Job Hunting Chronicles

Happy Wednesday 🤎 I hope everyone who celebrates it takes some time off this #Thanksgiving to relax and do something just for you. If you have a full-time job, I hope you get the long weekend off from work, and if you're looking for work, I hope you take the weekend off from the job search, you deserve a break. And to those who have to work (retail, restaurants, first responders, airport workers, truckers, etc.), thank you! This is my view as I finish billing a cat sitting job. I really do #LoveWhereILive. #freelancer #FreelanceWork #FreelanceLife #WorkFromHome #RemoteWork #CatSitting #CatSitter #JobHuntingChronicles 

Happy Wednesday LinkedIn 🤎 I woke up this morning to a text from a potential client saying she thought my price was too high and would continue her search for someone else to help her. She gave an example of pricing she had recently paid to someone else (as a justification) and then added, "of course, if my assessment is wrong, I would reconsider with more information". I told her I understood and wished her luck in finding the right person. Freelancers, do you try to win over a potential client if the hang up/hesitation is about price? For me, it's a case by case basis, and this one was telling me that lowering my price initially to get a client wasn't going to be in my best interest in the long run. I appreciate her position and the fact that she didn't ghost me, but not enough to discount my services. I'm also not a fan of having to justify my prices. Maybe I could convince her of my worth initially, but this weirdness would probably always be between us a...

#MerryMonday LinkedIn 🤎 Freelancers, let's talk about all the unpaid work that we do. I'm not talking about you estimating a job taking 3 hours and quoting a fee for that, then the job actually taking 6 hours. That sometimes happens because of things you can't control (or don't know about up front). No, I'm talking about the work we do when trying to land a job. I don't think non-freelancers really understand how much time we spend on correspondence and then, if we get to it, writing proposals, all in the hopes of getting the job. Last week, I had to tell a potential client that I didn't think I could help her after all. We had spent 3 weeks going back and forth on emails (I think 15 in all!), and yet I was no clearer on what she was looking for with email #14 than I was with email #1. I have written about this potential client before, the red flags that I was trying to excuse, because I do think this woman needs legitimate help, and her age (mid-80s)...

Happy Wednesday 🤎 There's a debate going on about salary transparency and not surprisingly, candidates are for it and recruiters/hiring managers/companies are usually against it. Recruiters and hiring managers like to say things like "if a candidate asks about salary up front, I know that's all they care about". Like wanting to make sure a job can pay your bills is somehow wrong. It's Economics 101. Look, we all work to pay bills. It would be nice if recruiters and hiring managers could just normalize accepting that instead of trying to spin why salary shouldn't be a candidate's primary concern with things like great benefits and culture. If the salary isn't there, not much else about the job matters. So recruiters/hiring managers/companies, do everyone a favor and disclose the salary up front. Candidates shouldn't be disqualified because they want to know if the job will pay their bills, and you can avoid them having to ask the question by just...