Re: Agencies...??:

["Nina L. Panzica" <panin -at- MINDSPRING -dot- COM>]

At 09:40 AM 7/24/97 -0400, you wrote:
>>From what I've seen, people use 'agencies' to help them find work...  It
>sounds like a good idea, however, because I've yet to do so, I thought
>I'd ask for some idea of >which agency< to contact, and >why< that
>particular agency.

I've worked with agencies for many years, as a contract writer.
Increasingly, agencies are trying to fill permanent positions, too, so if
the latter is the sort of work you're looking for, contacting agencies
might still be useful to you.

In my experience, the question is not so much which agency you contact but
how many.There are hundreds of agencies that handle technical people in the
Atlanta area alone. While each agency will have many, many job openings, my
experience has been that most of these job requests are for programmers,
not technical writers.  If you only work with one agency, even one that
specializes in placing writers, you won't get that many calls. Again, in my
experience, for every 50 or so calls I get, one may result in an interview
with an actual client (not the agency itself).  This happens for a lot of
reasons: many agencies are unskilled at selling you to clients, often the
client requests the contractor prematurely and then discovers a few days or
a few weeks later that they can't afford one or that they have a former
contractor who can go back to work for them, or any of a dozen other common
circumstances.  Often the job the agency wants you to interview for is not
appropriate to the work you do or involves skills that you don't have and
don't want to acquire. Or it pays very poorly. Or the working conditions
(for instance, moving to Afganistan) are unacceptable.  If I can get an
interview, I can usually get hired, because I have a lot of experience and
am very good at presenting that experience to others, but for every 10 or
so interviews I go on, nine are unacceptable for one reason or another.

What I'm trying to say is that working for agencies is a numbers game. The
more you apply with, the better your chance of getting a job becomes. If
you live in an area that has a lot of local hi-tech, applying with local
agencies, in my experience, works better than applying with out-of-town
agencies. This applies to the online world, as well. I have put my resume
on dozens of national resume banks and headhunting sites and on one local
Atlanta resume bank. The great majority of contacts about openings come
from that one local posting and not the multitude of national postings.

Sometimes you'll choose to work with the same agency over and over again
because they always have work for you, they pay you decent rates, they know
how to sell your skills, and they treat you fairly.

Here's one way to find all these agencies: look in the Sunday help wanted
ads of the newspaper of the big city nearest to you, in the Computer or
Data Processing sections. The hi-tech agencies are the ads which list
multiple programming jobs: five to 30 per ad.  They won't say that you
should respond to a Human Resources department, nor will they have a
newspaper blind box to send your resume to. They may print "recruiter" at
the bottom of their ad, or they may have the word "consultants" in their
company name. Often they'll list  a fax number,  an email address, a Web
URL, and a physical location at the bottom of their ad. Send them your
resume even if the ad does not list technical writing postions. You (and
they) never know when they'll get a request for one.

Again in my expereince a greater proportion of actual jobs have come about
from my networking with other writers rather than from agencies. If you
have an organization like STC in your area, I recommend joining and
attending the contractors' meetings (if contracting is what you want to
do). Many STC chapters have their own resume banks that local employers and
angecies search when looking for technical writers: make sure you get in
those. Many also have a job line or job postings on their Web sites, which
advertise technical writing openings you wouldn't hear about anywhere else.
After a period of time, when the other writers get to know you, they will,
if they know you are looking for work, refer employers on to you when they
cannot accept the position themselves. Also, many experienced writers have
started their own businesses and take on many clients. They are often
looking for skilled people to subcontract work to.

Be careful when you work with agencies. The biggest problem I've had is
with recruiters trying to get me to accept jobs that pay well below the
minimum I need to pay my bills or that involve my doing unskilled,
unprofessional work (such as pure desktop publishing or even
administrative-assitant work). With most agencies, no matter how low or how
high I tell them my hourly rate is, they always try to get me to accept a
rate that's at least $5 lower than what I've stated is my absolute minimum.
Perhaps they do this because many inexperienced writers will think, "Oh
gosh! I must be charging too much!" and lower their rates beyond what's
acceptable to them as a result in the fear of never getting work. Often an
agency will drop the rate-reduction news at the very last minute, after
they've gotten you real excited about and interested in their client, and
after they've even set you up for an interview. It's harder then to refuse
them, but you have to if you want to be paid what you're worth.  And what
are you worth?  Obtain as many salary surveys as you can, and see what
other  people in your area with approximately your experience or skill set
report earning.

A minor, but annoying, problem of working with many agencies is that many
of them get the same job requests at the same time. So you might get six or
seven calls over a period of a day or two about interviewing for the same
client. All these phone calls take time. Most will call you to find out
things that aren't on your resume: whether you're willing to travel or
relocate, what your desired rate or salary is, what your strongest skills
are, whether you are working now and when you will next be available, and
possibly to set up a screening interview with you. These screening
interviews are also big time-eaters, but when first establishing yourself
as a writer or in a new location, it's important to go to all of these you
get invited to. Some agencies will not even set you up for an interview
with their clients until they've had a chance to meet you face to face.
Because all these phone calls and interviews and even application forms can
really eat a lot of time, and because all of these things seldom result in
actual interviews it is easy to get short with agencies (especially if
you've already had ten or fiften calls that day for the same opening) or to
ignore them entirely and not return calls.  If you are trying to establish
yourself, this is career suicide. Don't do it. Be professional and
courteous  to these people, as you never know which one will be the
one--now or three years from now--to get you a badly needed contract.

If you apply to as many agencies as you can, you'll discover that some of
them accept your rate without a single protest and that you don't really
need the business of  the ones that lowball you. There are worse things
that agencies do; I've heard some real horror stories from other writers.
Again, networking with writers in your area can be very valuable for this:
if you ask, other contractors will tell you which companies they or their
associates have had bad experiences with. Likewise, ask them about the
agencies they like to work with, and contact these folks first.

Regards,
Nina P.

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