Help evaluating a job offer: consulting/defense contractor

November 6, 2015 6:41 PM

They have moved very quickly: red flag? How much stock should I place in Glassdoor reviews? Is any "consultant" title a useful foot in the door to the industry? Is this uninspiring salary reasonable given my background? Intricacies below the fold.

My situation:

I finished a PhD in a physical science/engineering field about three years ago and have been doing research at a government lab since then, as a federal term employee. I have concluded that I want more variety and more client-type relationships than is compatible with keeping up the academic publication record required to be hired permanently.

Time is on my side with more than a year to go on my current term, but I am ready to leave when I find the right position. I first started looking at McKinsey, BCG, etc., but put off applying because (1) it seems like preparing for case interviews is a major time investment and (2) it's not clear that I could leverage my experience/expertise in order to start somewhere ahead of a recent college grad. I'm 30, you know?

Enter the many companies near me (DC area) that subsist on government contracts -- apparently largely defense, which I don't have experience with. Many describe the work as "consulting", post positions including words such as "engineer", and don't seem to rely on case-style interviews. Perhaps a good compromise or stepping stone to high-powered consulting? Over the last 3 weeks I have put in maybe 20 applications. No responses yet, but probably still too soon to evaluate the effectiveness of my approach.

Interaction with this company:

This large company was on my radar, but I had not seen any specific positions that looked like the right match. I saw a posting for an "open house" last week with about a dozen positions, none of which I thought I was qualified for at first glance, but I signed up anyway for face time. The first clue that it was more like a first-round interview than a career fair was a call asking me to schedule a specific time within the four-hour block. So I took another look at the list and identified a job that looked interesting, if a stretch.

During the interview I explained my experience and motivation for wanting to do consulting, and asked if they would consider me for that position. My interviewer talked about the position mainly in terms of the job function -- I really didn't learn much about the goals of the contract other than that it has something to do with the Navy. I didn't press for details partly because I didn't think I was much of a candidate for the specific positions associated with the open house, and partly because they all required a security clearance and I thought the details might have been classified. The interviewer explicitly said that he wasn't qualified to ask me any technical questions to evaluate my background but that he wanted to share my resume with colleagues who would probably be very interested in me.

This week a recruiter followed up and asked me to fill out a pre-screening form related to the clearance process. Today she called with a verbal offer! What, no second-round interview? I have...

So many questions:

- The super-generic title offered, Senior Consultant, was not on the list. So is this even the same contract? Does that even matter if they can't give me details about the project? Is that normal for consulting, normal for classified work, or shady?

- During salary discussions at the interview, I gave my current salary (80k) and said that as a baseline I would not consider a pay cut, but was hoping for a bit of a bump and would have to consider the job details and benefits. The recruiter offered me 80k and asked how I felt about a "lateral move". I said that it was certainly worth negotiating from there, but pointed out the difference in PTO. She didn't think the PTO was flexible but said she'd ask if they were able to go any higher on the salary. Afterward I did the math; 5k would make up for that difference... and also put me at the Glassdoor average for the title and location. I kind of assume the rest of the benefits will be worse than federal but that it will be hard to get the info until I have a written offer and a 1-week deadline. So for comparison... I don't want to work in industry (not motivated by consumer products), but directly using my area of research expertise there, I could probably make 100-120k. What should I be expecting here? I have no quote-unquote consulting experience, but I believe all of my experience is relevant.

- Oh, Glassdoor... many reviews say that the benefits, pay for entry-level employees, culture, and reputation have tumbled downhill since the company became publicly traded 5 years ago. A similar number are glowing. A few say that it totally depends on whom you're working with and that the internal politicking is terrible and leads to overwork, in contrast to the heavily touted work-life balance. And also that it's cheaper to fill positions by underpaying new people, while experienced employees are being given lack of work notices. So... how do I evaluate whether this specific job is a good or bad situation within the company?

- ...and if I turn it down, will that sour my chances of finding another job at this company? I've thrown in applications to other positions there and certainly like the idea of an engineering/consulting job. I know to avoid saying I'd take it for $__k and then turning down a firm offer; with the recruiter I left it at "Can they do better? And I really need to talk with the supervisor about the details... such as the work site..."

- Oh oh OH: the recruiter said that the clearance was not strictly required for this position, and that if it failed to go through (like after I'd been there for 3 months), I wouldn't be fired. Is that something I can believe? Could I expect it to be written into my contract?

