There was another thread over the Summer that I enjoyed greatly and found to be particularly enlightening. It basically asked how many MSCs you actively worked with. I was quite surprised to learn that many seasoned shoppers who were signed up with the magic 200+ companies, only actively worked with a handful of those companies each year. By handful, I would say the majority worked for 20 or less. That works out to approximately 10% of all companies signed up with.
If a new shopper takes the sage advice of the seasoned, veteran shoppers and signs up with 200+ companies, I believe they are likely to find a similar result. This means several things (feel free to massage the percentages to match your experiences):
#1 Some number of these companies don't have work in a shoppers locally area currently. Let's call this group 25% of the 200+
#2 Some number of these companies have clients in a shoppers area, but they are of no interest to the shopper. Maybe the type of job isn't attractive, or the pay isn't attractive, or whatever. Let's call this group 25% of the 200+ as well.
#3 The next group has shops in the shoppers area that are attractive enough to perform some test shops. After a few test shops, the shopper decides that the company really isn't right for them (for whatever reason) and decides they really don't want to work with that company on a regular basis. Let's call this group 40% of the 200+
#4 Finally, the shopper finds a group of approximately 10% that fits their particular needs and parameters (which is different for each of us).
I consider signing up with 200 companies just to find the 20 I will eventually work with to be a disconnect in the industry. I welcome and respect each of you who disagrees with my opinion, but this is still my position.
Here's one other thing to consider for the 'sign up for 200' crowd: All your personal data, including SSNs are sitting on 200+ machines, across 200+ companies, on 200+ networks, all with 200+ different 'ideas' of what computer security is and should be... I would personally very much prefer for my sensitive data to only be on the 20 (ish) companies I am currently engaged with and eliminate 90% of my personal data vulnerability on the Interweb! Even better would be for my data to be on none of these machines until such a time that it is actually needed for 1099 purposes, but I digress and that is perhaps fodder for another time...
I have read posts from many well educated, extremely intelligent, open-minded people on this forum. My hope when I posted this thread was to engage those folks who think outside the box and promulgate some potential solutions to this disconnect. I challenge all of us to put aside our preconceived ideas, put aside the way 'it's always been done', and put aside 'protecting our personal sandbox' for a while and just for a moment imagine what our industry could look like in the future...
"We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl -- year after year..."