The Recruitards II: Heads-Up

This is my second installment on Recruitards. In the first blog, I discussed the "mass" marketing hard-sell approach to recruiting. Today, I'm going to tell you my experience with yet another Recruitard last week. I will not disclose his name, for the sake of illustration, we will call him Santosh, from Syntel LLC.

Santosh sent me an email about a Data Architect position in Rochester, MI. Before I even had a chance to read the email (and I was reading email at that time), he called me. Now IT leadership is my forte and my resume is tailored thus, but my technical expertise is RDBMS, Enterprise Databases, Data Warehousing, ETL, BI, Data Modeling, Optimization, ODBC and generally making systems and databases talk to each other. So, I am a good fit for this.

The Position

So he tells me the rate, for the sake of illustration, let us say $80/hour. I am looking for a job; the money was ok, the location is great, bring it on. He wanted a current resume. I send it and qualified it with the statement that it is a resume tailored for technical leadership.

Then Santosh tells me the position is for the Mayo Clinic. Now, I know the Mayo Clinic is in Minnesota and I asked again, just to be sure.

Trish: "The Mayo Clinic is in Rochester, Minnesota, and I am in Michigan, are you sure about the location of Rochester, Michigan?"

Santosh: "Oh! No, No, they have a location in Rochester, Michigan."


Ok, I think to myself. Crittenton Hospital and Oakland University are in Rochester, MI. Henry Ford Health has IT services and medical offices in Rochester, MI. The Mayo Clinic very well could be opening a satellite office. It is not outside the realm of believability. So, I go along with Santosh.


Negotiating?

Santosh tells me the client loves me, and although he quoted me $80/hour, he has to be able to undercut the competition, so he can only go $75/hour. He tells me his firm will only be "breaking even" on the deal.

I'm thinking that's $200 A WEEK, he's nicking me for. And, he is sending me another email, could I please fill-in the number of years of experience in each of the following areas? Ok, I agree and proceed to fill out the experience grid. Less than 5 minutes later, he calls me AGAIN.



Santosh: "Trish did you receive my email? Where is the experience grid?"

Trish: "I am working on it now."

Santosh: " Oh, did you receive my email? Where is the experience grid?

Trish: "I am working on it now."

Santosh: "My manager says we can only pay, $74/hour. Can you please put in your response to me, that you agree to this rate."


I am grumbling to myself that he just nicked me for another $40/week. But justify it by telling myself, I am on a diet, I will do without lunch. But also thinking that Santosh wasn't going without lunch. I do as he asks. As I was pressing "send", he called AGAIN. Now they can only go $73/hour (and another $40/week, I'm going to end up paying them.) can I please agree to that in an email.

Now, this position was to run 6 months. Recall the rate started at $80/hour and he nicked me for $280/week, that totaled $7280 for the contract. Nobody likes to take a $7000 plus hit. At this point I'm feeling like he's scammed me.

As I pressed send, he call me AGAIN. Now the client just loves me, but needs me to sign an agreement for Syntel to represent me. So, I get the email and Santosh, had sent my resume back to me, no agreement. So again, before I even could call him. He was calling me yet again.

"Where is the agreement? Can you please sign and return it to me"

I told him, he needs to send me a copy of the agreement.

Location, Location, Location

As I describe what transpired the other day, I may have left out a couple of calls, but I just checked my phone to verify how many times he actually called me. In the span of 3 1/2 hours, Santosh and I had a total of 10 calls. And the above gives you a flavor for the afternoon. And after all this, I am both amused and mildly irritated at the same time. You know the feeling? Finally, his email with the agreement arrives. I read it and the position location is in Rochester, MINNESOTA!

You know the feeling? To put into the words of the great, Charlie Brown:  "ARRRGGGGH"

The Icing on the Cake

So, I call him back and explained that my rates had to go up 25% for a remote location. I followed up with an email, outlining the new rates with and without expenses included, and even offered to telecommute for the agreed upon rate. The icing on cake was the following day, when he actually responded to my email, saying that telecommuting was not a valid option.


