How To Achieve In Your Career

I am dedicating this article to answering a question posted by a business analyst. If you have a question or challenge about your business analyst career, post it as comment at the end of this article and I will answer it for you:

Having recently started in my first permanent position as a Business Analyst, I find the toughest challenge for me currently, is getting up to speed with the systems I have to analyse and develop (Risk Management and Finance Systems).

Now, 5 months later, I am thoroughly enjoying my BA role and tasks. However, I am considering moving into a contracting position. The primary reason would be for the money.

My fear however is that I would be moving into a contracting position prematurely and having read some of the posts in this string above, it seems that BA contractors have to be highly skilled.

Perhaps I should firstly ensure that my general BA skills are a lot more refined before putting myself into a position where I am required to be a specialist …

Any ideas?

It may shock you to find out that contract business analysts can earn up to 50% more than fulltime business analysts with the same skills, experience and training. The specifics of how much more you can earn as a contract business analyst (if money is your motivation) depends on the company you work for before making the jump to your contract business analyst career.

Some companies pay at the bottom of the pay range for fulltime business analyst careers while others are at the highend of the pay range derived from doing a salary survey for business analysts with comparable skill sets, experience or training.

However, even though contract business analysts are paid much more, they are required to highly skilled, competent or expert business analysts at what they do!

That is fair, isn’t it? Look at it from the IT Manager’s perspective. The IT Manager who pays a contract business analyst’s salary has to pay an additional premium or bonus to a staffing or recruiting firm for hiring you. So, the cost of hiring one (1) contract business analyst may end up being two (2) times the costs for fulltime business analysts.

The IT Manager who hires a contract business analysts has certain expectations including:

• Skills: The contract business analyst has to be highly skilled at what they do. If they are not then they wouldn’t last long on their contracting gigs, because IT Managers don’t want to pay all that money out without getting a return on their investment

• Experience: The contract business analyst has to be highly experienced at what they do. This does not necessarily mean that the contract business analyst would have 10 years of experience or anything like that … but that when it comes to specific skills like Use Cases or Requirements Elicitation, the contract business analyst is expected to have had a lot of exposure or experience in using those skills in several projects and business situations. In other words, IT Managers doesn’t want the contract business analyst to use their company as a learning experience. They are paying for your experience and they want you to start showing that from the moment you work in through the door

• Education: The contract business analyst has to be highly informed, trained or educated in business analysis. IT Managers doesn’t expect to find gaps in the knowledge areas of their contract business analysts. They already have fulltime business analyst employees who need to be trained or educated. But you are expected to be at the top of your game and that includes having the requisite knowledge to get your job done quickly, excellently and without any issues.

In the end, only you can tell you whether you should make the jump to becoming a contract business analyst. The rewards can be really good. You may get paid a lot more, you may work on a lot of fast-paced projects where your leadership, skills and experience will be fully utilized.

However, you will also have to highly skilled, knowledgeable and experienced to succeed as a contract business analyst. Your must be able to perform, produce results quickly and prove to everyone that you are worth your hire!

If you have any question or challenge facing your career, go ahead and post it as a comment at the end of this article and I will address it for you.

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