Magic Pot of Jobs

As many of you know, I’ve only been a recruiter for about a year and a half. Before this, I worked for a software company and in the IT departments of a number of other companies, which is why I was hired to do tech recruiting.

But it also means that I know less about things like… best practices in contract recruiting. And suddenly I have occasion to need a crash course in working as a contract recruiter. So if any of my esteemed colleagues want to help a sista out, I’d appreciate it if you dropped me a line. tiffany @ the name of this blog.com, or use the contact form linked in the navbar.

(No, I didn’t lose my job. Everything is fine, thanks. But I need some information.)

I got a call from one of my talent the other day- he’s out on a help desk assignment, doing Tier 3/Jr. SysAdmin work with a client who has been a pain in my neck since they day they called me.

The client had offered him the position permanently. Not only had the client not informed me that an offer was about to be made, the client offered the talent fully $10,000 less than what he was willing to accept, and probably $15,000-$20,000 less than what the talent is actually worth. The salary is also unacceptably low for the geographic area- you just can’t live on the offered amount of money in the DC area.

The talent asked for my help in negotiating the offer, and of course I agreed. Because of our history with this client, my branch manager decided she would handle the negotiation (I’m in extreme tell-people-exactly-what-I-think-of-them mode today, which is dangerous). She called yesterday afternoon, and again this morning, and the client didn’t answer either time.

The talent called back this afternoon. All day, the client has been saying that MISF has been calling him, and asking what they want. My manager left the reason for her call in her voicemails, so I don’t know what’s up with that, but I theorize that he’s uptight about it because he was trying to convert the talent without our knowledge to avoid paying a fee. This would of course be a violation of the fee agreement he signed with us. Had he called us back, we could have been flexible on the fee, but he blew us off.

The talent further informed us that he had been inexplicably pulled into a meeting today, in which he learned that the client company is having trouble making payroll.

So let me get this straight- the client is dodging our calls because he knows we’ll charge a fee, and instead of just deciding that he can’t afford to bring someone on, he offers an insultingly low salary to the person in hopes that he’ll be desperate enough to take it, and that the talent will be grateful enough to get it that he won’t tell us and he’ll be able to violate our signed agreement.

Right.

So we of course assured the talent that we would be working diligently to find him a more suitable placement, and that in the meantime, the client’s impending insolvency does not affect our ability to pay him. He relaxed and said he would be turning down the position that was being offered.

If he had just called us when he intended to offer the job? We are able to (and have in the past) reduce our fee in order to get more money for the talent. But because he tried to be all sneaky, we called our corporate Credit department and mentioned to our regional collections rep that this particular client was having trouble making payroll. So as soon as the client goes overdue on their payments? Credit revocation.

Do not try to dodge me. I’m trying to make a living just like you, and if you try to rip me off, I don’t take kindly to it.

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You’ll find marketing jobs in Canada at HigherBracket.ca.

Here’s a quick tip:

When you’re calling a place of business and asking to speak to someone in particular, and the person answering the phone says, “…and where are you calling from?” it’s really just a polite way of saying, “Who are you and why does the person you’re calling want to talk to you?”

So the answer is NOT: “I’m calling from home.”

So there’s all this foofaraw in the recruitosphere about Google and ZoomInfo staring over our shoulders and what the implications of our blog comments mean for future employment prospects, blah blah blah. People are asking that their comments be deleted from other people’s blogs, and making (I hope) jokes about other bloggers using their names and blah blah blah.

People, yes, employers will Google you. Yes, what you say on the Internet can come back and bite you in the ass. Yes, it can and does happen. But there’s a simple solution that doesn’t require all this hand-wringing and tiptoeing.

Don’t say crap on the Internet that you don’t want to have associated with your name.

This is not rocket science, people.

Involved in a heated debate with someone on someone else’s blog? While you’re typing out your responses, continue to ask yourself if what you’re saying reflects how you’d like to be known. And don’t rely on email conversations to stay private- once you put it in text and send it to someone, they’re perfectly free to post it to their own blogs.

In other words, use a little judgment, people. You shouldn’t have to ask for your comments to be taken down from other blogs, because you shouldn’t say things you aren’t willing to stand by. Being really, really mad is no excuse. If you wait until after you’ve cooled off to ask if you want what you’ve just said to show up in Google or ZoomInfo, you are TOO LATE.

Surely I am not the only person this has occurred to. But it also seems to me that, since I’ve been blogging for nearly 5 years now in one format or another (much longer than I’ve been recruiting), maybe I’ve just had more time to figure all this out?

(Did I make you mad? Wanna bash me in email or my comments? Watch out, I’ve been known to post emails, and I’m really not inclined to delete comments after the fact just to protect YOU. Also, I already own my eponymous domain names, so repeating my name a bunch on your own blog won’t hijack my Google juice, so don’t bother.)

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Checkout call center jobs at JobsInCallCenters.com.

By the way, I updated MPOJ’s disclaimers and policies today.

