Late yesterday afternoon I received a call from my contract company stating that the company I interviewed for contacted them about me working for them. They said that they would like for me to work as a contractor versus full-time. The deal is that the pay rate is 8K less than what I'm being paid now and my contract company doesn't think I'll get the job since it's for a bank and my credit isn't good. My contract company has been acting strangely ever since I told them last week that I interviewed with the company. For the first time in seven years they acted quite negative about the job and I never understood why.
After talking with them I called my friend at the company I interviewed with and told him what they said. He then told me the following:
- My contract company is a vendor for the company I interviewed with and they have a contract between them that states if anyone from the contract company tried to get a full-time job they have to notify the contract company and the employee has to start as a contractor and work for a minimum of six months. They can't hire the employee outright. This makes sense because the contract company doesn't want the company I interviewed for to "steal" employees from them. The problem I have with this is that my contract company never told me this little nugget of information and is acting like the company only wants me as a contractor when in all actuality they want me full-time but can't due to this legal contract the companies have between each other.
- Since I would be a contractor with the new company, the new company doesn't request my credit information and my contract company never sends this information to them. Why my contract company is telling me that the new company won't hire me because of my credit score is completely mysterious to me.
- I can't tell my contract company I know these bits of information because my friend working there asked me not to, so I'll never have these questions answered in my mind.
- I asked if my pay rate for the job could be increased by 4K so that I would only lose 4K and they said probably not because the owner of the contract company set the rate herself. I asked them to ask her for me anyway. For all I know they could be making in excess of $25K on me and not giving me a fair cut of it.
- I cannot live on 8K less.
- I don't have much of a choice since my current contract ends March 31st. My friend said that the contract company knows this and doesn't understand why they would "exploit" (his words) me like that. They are taking more of a cut from my pay knowing that there isn't a lot of jobs in my area anyway and they have the chance to lose me after six months if the company hires me full-time and I'm no longer a contractor.
- I have been personal friends with the owner of my contract company and her family for seven years now. This is the first time I feel something shady is going on and now I am scared of a) not getting the job at all and b) getting paid much lower than I should if I do get the job.
I was very excited about all of this and hoped to have an answer today. Now I know I have to be a contractor there, that is if I get the job at all. My friend said that the company really wants me to work there, but I hope that an issue doesn't arise with my contract company and whatever game they are playing at.
I visit my contract company today at 4:00pm. This will be an interesting meeting.
