Magic Pot of Jobs

You know what feels great? Telling a problem client to take a hike.

Some of you all are quivering at the thought of telling a client to take a long walk off a short pier, but I suspect that most of you are grinning, just a little bit.

You see, it is my contention that if you are confident in the value you provide, you probably have some point at which the customer is not only Not Always Right, but at which the customer is in fact WRONG and you have more important things to do with your time than try to coddle them.

I had such a client today. The client wanted a fabulously experienced art director, with lots of conceptual and branding experience, to work on a long-term, as-needed basis. A freelancer, essentially, who would not work a typical 40 hour week and who would never have the opportunity to go permanent. The client is a high-profile national brand who would look great in a freelancer’s portfolio, and we happened to have an excellent candidate who is trying to start his own firm and was eager for the chance to do this work. His rate was substantial, but not out of line with the market for his level of skills and the requirements of the position. I submitted the resume and bill rate, and went about my day- this client is, shall we say, not known for prompt feedback.

This morning, I received a polite but not-very-friendly note from the staffing services manager. She won’t be passing the resume on because “as I discussed with your manager when I placed the order,” they aren’t considering any bill rates above X, because the full-time equivalent would make approximately Y per hour.

Let’s just say that X was insulting, and if that I were to honor that rate, I would have to pay this highly experienced art director something resembling junior designer money.

So I responded with my own polite but not-very-friendly email, explaining that a person making Y would have a bill rate of MUCH HIGHER than X, and that since they specifically requested a freelancer, they could expect that the person will make much more money per hour anyway to make up for the fact that freelancers don’t reliably work 40 hours per week and so the full-time hourly was not a true comparison. Furthermore, my manager doesn’t recall having any sort of bill rate conversation, and while she apologizes if she misremembers the conversation, we still don’t have any “quality freelance art directors willing to work a non-regular schedule at that pay rate at this time.”

In this case, “Please do keep us posted if your needs change,” is secret code for, “Please do feel free to call us if your budget ever lines up with reality.” (more…)

I answer the phone today, my first day back at work after recovering from the plague.

“Thank you for calling [MISF]. This is Tiffany, how may I help you?”

“Uh, yeah. I was callin’, um, because I’d like to, uh, come in and… apply for… uh… um, um… uh, what’s it called…”

“A job?”

That probably wasn’t very nice of me, but between my hatred of the phone and my incredulity that someone would call me so ill-prepared, I just couldn’t wait. Sometimes, you have to just take control of the situation.

Turns out, the phrase the person was actually looking for was “temporary-to-permanent.”

One of the many people I met at the Recruiting 2006 show was CM Russell, who writes the excellent Secrets of the Job Hunt and is also the founder of RecruitingFly and AllCountyJobs.com. Busy man. We sat down for a few minutes to talk about some advice for jobseekers. A lot of what I say isn’t going to be new to longtime readers of MPOJ, but if you’re aching to hear my (pre-strep!) voice, he’s got it for ya.

A moment with MPOJ at Secrets of the Job Hunt

What’s this? Tiffany is silent for a week following the Recruiting 2006 show? How can this be?

I’ll tell you. I came back from New York with a scorching case of strep throat, and I blame the trip! Think about it- mass travel, a conference where you shake hands with all those people and you don’t know where they’ve been, and that skanky, skanky hotel I stayed in. I started feeling the first twinges Wednesday night, and by Thursday, I had a fever that lasted three days- right through my birthday and into the family gathering surrounding my husband’s couisn’s wedding. So thanks, y’all.

I get to a doctor this morning, and she said what you never want to hear a doctor say: “Oh my GOD! Look at your tonsils!”

But aside from contracting the plague, I must say that I had a great time at the conference. I met lots of people I had previously only known from their blogs (hi guys!), lots of people who are curious about “that blogging thing,” and just generally had a really good experience.

But if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish getting over the plague…

Maybe it’s because DC is such a lawyer-heavy town, or maybe it’s a reflection of how some people who used Frontpage to build a website once want to hang out their shingles as web developers but we’re experiencing sort of an odd but more frequently recurring issue here at the MISF.

My office, as you know, focuses on Creative and Interactive professionals- designers, web developers, information architects, etc. Our talent often have their hands in some of the most critical products of our clients- clients which include PR and communications firms, design studios, and web shops. As such, it is of course vitally important to the clients that the work be of high quality. (That’s not to say that it’s not important to the clients of my colleagues who focus on administrative talent, but there’s often more riding, in both a legal and a profit sense, on the work of our talent.)

As the specialty has grown and as more and more staffing firms have gotten into this space, it stands to reason that there would be occasional screwups from the talent placed. Code doesn’t work, files not placed where they should be, confidential work leaked out all over town, and worst of all, flat-out dishonest talent who misrepresent the work they do for the client. It’s an unwelcome fact that those of us in staffing hesitate to talk about in public- some people are temps for a reason.

In response, we’re noticing a marked upswing in the number of clients who want us to sign detailed and complex contracts. Fair enough, but the contracts always read like Professional Services Agreements, of the type that the client might itself have had to sign for one of its own clients.

The problem is that this approach doesn’t work for a staffing situation. I understand that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look for the screwdriver anyway. A professional services agreement is fine for when you are contracting the services of a web development studio (whether that studio is comprised of one more more people) that will work independently of your own staff, and who is accountable to a list of deliverables.

A temporary web developer brought in through a staffing agency, however, is much more like the web developers on your own staff, who work under supervision of your own project managers and tech leads, and who can be fired for incompetence much more easily than a vendor with whom you have a contract.

A rule of thumb: if you want your staffing firm to sign a contract that warrants that there will be no “trojan horses or back doors” in the code the talent write because you don’t have anyone on staff who can read the code for him or herself, what you need is not a staffing firm, it’s a web development studio.

But meanwhile, I’m wondering if anyone else is experiencing this trend. I’m looking at you, Aquent and TalentZoo bloggers, I’m looking at you in particular. Does this happen to you, and if so, how do you handle it?

My manager and I were remarking recently that I’m a bit of an odd duck- I have no problem with, and even enjoy, getting up in front of a roomful of strangers and giving a speech or presentation. And yet, I would rather hang myself with the phone cord than actually talk on the phone. (I know some of you super sourcers out there are cringing as you read that.)

I don’t know where my deep-seated hatred of the phone came from, but I know exactly how I got to be so comfortable speaking to groups. I’m not a fantastic speaker on the level of a Steve Jobs or Guy Kawasaki, but the truth is, since that’s not how I make my living, I’m content for the moment to be a Pretty Good Speaker. And I think Pretty Good is a level of skill within reach for most people, if they can do a few simple things.

What’s best? Since most people have such a dread of public speaking, getting confident enough to become a Pretty Good Speaker will still put you head-and-shoulders above the rest of the pack, and as we all know, presentation skills can only benefit your career. So consider the following tips.

Furst Person provides a call center simulation service to employers.

(more…)

Why is it that when a client doesn’t like the resume I send him, he writes back to ask if I’ve “got anyone else?”

Hey, dumbass, your position has been open for two months and you haven’t liked any of the responses you’ve gotten. I sent you a resume, and you didn’t like it. Fair enough, but why are you now assuming that I have a whole raft of other candidates that I’m just withholding from you? As if I have 10, and I’m just dribbling them out to you one at a time to amuse myself.

As I have said to others, I make money by putting people to work. If I had some other candidate, I would surely send it to you.

If your job has been open that long and you haven’t found the right person to fill it, either you aren’t looking hard enough, your requirements are poorly thought-out, you aren’t paying enough, or you aren’t properly evaluating the resumes you get.