Here is the thing: if I'd gone through a few challenging rounds of interviews and then they offered me compensation equivalent to my current job, I might think, hey, they have really high standards, and they're willing to give me a shot at a new field with no financial disruption! BUT, as much as I want to believe I was just that glowingly awesome in the single interview I'd prepared for by Googling the job title... the whole situation jives with those negative reviews. And I'm not desperate, so they'd have to offer me more to jump into a seemingly dicey situation. Is that sound reasoning or am I tripping myself up with some irrelevant cognitive bias?

I am waiting for the prospective supervisor to call me. I have a feeling similar concerns will arise with future opportunities in this field; every company I've read reviews for has had complaints that concerned me. Thanks for reading this far! Any insight is appreciated!

posted by ecsh to Work & Money (7 answers total)

Best answer: This has red flags written on it. I would cut and run.

Job interviews exist so that you can interview the company, not just so they can interview you. Skipping this process sends the message that they don't really care whether or not you are happy at the company. You answered a cattle call and now they are herding you through the pen.

The company should have its best foot forward to you right now. This is your prospective employer on its best day. Can you imagine what your actual work days will be like? What about raises and career growth, could you imagine that?

The only way this could remotely be worth it is if they offered you all of the money. And not $5k more, ALL the money. Because right now I am not seeing the upside to you, just lots of risk. You haven't even met the boss, and that person makes or breaks your life. I don't blame you at all for being nervous, it is rational.
posted by crazycanuck at 7:32 PM on November 6, 2015

Best answer: I don't see any reason to take a risk on jumping ship if it seems sketchy and you aren't getting anything out of it (an equal pay situation doesn't really help you given the disruption changing jobs will create in your life. It's not like you're dying to escape your current job). Wait for something that has fewer red flags.
posted by zug at 7:50 PM on November 6, 2015

Best answer: Red flags, red flags and more red flags. Surely you should have interviewed with someone with some sort of technical background before they made an offer.

For what it's worth, I had a phone interview with one of these subsists-on-defense-contracts firms (though a small firm) as I was finishing my PhD (I can maybe dig out their name if you want--this was one of the better interview experiences I had, but the security clearance thing was a dealbreaker). The phone interview was with a manager with a technical background, included some basic technical questions, some discussion of the sort of things they worked on in broad terms and specific discussion of the security clearance issue--their contracts almost always required a clearance (which dual citizen me can't get). Extrapolating from that experience, I'd have expected them to say something like "X% of our business doesn't require a clearance and we do have N people in $job without clearances" rather than vaguely saying it wouldn't be a problem.
posted by hoyland at 7:50 PM on November 6, 2015

Response by poster: Okay, thank you all for the reality check. I wasn't too inclined to take it unless a bunch of people said that no really, it was a good offer, and the weirdness was par for the course in this industry.

FWIW, I'm not necessarily changing jobs for more money, more because I'm not interested enough in the right things [publishing like an academic] to be hired permanently. But you're right, on a day to day basis I love my coworkers, the hours are flexible, etc. I just have the impression I should be paid more outside of government and don't want to undervalue my time.

(The interviewer was a technical guy, just a different flavor of engineer such that we both knew he wouldn't have known if I was BSing details about my research. And it's possible but far from clear that he's the prospective supervisor -- I was thrown off by the title change. The recruiter is on the opposite coast and I don't feel like she knows anything. But I'm also totally importing some past experiences with useless recruiters.)

Any other comments on consulting/contracting hiring experiences are welcome.
posted by ecsh at 8:51 PM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The salary alone would be an absolute deal breaker for me. As in, I wouldn't even consider it. I worked for 80k as a government contractor in DC a decade ago, with a Bachelor's degree, and I eventually quit because of the stressful commute and office politics, despite liking the work and my immediate team.

You have a PhD, it's 2015 and they're offering you 80k and shitty benefits? Oh HELL no.

No matter what they tell you, contractors have less stability than employees, and yes they will let you go in 3 months if they feel like it.

You don't sound nearly psyched enough about working for them to balance out the negatives.

Oh also, despite the fact that so many positions ask for security clearances, my understanding is that legally, all they can require is that you be *clearable*, not already cleared. So, you can go ahead and apply for jobs that state a need for a clearance you don't have.

