When a Client Offers You a Job

Long gone are the days when you had one career for most of your working life. Instead, you can easily have multiple careers, and good ones at that.

The other thing that has changed is the lack of movement between the independent firm side and the client side of things. Yes, in the past you might have switched once when you realized that you were on the “wrong” side, but the line between “firm” and “client” isn’t like it used to be. In fact, your relationship with the client should not be adversarial but rather supportive. The employees on the client team are not your enemy, and you might want to work with them one day.

The Forcing Function

Three things are coming together as a forcing function in the space:

• All the disruption and breaking down of barriers between client and firm, as noted above.
• These days, it’s more common for firms to have client concentration challenges (any client that represents more than 25% of their billings), compounded in part by how much firms struggle with the new business function, and so they focus on client growth to the detriment of new clients instead of focusing on both.
• Firms are struggling more than usual and so principals are more open to options they might never have considered before.

So what happens? The firm goes through a few layoffs and one of the clients offers the principal a job. Or more often than not, one of the partners is lured away to the client side.

Trading “Principal” for “Department Leader” Role

This article is about how to think of an opportunity that might come your way. Heck, you might even initiate it if things have changed so much that you’re ready for a new or different challenge. It’s actually not the end of the world if you can get over any self-imposed stigma you might be feeing:

• Think of something like this as a 2-year stint and not a major career change. Providing financial stability might be a huge win, but it might also allow you to regroup and then relaunch from a position of strength, later.
• Keep in mind that the longer you plow forward on this entrepreneurial journey, the more unemployable you become, so it’s not going to get any easier to switch to the client side. If you are tempted to do it, think sooner rather than later. To that point, the longer you work on your own, the more difficult it'll be to have a boss, so the fit and collaboration will have to be spectacular for you to make it last longer than that. But you should be able to hold your breath for a couple of years.
• But if you are going to leave your entrepreneurial venture behind, it needs to be in exchange for an employment agreement where they can only fire you for cause. And it would need to be longer than one year, I suspect. Or one year with an option for an additional year.
• If you run a firm with someone else, you don’t need to make a decision together. Doing so is much easier, of course, but there are times in life when your interests don’t always run in parallel. So be it.
• It wouldn't be out of the question for there to be a modest signing bonus, but it would be unusual in today’s environment. If you are required to move for an in-person role, then you should expect a moving allowance and possibly some temporary housing.
• If the circumstances are such that the client wants to incorporate your client work into theirs, you might expect them to pay you some commission on the work that you bring with you, as well as any that you help them land after the new arrangement begins, but this is not usually the case.
• If they insist on a non-compete, it must be construed very narrowly to protect their clients and employees, while at the same time not preventing you from doing anything you want within the same field. Make sure there's a carveout for any board position or pro-bono work you want to do for a trusted organization.
• If you do this, try to think of something that this will allow that would otherwise be very difficult for you to do: like time to write a book or some grad school education or a foreign fellowship or something. Some dream you've had that would be tough to do without steady employment.
• If you're going to go down this path and leave the firm, look around for other offers, too, just to see what’s out there, but chances are good that one specific offer is what’s going to lure you away.
• Aim for a good title that'll look good on LinkedIn. Or, if you want to leave your later options more open, you might agree on something that incorporates “Resident [Something]” that implies a high-level contractual role that might lead to a similar one later, but be careful about sending a signal that you won’t stay long.

One Last Point

There is this weird mental hurdle that you must get over, dear friend, and here’s where I tell you to grow up a little: do not worry what other people think. Closing a firm is not the sort of failure you might think it is. We do what we must and forget what people think. Life goes on. Make bold choices.