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>Okay, so what's my point? I don't quite know how one should handle
>this situation. How about this? "I won't work for less than $X, but
>I've been offered jobs in the range of $Y to $Z over the past few
>months. And of course there are many other factors involved. Let's
>talk about the jobs you have available, and then we'll talk about
>price." What do y'all think?
>
>Anybody out there with a consulting firm who could shed some light on
>this?
>
>Melissa Hunter-Kilmer
>mhunterk -at- bna -dot- com
>(standard disclaimer)
>
I think there's a stark difference between a "consulting company" that
places bodies or that does software or drafting and just uses tech writers
as a sideline, and a company like Simply Written that specializes in tech doc.
In the first case, there's a conveyor belt mindset...get somebody in the
front door and get money out the back. Nothing wrong with that, if you know
the rules of the game. There it's going to matter a great deal how much your
rates are, because the margin is everything. Few consulting company
salespeople even know what tech writers really do, so it doesn't matter much
to them or to their management how well the resulting stuff is done, only
whether or not the person with the magic check-writing pen is happy.
In our company, Simply Written, we know how much we have in every hour's
billing rate for for overhead, for writers, for editors, and so forth. And
we know how much is to be profit for the stakeholders. Within those bounds,
we have no problem spending up to what we've already calculated for a
workforce. That's what it's for. If we can get by with less, that's okay,
but we don't lie awake at night thinking of ways to cut a dollar or two out
of our contractors' pockets. So we don't balance one contractor against
another by their asking rates unless we're being asked to carve out some of
the profit to pay them. We just ask "What's your rate?" Period. Then we
haggle. But skill sets and experience count far, far, far, far more than
rates, so long, again, as the asking rate is within our known range. We'll
make about the same actual profit on everybody. We don't try to squeeze out
more. We've already calculated what it'll take to get the quality of
contractor that we need, so we don't focus on that. To be honest, a lot of
placement and consulting firms don't have a clue how much a good
communicator is worth, nor how much a good one will ask for. We don't have
anyone else, so we know down to the dollar how much it'll take to get the
person we need. And having been contractors ourselves (and still are on
occasion) the principals of Simply Written know that anyone offering
themselves at ridiculously low rates isn't going to work out well anyway,
because they're obviously not experienced enough.
Tim Altom
Vice President, Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 (voice) 317.899.5987 (fax)
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