I am currently in a fully employed position, but for a variety of reasons I am looking for a new role. I have recently seen an advert for self employed consultants working for consultancy, paying a monthly fee and a percentage of earnings to them. Does anyone work for this type of company, what are the benefits and pitfalls, is there enough work to have a guaranteed income? Any comments are gratefully received

Stedman 1. No, its not a franchise 2. I'm not sure how it works with the Consultants Register 3. I believe you provide everything except for the contacts and the invoicing and for this you pay a monthly fee plus a percentage of your earnings

I've been a consultant since 1990 and whilst my work is now stable, the early years were very tough. I have come across schemes in general management consultancy where you pay an up-front fee to join (upwards of £30K) and then are given "leads" on which you pay commission on any work you gain. I got the distinct impression that the whole "consultancy" was funded by the up-front fee and the leads you might subsequently get were grossly over-played. Just remember the old saying "A fool and his money are soon parted". It is quite tempting to invest your redundancy in such a scheme in the hope you'll get lucrative rewards. If life was that easy, we'd all be rich of course. I have worked for several large consultancies and payment of fees to do so was never required. I guess few are looking for external associates these days as all the work has dried up. I was briefly involved in the very early days with one consultancy which tried something of the sort, and I did pay a small up-front fee of a few hundred pounds. I never got any work from them and none of the claimed "leads" and eventually they collapsed. I met quite a few people who invested much more than I and lost it all. Personally I'd be very suspicious of such schemes, and unless you can see a source of regular contracts from consultancy, employment is much safer.