How much do you all feel would be appropriate / non-presumptive to ask for as a student with high subject-expertise and low consultancy experience? Would something like $50/hr be crazy high or crazy low?
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>Would something like $50/hr be crazy high or crazy low?
Charge at least $300/hour. I'd say $500/hour. In France, it's more "jour.homme (JH)" (man.day). Compute your rate.
Set the precedent of someone actually looking at your rate and say "That's acceptable". You don't have much experience so it'll probably take you slightly more than the time you "bill" to actually do the job, but don't let that "delta" get big. Going above and beyond didn't hurt us.
You get more efficient with experience, and streamline your process to getting things done, document templates, your workflow, etc...
Do not think of it as "freelance consultancy", or that you're a student. You have expertise and you're solving a problem. What would happen if someone went on without that expertise? Would it mean a military plane being neutralized?
Here's something you may find useful for later, if you want to do consulting through a consultancy: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131066829330549965...
2) Unless they’re hiring you as an employee, they’ll expect to deal with you via a company. Get in touch with an accountant ASAP and look into liability insurances.
You may need to talk to an accountant. You may need to charge VAT and will almost certainly need to set up as at least a sole trader.
If it's a common role chances are recruiters are looking for people and they will typically quote the budget for it, if so use that. If the rate isn't openly advertised, get in touch with the recruiter and pretend to apply for the position, whatever rate they suggest, add 10-20% (that's their markup) and use that for your rate.
If it's a more specialized position, search for more common roles which require your skills and look at those rates, and potentially go back to the above approach to figure out the rate.