Ironically, I took the BI job because Maryland had some stringent requirements regarding PI work and I’ve had a huge interest in doing PI work since I first went to school for my Associates (prior to the Navy.) And I had also gotten my PI registration with the state of Virginia while I was on shore duty with the Navy after taking the 60-hour course down in Norfolk. I’m going to renew that before March next year. There’s a similar course in Bowie, MD for the Maryland PI, so I’m going to look into that.
Read your post on doing a year as a BI and thought that was very informative, BTW.
But if all else fails and the employee positions don’t pan out, then I’ll reconsider the 1099 position with another company. I’m certain that whomever worked for GDIT and had previously offered it to me for another contract has already moved on by now…
As I said in the original post, I have debt to pay off, so I didn’t think that a contract position would sustain me long enough to get a majority of it paid off. I just didn’t feel comfortable doing a 1099 position, especially after they’d laid me off from the employee position. If I didn’t mention it in the original post, then I’m mentioning it now. Also, as someone who has never been laid off from a job before, this has affected me mentally and emotionally more than I anticipated. Coming from the military was already a challenging transition and I’m aware of all of the lifers who like to hassle those getting out about staying where there’s more stability, which placed some doubt in my mind that I really don’t need.
1099 contractor here. Reconsider your decision. As a contractor, the more you work the more you get paid. This is my “full-time” job, not a retirement or second gig. I feel like I make pretty good money for the time involved. I definitely make good money when you consider the flexibility in work hours, work location, and the fact that for the most part I don’t have to put up with any corporate nonsense or metrics. I suspect there are highly motivated contractors out there making $100k or close to it.
I’ve looked into second jobs, but this job pays so well (per subject interview, per source interview, per record) that there’s really nothing that can compete. If I want to earn more I just have to schedule more fieldwork during the day and spend more time at home typing. That can suck when my kids want to play at night or on a Saturday morning, but adding a full day of fieldwork and then pushing typing onto the weekend can net another $500 easy. Working as a 1099 contractor also allows you, if you in fact find a second job that pays well, to structure your schedule to accommodate both jobs.
In summary I believe that working as a 1099 contract investigator gives you the opportunity to really bring in some cash to pay down debt - an opportunity that you’d miss working salaried for a fixed amount.
If you don’t mind me asking, what area are you in that has that much work for a 1099? In my area there’s not even enough for the full-timers… the handful of GDIT people in my area can’t get jobs with anyone right now due to lack of work and the people I know that went 1099 gave it up after a few weeks of having literally nothing available to work.
If you go 1099 it hinders your ability to collect unemployment and there’s no 1099 work in my area it seems, which is why most people are passing on it right now.
I’ve been wanting to switch to a 1099 position but I’ll probably wait until closer to the end of the year to see how things are looking. As a full timer right now I barely have any work (which I’m not complaining about as I’m far ahead on my workload for once) but as far as I know there isn’t much work for the contractor BI’s in my area.
The workload issue is a major problem. These companies over hired to reduce the backlog. They hired 10 for my area. I later found out there was another 7-8 from my company, not to mention other companies that had BI’s in the area. This may have caused the backlog in my area to go down quickly. And that is the problem.
Who do they give work too? A 1099 employee that they have zero pay going to or their hourly employees, who get paid if they work or not?
I work in a sun belt city that has a major-league sports franchise or franchises. Decent military, DOD contractor, higher ed, and other fed presence, eg FEMA, DOJ, etc. It’s not the biggest city in America nor the smallest. I feel like it’s representative of a lot of larger cities. Right now I’ve got 10+ TESIs assigned to me waiting to be conducted.
The variable workload is definitely the key issue for contractors - if there’s no work I don’t eat. Over the last six months the workload has gone from me being able to be very picky (“oh, that’s a 30-minute drive, too far”) to driving three hours round trip. But there has still been enough work for me to make what I feel is a very good wage. I’m still better off driving three hours round trip three days a week for fieldwork than I would be drawing unemployment or driving for Lyft.
The underlying issue in this discussion is that lack of visibility we as investigators have into the workload, which contributes to so much career stress and uncertainty. Is NBIB holding work back from my company? Is my company holding work back from me? Is there a weird thing happening in my area that is creating a drought of work? Is there some secret-for-now tech breach that has slowed available work to a trickle? Who knows? That uncertainty is part of the job but possibly the worst part of the job.
So with this being the final week has anyone had any luck finding other job opportunities elsewhere? I used to work on the contract and it sucks to hear about what happened.
Still waiting to hear back on final offer(s). Definitely nothing coming from GDIT on other contracts or even the independent contractor position for other contracts.
Negative. Pretty much given up at least for now, but hopefully after 10/1 something might happen. Have not heard anything after submitting my resume.
Either these contractors will start hiring once they know the workload or they will be the next USIS or Perspecta and come to the conclusion they have hired too many investigators.
I threw my hat in the ring for a 1099 DHS contractor position with GDIT. Might be doing unemployment, but I hope not for long.
It is a pretty simple equation: There are was too many background investigators available to work in this scarce market based on the current workload after backlog reduction efforts by NBIB/ODNI (Old backlog was 800K, now it’s 330K). 330K does not keep the BI field fully employed. I don’t see any changes going forward that will alter this course, if anything even further reduction in field work as a result of continuous evaluation, trusted workforce 2.0, etc… We better buckle down and either expect to be on perpetual TDY’s, relocate ourselves to a better market, or punch our ticket and find a new career. The layoffs will continue. There is no magical blocks of work to be released this October as has been rumored. The BI marked has taken an evolutionary shift and we are going to be left behind. I wish us all good luck.
I could not agree with you more! On Oct 1, no one should expect to see a massive amount of work. It’s just not going to happen. The backlog is what kept us employed as contractors. Then the contractors got greedy and wanted certain amounts of the pie! Over hired and hired anyone that could speak in a complete sentence. Now here we are…
When I started working I knew the end was near. The backlog was gone. I was getting cases that were a month old. Not sure where it goes from here. But with so many people getting clearances with major issues, they really could save money and get rid of most BI’s.
Wow. There is no way they need as many BI’s as they have. I don’t think they need as many contractor companies either. If they spread the work too thin among the contract companies, they will all stop due to it not being profitable. This will be interesting.
on top of that, my current assigned work load has been about half of what it usually is.