Contractor Model

It seems like all agencies go through a phase of evaluating the balance of full time employees vs. contractors at least once. Keeping full time staff can be scarey for a company that exists in the roller coaster environment of marketing and advertising. But, contractors create high overhead costs. Companies who have seen fast growth and hired staff to support it have also felt the pain of having to lay all those individuals off when the work evaporated. Contractors do not take lay offs personally. They do not expect to be on staff for more than a couple of months. So, it is easy to expand and contract with their support. However, if an agency is going to rely on contractor support to get projects completed they must also account for the time it takes to get teams organized and ramped up.