task is complete, they leave. No messes, just a clean and well-done job.