Recruitard Award
Santosh of Syntel, LLC is a truly deserving recruitard. Santosh, in honor of your blundering ways in recruiting, you are hereby awarded the Recruitard's, Heads UP Award.













Check out my other blog at: http://detroitprojectmanagers.blogspot.com


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Armada Business Consulting, Inc.

Armada Business Consulting, Inc specializes in excellence in execution for Technical Project Management and LEAN implementations. Contact Trish at trish_sutter@yahoo.com.

Pigs Get Fed, and Hogs Get Slaughtered

Intro

"Pigs Get Fed and Hogs Get Slaughtered." -- Joe "Hollywood" Sutter

It's been bandied about more and more. Some get it right and some get it wrong. My husband, Joe "Hollywood" Sutter, coined this saying way back in 2001. And it has finally made it's way to Washington, as we recently heard a Senator on the news, mis use it, when he said, "Pigs get slaughtered."


Human: Man or Animal?

Joe is a tremendous philanthropist and has great faith in the ultimate goodness of the human soul. He contends that every man is basically good kind and sharing. I think Joe is on a personal quest to find that goodness in every man. He seems to find every potential charity case in the entire area, each of which he attempts to convert into his own proteges.

I on the other hand, look at Maslow and agree with his hierarchy of needs. Then contended that man is basically selfish. I follow dictums, such as "only the rich can afford to have morals". I hear Nickelbacks, If Everyone Cared and just wish. These are just Utopian ideals whose only place in the real world is as a dream.

He and I debate this from time to time, as I hold that the human animal is basically selfish. I have often teased him, that he has "SUCKER" tattooed across his forehead in flashing neon red for every con-artist in the world to see. We do some rental properties, and Joe is not allowed to screen applicants. We would go broke; every time he picks them, it ends up costing us money.

So we have come to a truce, with his charity cases. He can employ them and give them honest work, but he is not to extend them credit or get us in a situation where any of them owe us money. Joe is great at creating a project for these charity cases to get them back on their feet. But Joe is a natural project manager. He is one of those folks that never needed any formal training, he just does it. People get coordinated. Stuff gets organized and things get done. That is probably why, he gets crushed when his protege's fall off course. Because he has the vision and sees the potential in everybody.

Mentoring

During the course of mentoring a mechanic on selling cars on the side. Joe was advising his protege on pricing. He stated, you can't price the vehicle too high, because that's what the "A" dealerships with warranties do and you can't support that price. Neither can you price it too low, as you will lose money.

His protege mechanic, did not listen and priced the vehicle at the top end, $5000. It should have been priced at $3800. Had the vehicle been priced at $3800, the mechanic would have received many offers between $3000 and $3500 and would have been able to sell it around $3500.

He ended breaking even, up only getting $2850 for the vehicle. He did not even make back the time he had invested in repairs in the vehicle.

What Happened?

The result was that the educated buyers, immediately saw that the vehicle was over priced and he lost them for good. He had NO real buyers on the vehicle. He would not advertise a lower price. So someone that was a fast talker, finally worked him down over a period of a couple of weeks, until he sold it far under undervalue.

Joe analyzed the entire situation with his "protege" mechanic. He found, if the mechanic had been satisfied with getting some profit, instead of being a hog and trying to take every last penny, he would have made a fair profit. It's ok to make a profit, just don't gouge everybody.

From this experience Joe coined the saying, "Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered." He told me the Lord taught him it is OK to make a profit, you have to eat. But to gouge enormous profits every time is greedy and unreasonable. He has repeated this philosophy to others time and time again. He even has me saying it. I've quoted my husband in letters to my Congressmen and Senators in Washington. Now we are hearing them attempt to use the quote with the media and on TV.

It's amazing, how little things you do, can find themselves into the world at large.

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Armada Business Consulting, Inc.

Armada Business Consulting, Inc specializes in excellence in execution for Technical Project Management and LEAN implementations. For more information contact Trish at trish_sutter@yahoo.com.

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Never get a lemon Never over pay http://www.dealerssecrets.com

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