Going offline till the 21st or so, on a much needed vacation. See you when I get back.
In the meantime, congrats to the lucky recipients of free BizJam passes, listed below, most of whom I had the pleasure of saying hello to at the conference yesterday. I’m sorry I didn’t have more passes to give away, but thank you all for emailing me.
Liz Andrade, CMD+SHIFT DESIGN
Beth Martin Quittman, Samara Lectures
Jen Rotert, Lavish Design Studio
Jenny Zappala, freelance journalist
And thank you BizJam for an excellent conference. (If you’re in the Seattle area, I highly recommend checking it out next year. And if not, see Biznik, an excellent social networking site for indie professionals.) My favorite part of the event was talking to the other enterprising folks between sessions. I also loved that so many people had brought their laptops and were cranking out copy or design between sessions, on deadline. Hilarious. And so fitting.
Have a lovely week!
July 11th, 2008
I know as small business owners and freelancers it may be tempting to hire or subcontract to friends who need work but may not necessarily have the right qualifications (or motivations). Before you do, you may want to consider some of the pitfalls and suggestions I mentioned in this article.
A marketing director I recently met was kicking herself for recommending a friend for a temporary position doing admin work for her boss.
“Everything started out OK,” said Christie, who works at an arts organization in San Francisco. ” And then the whining started.”
The job was beneath him, didn’t pay enough and wasn’t what he saw himself doing long-term, her ungrateful pal whinged. Then he told Christie that he “would be gone in a month or so.”
Only he didn’t quit. Instead, he stayed on nearly a year, “calling in sick once a week and showing up 30 to 45 minutes late every day,” Christie explained.
But the slacking didn’t stop there. There were the two-hour lunches, the “dental appointments” that required him to leave work early at least three days a week, and the maddening fact that he kept telling Christie about his necessary absences instead of dealing directly with his manager, something Christie was forever reminding him to do.
Read the rest of the article on abcnews.com.
July 11th, 2008
