recruiting emergencies
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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