• Put every keyword in your resume
• Show that you were an architect on all the positions
• Poorly articulate your experience in the interview
• Have inconsistencies in your resume
• Don't admit you don't know something

Put every keyword in your resume: There was a time when my client would look at the resume and say, "this one looks promising, you don't have to spend the whole hour with him. If you find out he is a good fit in the first 15 minutes, go ahead and hire him." After the interview, I would end up explaining to him how bad the candidate was for our position. After a while this became a routine and I started thinking, "I hope my client doesn't think I am intentionally not hiring any one!"

The point is, if you put something in your resume, you better be able to defend it. There was a candidate who said he didn't know any design patterns but he had listed a few in his resume. When I asked him about it, he got confused and said it should not have been there. Did the vendor put them there? I don't know.

Show that you were an architect on all the positions: If you have always been an architect, you probably have no coding experience and wouldn't make a good architect. Now, you may be listing only a subset of your projects but it doesn't make sense to list only architecture experience for a developer position.

Poorly articulate your experience in the interview: I have seen good candidates not articulating their experience very well. This could be due to nervousness but it also reflects poor communication skills - something IT projects can't afford especially if you are expected to participate in meetings and/or communicate with others on a regular basis. In response to "What is your experience with JMS?", I sometimes get, "Yeah I know JMS, there is a queue and there is a message and you can send the message through the queue." Or even worse, "Yeah I know JMS, Java Message Service." This response does not help me. 

And please don't ever say, "I don't know XYZ but I can pick it up very fast." If you don't know about something, how do you know you can pick it up quickly?

Have inconsistencies in your resume: You cannot have 2 years of experience in WebSphere 6.1 because it didn't exist 2 years ago - period.

Don't admit you don't know something: This one turns me off completely. In fact, this could turn any interviewer off easily. Once I asked a WebSphere administrator candidate how to start WebSphere Application Server in Linux or Unix environment. He said, he had only administered in windows environment. "Okay...how do you start WAS in windows environment?" I asked. He said, "through the start menu." I said you wouldn't have start menu available for a remote server. He said they used remote desktop. I was looking for the command line way to start the server so I asked him directly about the command line option. He went on to say there was always a way to start WAS without using command line and then he spent some time defending his position. The point in case is, it's OK to say, "I don't know."

Sarcasm aside, it's not too difficult not to make these mistakes. 

• Read the position description and think about the relevant experience BEFORE the interview
• Do some fact checking on the resume; inaccuracies go against both recruiter (is he manipulating the resume?) and candidate (is he lying on the resume?)
• Relax and make the interview conversational; bad interview doesn't mean you are a bad candidate, it just means you are not a good fit

Send me a position just because a keyword matched: This is my favorite (I know I said I am listing the points in no particular order but I just can't resist). Guys please! I can't be a good match for an ATG Architect position if I worked as a developer on ATG for 2 months in the year 2001. I know you are using some software to search resumes by keywords but at least glance through the resume once.

Try to tempt me to leave my current project: If I could change only one thing about the recruiting process, it would be this one. The recruiter tells me he has a position for me that would be a 'great' fit. I tell them I am already on a project and not looking for anything. And he tells me "I just wanted to check with you if you are dissatisfied with your current project or looking for a 'better' opportunity." If that' how you get the candidates, expect to loose them the same way. Come on! How could a candidate trust you with such an unethical behavior? When I come across a recruiter like this, the first thing that comes to my mind is, he is probably lying about both opportunity and role.

Describe every project as SOA/web service project and every position as architect position: This is a funny one. Once, after hearing the description, I told the recruiter it didn't sound like an architect role (it required developing swing components - something I had never done), she said, "I mean you will be working with people at architect level."Huh!

List technologies instead of describing the position and role: My reaction to these emails is... nothing! Because they have no information. I recent one I received looked like, "CA, 3-6 months, JSP, EJB, Struts, send resume..." I don't even know what to write about this one.

I have a few more that don't turn me off right away but do come across poorly:

• Send me an email not addressed to me
• Keep sending me the same position multiple times
• Spend more time describing your firm rather than talk about the position
• Be interested in my resume and rate information more than telling me about the opportunity

Next time look for "How NOT to get hired."

Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, tax advisor or small/large business expert. Everything I write here is my personal opinion so take it with a grain of salt. I am not affiliated with any vendor so any product I mention is just for example purposes, I don't recommend any products or services. 