I worked on a contract for Lockheed Martin that required a clearance I didn't have, and I literally spent the whole first month with barely anything to do. I couldn't attend meetings for my project, I didn't have access to any electronic documents, I just had a small pile of some written requirements to review, which took a few days. I spent the rest of the time studying (I was in school at the time) and being bored.
posted by mysterious_stranger at 8:58 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I actually don't think there are really any "red flags" per se. I work in this industry and what you're seeing isn't that abnormal. When companies need to staff a contract they will often move very quickly — sometimes alarmingly quickly if you are used to industries with slow hiring processes. (I've been in interviews on Fridays that went well, where the person was asked if they're ready to start Monday morning.)

However, I would certainly push hard and be prepared to walk away over the salary and benefits. They do seem low, and that would be a good reason not to take the job. Probably they are looking at your academic background and lowballing you, figuring that you'll take something that seems like a good salary in academia even though it's low in the private sector.

> Could I expect it to be written into my contract?

Yeah, no. You won't have a contract, not in the manner I think you're thinking of. You'll almost certainly be an at-will employee under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia (or maybe Maryland, depending). Unless you have some very specific technical skills, nobody is going to put you on a employer-binding contract — the only people I know who work in defense and have an individually-negotiated employment contract are people with very specific technical skills who their employer is concerned are going to jump ship to a competitor, or C-level executives. Generally speaking, you don't want to have a contract like that; part of the reason people do defense work (in the DC area, anyway) is because it's so easy to float around from company to company, getting raises in the process. You work at some big, soulless corporation, build relationships and/or get yourself onto a big program, then you make an over-and-up move, generally to a smaller company. When it runs out of contracts, you go back to Big Defense for a while. Rinse, repeat.

The way you get job security, if that's something you're after, is by getting yourself written into proposals as "key personnel". Tenure it ain't, but it's a pretty good discouragement against getting let go while that proposal is being floated. And really, who you know and what contracts you work on is often more important than the company who is cutting your paychecks at any particular moment. (Lots of people will spend years on the same government contract, doing the same job, but move between two or three actual employers on the backend as the contract changes hands or gets recompeted. The most annoying part of this is changing your health insurance all the time.)

As for the job title, "consultant" is a generic job title to the point of meaninglessness, but very common. At some places the modifier ("Senior ___", etc.) is fairly important, though, because it (sometimes) puts you into a different pay band than the same title without the modifier. It's better to be at the bottom end of a salary range for a specific title than at the top end, of course.

The job title that you are hired into at the contracting company isn't necessarily (and usually isn't) the same title as the position on the contract that you'll be filling for the government. E.g. your offer letter with Big Warmongers Inc. might call you a "Senior Consultant", but the contract between BWI and the government might have some totally different title specific to that project, e.g. "Deputy Lead Coordinator for Change Management and Happy Hours" or whatever.

Oh, and their inability to negotiate PTO but flexibility on salary is very common. I don't know why that is, exactly, but I've never had a defense-industry employer be willing to give me extra vacation. If you ask, they'll generally toss a few extra bucks of base salary at you and mutter something about "flexible work schedules". I think this is because they have to be able to guarantee the government that each FTE on a contract is going to work a certain number of hours, and so if they offered you more than the standard amount of vacation on paper, then they'd run the risk of having to answer a DCAA auditor's questions about how they were going to make up the difference to the government.

Anyway, I think the real question here is whether you want to work in defense or not. It's sort of a weird industry to work in, not to everyone's liking. If you do, I would go back to them and ask for more money. If they won't go for it, I'd keep shopping around. There's nothing about the job offer itself that seems totally weird except for the lowball salary, IMO.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:59 AM on November 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was just coming to post some of what Kadin2048 said. I suspect what you've hit here is a Navy agency put out an RFP for staff with a certain set of skills, and once the firm saw you had the skillset, they didn't bother to investigate any further.

I've been on both sides of this situation: the contract staff, and the federal agency. It kind of sucks both ways, because the contract firm is basically just trying to find someone who they can fit into the box, and the federal agency is stuck with whoever is on the team of the firm that won the contract. (The last time I was placed as contract staff, my firm was the only firm that submitted on the RFP! Lucky for them, I could actually do the job, and well.)

I don't know enough about the security-type work you might find at the Navy, and it sounds like they aren't going to tell you. Frankly, if they are making an offer without describing the work, I wouldn't accept it. That's aside from the whole thing about your salary.

Oh, and the salary: it's possible they are holding you to the equivalent of the GS salary for the position, which again is something that happened to me. It has nothing to do with your PhD and all about what the GS schedule says.
posted by suelac at 6:42 PM on November 7, 2015