It won’t affect most of you, but if you’re trying to launch a new employment-related site or product, you might like to read it.

We got a call this morning from a branch manager at one of our sister offices. We share several clients, including a particular firm for whom we’ve been trying to fill a high-level position for some time.

Our colleague calls to inform us that this client had asked her branch for a receptionist this morning. They immediately sent their most qualified, available talent- a woman who happens to be a Muslim and wears a hijab.

Shortly after the talent arrived, she was sent away from the client and back to our colleague’s office. The HR Director (with a Senior Professional in Human Resources certification, mind you) explained to our colleague that “Image is everything here, and we just can’t have her sitting at our front desk.”

As the Farkers say, “O RLY?”

Note that the talent was well-groomed, her clothes were clean and cared for, her demeanor was polite and friendly, and was in all ways appropriately professional for the position.

So none of our offices will be servicing this client. In addition to finding the talent an appropriate substitute assignment immediately, the branch manager for that office will be calling corporate to get some direction on the most appropriate way to tell this client to take a hike and never come back.

As I often say to my coworkers in such situations, it never surprises me that there are people in the world who think this way. It only surprises me that there are people who actually say it out loud. Especially people with advanced professional certifications in KNOWING BETTER THAN THAT.

I’m appalled, can you tell?

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Who. The. HELL. sends me a resume in Powerpoint?

Not a presentation about why I should hire them- which would still be a turnoff- but an actual resume, formatted normally, except in PPT format, complete with cheesy slide templates.

Ordinarily I am accustomed to stoking the fire under the Magic Pot (yeah, I go a long way for this metaphor, I know) but I spent all day yesterday putting out fires at the office.

Here’s a pro tip- when you accept an assignment, you should actually show up for it.

This talent had a phone interview scheduled last week with a prominent charity for a help desk position. She called not 10 minutes before the interview to confirm the details. The client later complained that she had missed the interview. Now, this client has been nothing but trouble since they first called us, so I was perfectly prepared to believe that they had screwed up in some way. We offered her another assignment- just a quick one-day thing, and she accepted. She even called the day before to confirm.

Come the day of the assignment and she no-shows completely. No call, no explanation. The person I had called in to be the second person on the assignment at the last minute is suddenly the only person. Fortunately, he was way overqualified and didn’t have a problem with that. But then I’m stuck scrambling to find a second person, and didn’t have anyone available on that short notice- I’m reduced to calling a client who happens to be a personal friend and asking to borrow the talent I’ve placed there for a part-time gig for a couple of hours.

Yeah yeah, I know, I should have a deeper bench. And I’d like to, but in DC where unemployment is at 2%, there just aren’t lots of trustworthy IT people sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.

Meanwhile, I’ve got other clients calling at the last possible minute for same day web freelance work- I had ONE person who could go on that kind of short notice, and only because he just finished another assignment for me.

And then today, I finally track down a client who has been blowing me off for weeks- I sent someone out there to him for a two week gig over a month ago, and two weeks have turned into a month and a half. At the same time, I’ve been working on lining up a permanent gig for the guy at a more suitable long-term prospect. I’m finally ready to make the transition, and the talent has no idea how much more work they have for him to do. I’ve been emailing and calling the client for weeks and getting no response. Today, after three weeks of not hearing a word from him, he’s protesting that he’s going to need my talent “indefinitely.” I point out that I had expected him to be available two weeks ago and hadn’t heard anything to the contrary.

The client’s response? “Yeah, I guess the lines of communication did break down there, huh?”

Yeah, if by “break down” you mean that you blew me off for an extended period of time instead of saying simply, “Actually, it turns out that we’re going to need his help indefinitely.” So thanks for complaining when I do my job and find the talent a permanent gig.

Anyway, this post got a lot longer than I intended, but it’s what I’ve been spending my time on for a couple of days. Yeah.

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Get the latest on diversity issues in the workplace at Diversity Jobs.

John Sumser has an interesting BlogSwap post up at Recruiting.com today about whether there’s any value in blogging if essentially we’re just blogging for each other.

It’s not a new question- I seem to remember a kerfuffle a few weeks ago about whether or not the recruiting blogosphere is simply a “mutual admiration society” or not.

It’s a valid question- I know there are days when I, like the commenter on Sumser’s post, feel sort of confused by all the inside jokes and weird nicknames being bandied about by the recruitosphere A-listers. But nonetheless, whether I write Magic Pot of Jobs or not, I’m still finding a lot of value in my fellow recruiting bloggers’ postings.

Permit me to beg the question, though: Even if we’re only creating value for our fellow bloggers, is that such a bad thing? Clearly we have joined this community because we find it valuable, and the failure of others to find that value themselves doesn’t diminish the value of the community to me, or to HR Guy, or to Canadian Headhunter, or whatever.

What do you guys think?

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BIS provides background checks to employers worldwide.

In case anyone was wondering, I did eventually get my exam code and passed the test for my CSP today.

Now I get extra letters after my name. W00t.