When I was a hiring manager, this was one of my favourite experiences. Flesh out a new role in the team, make a business case for it, get a green light, work with seniors and HR people on the language, role description, and then post it. And once that page was live, I would promote it to my FB friends, TW followers, LI network. Each platform is a different universe, each would generate leads, or questions, introductions of brand new people, or people I used to work with in the past. Even if the role was somewhere in another department, I would usually tag the shared page with ‘come work with me’.
Those days are long gone, and even though I’ve made a lot of professional introductions in the last 2.5 years (wow, has it really been that long since a full-time gig), and helped many former- and former-former- workmates get new gigs, and move on to greener pastures, I haven’t really hired for myself. I have reached out and worked with many talented marketers, developers, editors, engineers on short-term projects, but not really hired. And now that I think about this – why not flip this hiring language on its head, and apply it to partners and clients?
So here we are. Yes, my freelance consulting practice is growing, and yes, there is a demand in multiple industries for lean digital operations; ad ops management; workflow optimization, and other technology transformation projects – so why don’t you come and work with me?
You – small and medium publishers: revenues are shrinking; technology you’ve built is either too expensive, or needs a refresh; audiences are not as engaged as they used to be; and your last (only) good developer has left, without leaving you a single page of documentation. On top of it, everybody wants to display ads on your website. How do you juggle all this? How do you make informed decisions with all those moving parts and still publish good quality content? Call me. There is a simpler way to run publishing operations in a digital world.
You – non-profits and educational companies: your audience segments are too varied to manage properly; the legacy CRM system is about 10 years old, and is so broken it makes you cry. The thought of revamping it – makes you howl. Your developer is also your IT person, who spends as much time running wires through the ceiling as updating out-of-office email responders. And you have an event coming up, for which you think you sent out digital invites, but don’t know how to track them. Call me. Your technology needs a revamp, and your workflow could use some automation, and I can help.
You – a startup with a fantastic idea or a product, and a good salesperson. The product works, the rep brings in bacon, but how do you scale? What team do you build, in what priority – front-of the house, or engineering? What about client services? How does that team collaborate properly, so you can continue building like crazy, and selling like crazy, and all the stuff in between … just … works. Call me. That stuff in between – client onboarding, workflow management, internal training and documentation, client services – can be done. Can be taught. Can be scaled and managed quickly so you keep growing that brilliant product of yours.
So – are you any of the above types of companies, or know someone with similar challenges? Come work with me, tell me about your technology bottlenecks, and together we can solve these problems. And if my ‘part 1’ is successful, soon enough I will be publishing ‘part 2’. And that’s a whole other level, friends.
Talk to you soon.