The Vendor Concept For IT Consultants
Understanding the layers of the vendor onion is a must for every IT consultant .Though you have the required skills and work permits
you can not just work as a consultant directly for a company in the US . Corporations
in the US
hire consultants only through a preferred vendor. Preferred Vendor is nothing
but a business term for a body shopping company. And this preferred vendor will
in turn have his preferred vendors who employ you. This can be compared to the Computer Networks OSI Model where the layers below provide services to the layer above. The
only difference in our case is that we are the only layer that provides
services to all the layers above.
Even when you get paid on a 80-20 percentage basis, depending
on where you stand in the food chain you end up getting paid half or less than
what the client pays the preferred vendor. So working directly for the preferred
vendor or the client should be our goal as a consultant. Not all preferred
vendors process our visas and green cards. And that is just one good reason why
we should get your green card processed ASAP through the employer we work for.
Having a green card or at least an EAD will help us switch to different
vendors and work directly with the client or preferred vendor.
While we get busy doing our best at our new clients place we should also keep up with the happenings in the technical as well as immigration spaces. And
when you are ready do not hesitate to run your own company to skip one or all the layers in between.
In the consulting business even a dollar an hour makes a big difference and
running pay checks and handling taxes is no big deal.
Read the following articles for further details: