What You Need to Know About IT Contractors

The boundaries of Boundaryless Career Change Management (BCM) have become blurred at a profound level. Technological change and organizational, global and competitive have obliterated the old professional models and obliterated the traditional framework for career progression and success. The boundary of boundless career planning has become permeable to every profession, every industry, and every geographic region. The need for fast results-oriented solutions has resulted in organizational structures that are not static but ever-evolving.

A new concept has emerged – boundaryless career management. This concept is a generic approach to career planning and encompasses all aspects of the professional life: recruitment, performance management, individual development, and training and development. In this broad sense, boundaryless careers refer to any career that does not fit into a pre-defined set of fixed parameters. Just because a field has a ‘boundary,’ it does not mean that a candidate applying for a position in that sector will be accepted or qualified for the job. Instead, all fields are affected by a myriad of forces and candidates who do not fit the expected parameters are placed in a pool of candidates that require different but still relevant strategies for their professional development.

All boundaryless careers are also, at root, boundless. In other words, they are careers that involve personal changes that take place over time, as opposed to a singular, settled career state. An example of a boundaryless career perspective would be physical disability, which often renders a qualified candidate incapable of performing certain tasks. If an individual with physical disability were to seek a career in law enforcement, he or she would not necessarily meet the minimum requirements of the job. Rather, the person with physical disability might undergo a series of personal career transitions across many different employment positions until he or she is able to function in the workplace.

Psychological flexibility, on the other hand, refers to the ability to adjust to changes in circumstances. In most boundaryless careers, career opportunities may be static or unchanging; thus, workers may have little room for career-oriented development due to stagnating pay levels, career prospects, or job security. Likewise, psychological flexibility presents workers with the opportunity to gain a wider range of perspective and experiences. For example, workers in IT can pursue positions in accounting, finance, human resources, or information technology, among other career opportunities.

In contrast, IT contractors enjoy flexible career options that give them the chance to work in a plethora of sectors. These include IT support, desktop publishing, graphic design, web design, programming, marketing, and software development, among other possibilities. These workers benefit from seamless integration with corporate strategy, as well as rapid career growth. In addition to these benefits, IT contractors are also often paid on time and not at the expense of other perks such as health care benefits or other employee perks.

According to the Merriam-Websters, the definition of “a boundaryless career” is “a broad category that includes both endless varieties of professions, unlimited degrees of freedom, and the ability to pursue work in virtually any field.” Therefore, IT contractors share many common characteristics with boundaryless careers. They are multilingual, multidealed, flexible, and have the ability to meet deadlines. However, IT contractors differ from career builders in that they often specialize in a particular area. The most common IT contractors are those involved in the following areas:

Due to the fact that the gig economy and the global marketplace are changing rapidly, there is a need for organizations to consider different models for their internal worker competency development. One option is to use the traditional model of hiring people according to an individual’s talents and skills. Another option is to develop mobile workforce solutions that allow an organization to tap into mobile workforce talent on the go. Both strategies, however, create constraints that limit potential career opportunities.

In a recent white paper released by the Center for Strategic Leadership & Employment Research, researchers suggested that IT contractors should be viewed as boundaryless workers with multiple skills. According to this white paper, IT workers should not be limited to one particular IT skill, but rather they should possess a broad range of skills. This allows the IT contractors to leverage their talents and their skills by turning those skills into new business opportunities on the fly. According to the zeitz et al, borderless careers offer workers the opportunity to make a significant living income, but only if they also have a strong leadership skill set and the drive to engage in a wide variety of career options on the go.