Hi, I've been a contactor for a company for the past 4 yrs and hope to find a future with a company that will hire me perm and pay well. Will it happen or not?

-Steve:(

It certainly could. I recently hired on permanent basis a fellow who had been on contract in my group for 2 years, and then within 6 minths I promoted him to manage 5 others. The key in this case was that his performance was superior to the other permament employees, so it allowed me to go to bat with management to get him hired. I made sure to get the headcount into my group's budget at the start of the next fiscal year. Now, it certainly helps that our division is doing well, so I was able to make a good argument for inctreasing our permanengt headcount. I also have another example of a friend of mine who was on contract for a food company as a product manager for several years. And was able to get hired permanenently, again due to good performance (and it helped that another product manager who went out on maternity leave decided not to come back). Lesson: make sure you take a contract with a company that is growing and doing well financially, and make it so your manager would feel like an idiot if he didn't hire you.