Most of my professional experience has been as an independent consultant who goes via an agent to get work. Typically I have been doing Project Management and IT Strategy (at Director Level when I work embedded in a client team at the GBP 650 - 750 per day after comission level) but have been looking at joining a larger consultancy full time recently.Weird thing is that I typically get the knock back from teh recruitment agencies. They seem to draw a distinction between "consulting" and "contracting" - while I see it as being identical except that I pay an agent 20% of my daily rate to do my cold calling / marketing for me while someone at my level in a consulting firm would typically have a dedicated marketing dept and see 60% of their daily take going to a partnership structure.Any ideas how to spin this? Or suggestions as to how best to break through what seem to me to be a pretty arbitrary distinction?

Why do you keep going back to the recruitment agency - target the Consulancy firm of choice directly.However, 700 squid a day is pretty good money, why leave that?

750 quid per day? you peasant

>> 750 quid per day? you peasantIt's difficult to go much past the 800 barrier as an independent. Done it a few times but you really have to be selling EXACTLY what the punter needs to buy.It's why I'd like to get onto the Big Boys circuit - learn how to sell at higher values.

Do you have any IT risk/controls/compliance experience?rates in the SOX arena regularly exceed the 1000 mark....

What - you guys earn 800 a day, cool.I can't wait till I grow up and be a Tech Consultant :0

One can only admire those of us who are earning more than £1000 per day. Clearly treating clients with the contempt they deserve and rubbishing colleagues who don't is the way to higher earnings. If Riesengold or whatever his insignificant (is that a good start?) name is would like to share the name of the idiot who pays so much for his smelly old sox, that would be great.

I think there is an important difference between consulting and contracting, although I agree that in IT the terms are often used interchangably. I'm sympathetic to your situation - I interview a lot of people, usually at Director level, who don't know the difference between consulting and contracting."Contracting" prioritises delivery to fairly well-defined objectives and doing so without undermining the client's political motivations behind those specifications."Consulting" prioritises providing constructive challenge and guidance to the client on qualifying their decisions about what the objectives should be, and/or how to go about reaching them. This often means challenging the client's preconceptions or injecting fresh thinking, to consciously influence the decision process.What this means is that roles requiring a "contracting" approach and experience will be looking for a work style oriented to not challenging the status quo but rather focussing on implementation and technical problem-solving. From the recruitment perspective, the role will usually have been defined by the person who wants to embed and enforce their point of view.Similarly, roles looking for "consulting" experience will be looking for you to emphasise your ability to work politically, influence, lead and challenge directly. These roles will usually have been specified by someone who needs third party support to implement change and overthrow current point of view in the organisation.