In the employment search I have contacted four local consulting groups, two are expanding their efforts with state government. Each group is aware of my efforts. My objective at this point is to obtain an engagement in the public or private sector, as a consultant. I can see how individual companies acting independently could present the same consultant.
In response to great people not being assigned to government contracts, based on feelings or facts, similar complaints are made in the private sector concerning individual consultants. Noted similar comments concerning employees within the same project teams. I contracted with consultants that filled a need because those resources were not present within the organization. Once invited in, they are managed. Two other perceptions are relevant at this point. The first is that the consultant is only as good as the internal contact. And, the second perspective being that from a higher level view, leadership can only see one team. It didn?t matter if I pointed left or right, the responsibility and authority resided with me.
In the employment search I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss government ?IT? with several managers and directors. Frankly, I was impressed with their integrity and candor. In some cases their efforts directly affected people?s lives, and that is a responsibility and pressure that deserves respect from the public. It?s just an observation, not necessarily attempting to win your hearts here, we all want to feel good about what we do.
A Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for a project manager was sent out to four consulting groups. Only two responded. The group I went through decided not to respond, but having learned of this I requested the opportunity to create a proposal during my first interview with that consulting group. I had 24 hours to create a winning proposal. It came down to two consulting candidates from the same group, and I wasn?t the one. This is not a negative. I enjoyed the challenge and the interview, attempting to get some feedback to build upon. The key point here is that I responded as if I were the IT management and it was my problem to solve, what would I want to see in the proposal. The RFQ was key, and starting with the understanding that many perceived risks are not going to be documented in the RFQ helped. They found the proposal interesting or entertaining enough to schedule the interview. The barriers for me are moving experience from a privately held corporate employee to consulting, government just happens to be a potential client.
My biased opinion; since they selected the other candidate over me, they must have found a highly qualified and capable person. Only time will tell if everything else aligns for their success. RFX?s are important, but they can never provide the whole story, public or private we just can not expose ourselves that way. One last thing, I didn?t lie about anything, my integrity is much too valuable in this smaller than expected local IT world.
