the wrong tool for the wrong job
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?