Hi Gang
We are in the process of expanding and we will at some future point in time need more people to write. Kevin has a proposal to put forth for all of us to vote upon. Here it is:
We hire new recruits who will be trained under senior members of the group. Since the new recruits will take some mentoring in the beginning stages, the senior members will share a part of their income from writing as a payment for their time and expertise.
The new recruits would get a cent and a half a word for their work and the senior members would get the other cent and a half. The work will be submitted to the senior members who will hand it in as a finished product, under their own name, and will be responsible for paying out the portion that is due to the new recruits.
Part of the mentoring will be to learn how to effectively use the blogs. We are striving towards a total transparent environment and the email forwarding system will be abolished.
The new recruit will not stay a new recruit forever; after 10 articles are successfully completed they will be receiving full pay. The senior members will have completed the mentoring process at that point.
New recruits will be used when the projects are so large that existing members cannot complete them in the time allotted by the client.
In other words, we will rely on the new recruits to help us get through very large projects, but when we can handle the projects by ourselves we will continue to do so.
This proposal is put forth on the floor for everyone to vote on.
If the idea is passed we encourage all of you to suggest anyone you may have in mind that you feel would be an asset to our excellent team.
Remember we value each and everyone one of you. We have a good team here and we know it!
You rock!
We are anxiously awaiting your vote and comments are appreciated.
carol
The thing I don't like about my own proposal here, is paying the .015 per word. Maybe we should up it to .02? Also, instead of 10 articles, maybe we should go by total word count, and make it somewhere around 5,000 words...This gives the mentor about $50 for "sponsoring in" the new content producer, yet the newbie (to our company) will still be above $10 per hour for their initial work.
ReplyDeleteI'm concerned about the .015 too. If the new people do the full job and the senior person just answers questions, light edits, etc, then the .02/.01 seems reasonable. The other concern is will the kind of work we get keep changing? If it's always going to be mainly writing/spinning, then I would think 5000 words/10 articles is a rather lengthy training period (assuming that most people recruited will have some experience at least). It's a lot to think about!
ReplyDeleteYou have to give the probies at least .02 per word. Recruiting new talent is the key to growing the company and I don't think you can entice quality talent for less than that. As far as the probationary period is concerned, I'm not sure you can quantify it 100%. Some new people will catch on fast; others will take longer. Having a set amount to be submitted should be flexible according to demonstrated talent. I'm also not sure I understand who exactly gets the by line for submitted material. The newbie should be recognized by the group from the start. You could have an added line for the sponsor to show who is mentoring them; but, the author of the piece should always get the credit whether their a seasoned vet or not. You can set the bar as high or as low as you like but ultimately each individual will be judged for their work, not their ability to meet a quota.
ReplyDeleteI've already said what I think somewhere else on the Blog (can't remember where). I say lets get to the point where we have so much work we can't handle it first then look for new writers. Getting clients will probably be harder than getting writers.
ReplyDeleteA big part of the management headaches on this last project, is that we needed more writers, and brought people in, even as we were doing the work. Me, Carol and sally expanded to the team we have now, all in a matter of days. Petal is right. We need work, more than we need workers. However, I want to have our protocol all figured out so that if a project comes along that requires more CPs, we will have a seamless way of grafting them in quickly.
ReplyDeleteRichard is right as well. Out of the team we have now, only one didn't work out. Darlene would need a lot of guidance to be able to produce like the rest of us. Everyone else is, IMO, a better writer than I am.
I was only making the temporary rate adjustment w/ quota so the CP that ends up "sponsoring" the newbie into the group, could get $50 bucks for their efforts. Maybe we could agree to all work together, within this forum, to help a newbie/probie and show them the ropes...pro bono? Then we can pay three cents / word from the get go, like we all got to start.
To answer Teal: Yes. The work I have now is all very different. This project we just completed, if the client is WOWed when all is said and done, will come around again every 2-3 months. I have a bunch of other projects that are much different. That is why communication is key. We need to have intense and efficient huddles at the start of a new project so we can all be clear on what our client wants...then hit the ground running so we can return a finished project to them ASAP. The "hand-off" and the "hand-back" is essential!
once the question has been settled on pay etc. I suggest that one just take one trainee in at a time. I think the time to mentor is when we are on down time not when we are all stressed to get a project out. Richard is right as I said before, people learn at different speeds. I suggest that the trainee is be told in advance that he or she is on standby and what the rate will be whatever is decided. If he or she agrees, then it is a go. I don't want to sound mean just practical. Does one go into a job as a trainee and ask how much does the manager get I want the same?
ReplyDeletesorry the first sentence should read....I suggest that we just take in one trainee in at a time.
ReplyDeleteI think we are trying to do something original and innovative...kibbutz style. I don't want to do things the way they are usually done. I suck at those kind of politics anyway. Some people that we recruit may have greater abilities than the rest of us. Just because they are new to "us" doesn't mean that they are new to the business.
ReplyDeletegee part of what I just said doesn't make sense, I will revise, we bring one trainee in at a time, downtime, is not when we are sitting down twiddling our thumbs, because there would be nothing to try them out on, but we need to define downtime,
ReplyDeleteexample,
it could be when we have a small project that is easily handled in the time period that we have,
it could be at the beginning of the project, where one or two articles are reserved and marked for the trainee.
or any other idea which you guys might come up with.
My feeling is that if we have a major project and having trouble getting articles out doing it ourselves, that it is not the time to have 7 or 8 newbies.
Of course if they are seasoned writers in this kind of writing it wouldn't take long, but if they are writers just not SEO writers it may take a longer training.
I run a newsletter with my writers I have vast connections since I have been doing this since 2003. Since its debut 500 writers have submitted their work to me. They write mostly personal stories and poems and some write editorials but some of the writers may want to learn something new. These people would need longer training to wrap their mind around our style of writing should they be allowed to join.
Also, I have connections from the various sites I have worked with. Martha Jette and I for example met each other on Ryze business network. Beverly Mucha is my friend from examiner.com.
well what I did was click on follow and that is how all the bangari posts started to come to my blog on google.
ReplyDeleteWe hope we wowed the client. We did a lot of work on this project and we brought in enough people to finish it. My thoughts are that we may not have enough work to keep everyone busy. I'm in this business to make a living. If I can't make a living at it, I will need to continue to find work elsewhere. We can only hope that we have big projects to keep the people we have busy.
ReplyDeleteIt would be good to have multiple projects going at one time to keep everyone busy. I'm just concerned that no one is going to be able to make a living at it if the company doesn't grow to fit the number of people we have.
On Field of Dreams... If you build it they will come.. let's hope that holds true for our company.
As a contractor, this was my biggest challenge. fitting the work to the crew and the crew to the work. I used to say that there was no "gas and brake" to control it...it was more like a "rocket and a brick wall"...Let's talk about a solution to this concern of yours, and I think Petal also has mentioned this same thing. My best solution is one that I want to try to articulate today. That is: Passive income... We need to find and take "cash on the barrelhead" work like what we just completed. Now if we can also do work that pays over time...like the content that we have produced for AC and Factioidz, we would have the golden combination.
ReplyDeleteI think it will be much, much easier to determine the pay rates when we have a good system down and a clearer idea of how much a particular job will bring in, etc. Right now, anything you decide is subject to change rapidly as we evolve.
ReplyDelete