[Sigia-l] is it just me, or is it really hard to find IAs right now?

[George Olsen]

On 3/31/05 1:48 PM, "Dave" <dheller at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been a hiring manager on both the agency side and now for a
> software company. I have to say that freelancers to me are a waste of
> my time. Why? B/c it is knowledge unretained.

For software and web-based companies with UX departments, that can be an
issue. But not everyone's at that kind of company. Two examples:

Currently, I'm doing work for a company whose product is web-based. However,
they're so small that it doesn't make sense for them have senior-level
expertise on staff permanently.

At a past job, I was in-house at a large financial institution building a
global extranet. However, once it was built they weren't planning to expand
it -- it was really going into maintenance mode and they didn't really need
my skills for that. I left because I would've gotten bored to death, but
they would've been wiser to hire me on contract.

Another frequent reason to bring in freelancers is to get an
independent/fresh perspective (although that's more at the consulting end
than the contracting end of things). A lot of big companies do that in other
fields, even though they may have the expertise in-house.

As with everything there's always trade-offs, it's just a matter of choosing
which ones make sense.

George
___________________________________________________
George Olsen                                Principal, Interaction by Design
650 329 1728                            george at interactionbydesign.com