Hi All,What daily rate should I Aim for in the current climate. I am currently into permanent job of £75K basic salary+ benefits and now moving into contracting?Regds

Are you looking at what the market will pay? If so look at some job sites & call some agencies. If it’s what do you need to be an equivalent package? You need to do some sums. I'd work out the total value of my current package (ie incl employers pens contributions, bonus, bens, life insurance, sick & holiday pay etc etc). Then I'd look at the situation if contracting, eg increased pension contributions, tax savings, downtime between contracts, accountants fees, any training, no sick pay, no pay for hols or bank hols, etc etc. There’s also the increased uncertainty of contracting, e.g. your contract can be finished with no 'redundancy pay' in a lousy job market. If you're 25 with no dependents & lots of saving that might be fine. If you're 45 with 6 kids it probably isn't, so you'd need a premium to make it worthwhile.Robbie T

If you're currently on £75+bens then I think you need a contract rate of £500+ to make it worthwhile.

What you want and what you can get are now 2 different things. If you don't want to price yourself out of the market look at what the roles you want to go for are generally offering.As usual, Experience and skillset will dictate your value, it also depends on how you plan to pay yourself via ltd company, umbrealla company etc.

Without knowing anything about you apart from current basic, I'd say £500 would be the max rather than the min. £400 - £500 is sensible. £400 if you need something, £500 if they need someone like you.

You should aim for more if you land the contract through your own efforts. An agency will take around 20% so £600 direct = £480 agency.Right now there are loads of people available so you may have to take less than normal.

It is almost impossible to get a contract not through an agency as they do the initial vetting so its not worth even trying.Agencies now take 10% and that is ON TOP of what you get paid so don't listen to what everyone tells you therefore it is in the best interest of the agency to put forward good candidates and negotiate the best rate

Robbie T, surely as a consultant you know that the day rate (and, actually, the price of any product) is best based upon the outside market conditions (e.g. compeitition) and not upon an individual's costs...?

Your daily rate will depend on whether you are contracting in the public or private sector - public sector pretty much always pays more. I would say that you should be aiming for £600-£700 a day: as a contractor I earned double my salary - with pension, holidays, insurances etc I'm not sure it's that worthwhile if you don't earn that (I was on a very similar salary to you and earned £700 a day as a contractor very recently, so it's perfectly possible)good luck.

To those of you who are discussing rates of less than £700/day for contractors, I ask the following:Why do you think a client would only be willing to pay a highly skilled, highly experienced individual less than £1,000/day as a contactor, whereas they will happily pay £1,300+ per day for a data monkey when said data monkey's services are provided under the name of a big consulting company?I'm not convinced that the 'reassurance' of a big company name is the answer, nor is it because clients think they 'have' to pay more for a big company and all its overheads...The reason I ask this is because I think some of you contractors are selling yourselves short....

Think you need a reality check on both counts!A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

I 2nd that.Cynic - are you a contractor yourself or just boasting about the 1,300+ per day you are hired out at under the name of your big consulting company?

Wow... some strong reactions here to the 'data monkey' comment. Didn't mean to offend anyone.Let me ask it a different way: Why is someone who is billed out at say £1,500 per day by a big company only able to obtain £600/day when they work as a contractor?

Cynic, you seem to misunderstand the difference between buying a contractor and buying someone from a big firm. The mistake is this: you assume that the price you pay is only for the person doing the work. It's not quite as simple as that.Consider my case: if you pay me £1,000 a day as a contractor, you get just what you pay for. You get me, my experience, and not much else.However, if I am working for a big firm, you get: me and my experience. But you also get defined methodologies, a network of other experienced professionals I can call upon if I need their expertise or advice, formal quality assurance and risk management, and if you are unhappy with me, the firm can probably provide a suitable replacement at short notice.If you are staffing an entire team, using contractors means that the client assumes all the risk for the final deliverable. They are responsible for management, coordination, delegation, etc. On the other hand, if you staff an entire team from a consultancy, the client has a single point of accountability for delivery -- the risk has been transferred from the client to the consultancy.There are good reasons to use both consulting firms and contractors. BP, for example, are a pretty mature organisation that really understand how to manage their professional services spending. They insist on managing contractor relationships themselves (no subcontractors) and actively manage their projects. It works well for them.By contrast, when I've worked in government clients who try to save money by using contractors, the end result is usually less than the sum of its parts. It is let down by having insufficient internal support to manage the contractors effectively. Don't get me wrong, the public sector is a great place for a contractor to get rich -- I just don't think that the government gets much value for it's money.

I do take Cyncic's point though. For someone earning £75K would put them somewhere in the vicinity of manager level in a big consultancy. So if an analyst or junior can be charged out at over £1000 p/day, it's hard to believe the large discrepency is justified by merely having defined processes/methodologies.Nonetheless I guess the market pays what they believe to be worthwhile.

A lot of the value is in the ability to communicate the results of the project i.e. the brand image of the consultancy to a wider audience.I can go to the CEO or investors or Divisional Managers and say Mckinsey recommended X. This is more powerful than John Smith recommended X - he used to work for Mckinsey.

What JJ said

Have I wondered into the Twilight Cone? Permie with a job at £75k to go contracting you must be mad?? No security, sick pay, work cancelled at drop of a hat, no prospects, stay put my son!Not sure what you guys do as "consultants/contractors" unless its finance industry but rates have tumbled, £500-700. gosh where are these companies, in my dreams, let me know. Typical rates via "agencies" are £350-400 max. £180 a day for local councils now, was £350, for top people.Too many people looking, too few jobs, usually its what the minimum you can rather than whats the maximum.Gasps in amazement at these postings

oops Sorry Twilight Zone - finger trembled at what Iwas reading