http://www.freelancestaffing.net/
Ann Strout
info@freelancestaffing.net
207-571-4591
So I was just going to let this slide, but because me & my assistant wasted a good day or two dealing with Ann’s documents, I felt the need to tell people my experience.
Ann contacted me on Guru when I posted an ad for a very p/t position.
She started marketing her company’s services that find you staff. They find you what you need, do all the screening & interviewing, & you pay them through Freelance Staffing. She also gave me rates.
I will disclose what she stated in her bid…
“How do our services work? You need a project or task completed, you contact us, we place the highest skilled freelancer that matches your criteria and business needs 100% on your project.
We do a trial period of a minimum of two weeks and no maximum. If you are satisfied with the freelancers work and wish to continue working with him/her, you may. If you wish to end the relationship but use the same freelancer for future projects you may do that also! If the project is less than two weeks worth of work, we have applicants who can provide fast turn around time.
We will place your company name on our websites home page as one of our clients and continue to recruit, screen and hire for you!
Freelancers can request to know when you are hiring and apply! This way, you will never have to search for an employee again.
The best part, is our services offer “on the spot” hiring. If you have a project that needs to be done in 2 days, or that day even, we will find your match and place him/her on the project that day!
How? We have a data base of applicants who can work last minute. All of See below for our fee structures and services.
We ask that our clients commit to a trial period of 2 weeks. This ensures that the client and the freelancer each get an equal shot at learning the quality of one anothers tasks and work. Below are the fee’s for our clients who agree to contract for a minimum of two week trial period.
$125 Start up fee. Here is what this covers. For this start up fee, we screen, do 2 extensive interviews with the applicant, reference checks and create an applicant profile. We also collect a standard application and resume. All in which the client is entitled to review prior to choosing the applicant. We will also relay daily or weekly work and progress at the end of each day or week. Whichever you prefer.
One of our policies is that the applicant must call into our lines at the start of each day and at the end of each day to be noted down as present for work or absent. We also relay this to you twice each day so that you always know if the applicant is working as scheduled or not.
$75 Client fee. This is a monthly fee that our clients pay. Here is what you get for this. We place your company name on our home page on our website. We consistantly recruit for you. If you are hiring, we do all the work that is stated above for only $75.
So say you have a project now, you pay the above fee’s, the project ends but before the month ends, you have another project. We do all of the above at no additional cost to you as you pay the client fee and are a client of ours.
Rather you have work or not, as long as you pay that monthly fee, we never stop recruting, screening and hiring for you.
Here is the other option. This is for clients who do not wish to commit to a 2 week trial period.
50% Mark up rate from your hourly fee.
$75 Client fee.
So if you agree to pay the applicant $10 per hour, with our 50% mark up rate, it will be $15 dollars per hour.
Our clients can extend the trial period for as long as they wish. If you start out with a two week trial period, and want to continue working with our applicant but don’t want to direct hire her/him, you can extend the contract with us for as long as you would like. Basically, you don’t ever have to direct hire, you may always work through us!”
Then a day or two later as I was talking to her, suddenly the rates changed.
I was confused & didn’t have time to really stare at the figures, so I sent this off to my assistant.
I thought maybe I was just tired & since numbers aren’t my forte, I figured Andy would figure it out.
Well he got back to me & said part of it made sense, but suddenly she had raised the price from $15, to $18, & that didn’t make sense to him either.
I pasted what he said to her.
She then reminded me that she said her prices were going up.
Being a businesswoman, I know that prices do have to go up, but what I was teed off at, was that she bid me one day, then 2 days later suddenly the prices went up. I can understand if we were an existing client, or were given notice, but we weren’t, & technically you can’t bid a price on a bidding site & then suddenly raise it. That’s just not ethical.
I wasn’t sure what kind of staffers she had, so I said I’d prefer to call her, because I wasn’t sure if her hourly rate was for all different people with skills, or only admin type people.
Also we were looking for long term people, not people for a week here or there, so I had to clarify all of the details with her.
She said she was busy on the Friday, could we make the phone meeting on Monday & I said sure.
She continued to e-mail with me back & forth throughout the weekend sending me new fee schedules & a contract.
Andy was getting more & more confused. He said her documents weren’t clearly written.
I mentioned this to her in hopes she would edit them. Andy was prepared to give examples since she said she was being as clear as she could be & she couldn’t explain it any more.
He had already been copying paragraphs into e-mails for me & I didn’t even want to see them because my head was spinning.
On Monday she said she would honor the prices in the bid, but they were higher than the new prices.
LOL, that made me even more confused.
Later in the afternoon when I got to my desk, I mentioned I was just about to call her when she suddenly had to go pickup her daughter.
She apologized & asked that we make it tomorrow.
I asked her to e-mail me after 2:30 pm on Tuesday.
I never received an e-mail.
We tried to 3way a call over to her, & there was NO ANSWER. This was after she said she’d be home all day & was flexible.
I left a message teed off that saying we were supposed to talk today & I’m disappointed she was nowhere to be found & that it was clear this was never meant to work out. I had just wasted 4 days of my time with her.
Never heard from her again.
Very professional!