Yesterday, I wrote about how to estimate your utilization when you are planning to become an independent consultant. Today, I am going to give some pointers about estimating your expenses. Once you know your expenses, you can calculate the amount of money you have to make to justify quitting full time job. I used the following formula:

My income as an employee + my expenses as an independent consultant = money I have to make to justify quitting my job

How do you estimate your expenses? Consider the following expenses:

• Accountant's fee every year
• Government fees (for example, Illinois has yearly fee to run an LLC)
• Business supplies - I only considered supplies I would need for business. For example, cost of printing business cards counts but cost of printer cartridge doesn't because I would buy printer cartridge even if I didn't have a business
• Business insurances - there could be a separate blog entry about insurance but if you own a business, you would at least need general liability insurance, professional liability insurance (some clients require it), worker's compensation (if you are going to have employees) and its variants
• Personal insurances - health, life, short term and/or long term disability. I did pay for some of these insurances as an employee as well so I only calculated the difference
• Self employment tax - if you start an LLC, you will be paying so called self employment taxes. It is 15.3% on the first $90,000 you make every year. As an employee, you pay half of it and your employer pays the other half. As a self employed, you pay both the halves
• Any professional memberships or subscriptions you might need
• Any other cost you might incur as a result of quitting your job (e.g. forced to buy a second car, move to a more expensive location)
• Cost of lost benefits such as 401k match, paid vacation and more - this is an expense because now you will have to pay for these out of your own pocket
• One time expenses or startup expenses: I didn't pay much attention to startup expenses because they incur only once and I didn't want to factor them into my billing rate but here are some startup expenses you might want to consider:
• LLC articles of organization filing fee
• Laptop and related accessories such as internet security software, hardware locks etc.
• Bank account fee
• Attorney fee if you need advice on what type of company to form
• Software such as Quick Books to maintain your books

I am intentionally not putting any numbers against any of these expenses. You need to do a lot of research to estimate them. Don't take others' expenses and assume that you will incur the same amount.

Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, tax advisor or small/large business expert. Everything I write here is my personal opinion so take it with a grain of salt. I am not affiliated with any vendor so any product I mention is just for example purposes, I don't recommend any products or services. 

I want to go independent but how much should I charge? Every consultant thought about this or similar question sometime in his or her life - most likely while considering consulting as a career. Some consultants recommend doubling or even tripling your current rate as an employee while others determine billing rate by dividing desired income by number of hours you expect to work. In any case, you have to know the number of hours you expect to work (called utilization) and amount of money you want to (or have to) make.

How to determine number of billable hours per year? You have to use your judgment to answer this question but use the following data points:

• If you put your resume on monster.com or similar and get a lot of phone calls and emails, it means your skills are in demand and the market is good; you shouldn't have any problems finding projects throughout the year. When I started, I used to get at least 3-5 emails a day and a phone call a day so I knew that there were a lot of jobs out there for me. Be careful though. A lot of 'opportunities' will simply not match your skill set and interest
• Look at your vacation plans. If you have to take vacation during certain time of the year, you have less flexibility. You will not be working while on vacation and on top of that you may loose time between the projects. Try to use time between the projects as vacation
• Consider your location. If you are located in a big city, chances are there is a lot of work for you
• The length of your contract will also impact the number of hours you will work in a year. My first contract was 8 months long so I knew that during the year, I would be between projects only once and I could estimate higher utilization
• Finally, consider public holidays and emergency situations. Companies have 8-11 holidays in a given year, which means a loss of 64 - 88 hours per year for you. Add to that the hours you would loose due to unforeseen circumstances. Remember, you can't call in sick without loosing money!

When I was considering going independent, I estimated that I would work between 1600 and 1800 hours per year. I adjusted that number to 1800 hours/year when I got my first 8 months long contract and I didn't have any major vacation planned.

Tomorrow, I will talk about estimating the income...

On Thursday November 17, 2005, I wrote a blog entry about going solo. Today, I am writing this entry to announce that I have actually gone solo. In a search engine friendly language, "I have become an independent consultant providing problem definition, analysis, architecture, design, development and knowledge services in the Information Technology area."

The first draft of this entry contained details about my prior consulting experience, my wide experience in solving IT problems in pretty much all the industries and my specialty in SOA/web services and J2EE/WebSphere. But all that self promotion was overshadowing this enthusiastic "going solo" announcement; so, I am going to save those things for the future.

The new life

Am I doing something totally different than what I was doing before? No. Life doesn't change much as an independent consultant - especially when I have pretty much always worked for consulting companies! I still go to the client location every day, I still work on IT projects, I still move from one project to another, I still work with clients and go through the daily dynamics of the client-consultant relationship and above all, I still have family, mortgage and car. A number of things have changed however. I can now do consulting within the framework of my core values and beliefs. I can truly shape my career by focusing on areas of my interest and by choosing my projects. I don't have to worry about my utilization and that next promotion. I get paid for all the hours I work and I am accountable for all the hours I don't work.

The details

I have formed a Limited Liability Company named Taraba Consulting LLC. As part of this company, I will help clients identify, analyze and solve IT problems. For now, I will only accept contract positions in Chicago land area. These days I am working for a healthcare client in downtown Chicago re-architecting and redesigning a web services based messaging application.

The influences

While working at two of the big five consulting companies, I had always wanted to cut the crap and focus on the consulting aspects I really loved. Working for a corporation for a very short period of time made me realize that I had to be a consultant or a teacher (ideally both) to keep my sanity. My wife helped me see my potential and encouraged me to work hard to realize that potential. And finally, two of my team members on a project at my last employer provided me with the environment that helped me make this happen sooner than later.

I have much more to share on this topic. In fact, starting today, visitors will see a new category named 'Consulting' in my blog but more on that later.