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> I said that they "might" be ill-suited. Thus far, I've interviewed quite
> a few former contractors who are now scrambling for full-time work.
> I've found that, through experience, they are ill-suited to captive
> employment.
I agree. But that goes both ways. Captives also generally make terrible
contractors. They try to treat their job like a full time position and
then are surprised when they go in one morning to find their contract
terminated.
> Also, as I said, I, personally, refuse to hire contractors unless
> desperate because they made a choice to contract. It's a market. I make
> decisions. You make decisions. Our firm makes decisions. We get
> disciplined by the market. In my role, I'm happy to discipline
> contractors. That means they go at the bottom of the "Yes" pile. :)
And you have that right. However, that might not be the smartest criteria.
There may be a lot of bright people in that "contractor" pile who would do
great work.
You also have to accept that a lot of "captive" people are not always the
most qualified. Captive employment tends to breed a form of "professional
inflexibility." Once people get comfy doing things a certain way, they
tend to think that is the ONLY way to do things.
Contractors don't have that luxury. Inflexibility does not get you very
far as a contractor.
> Yep. I just don't fool myself into thinking that I have so-called
objective
> criteria or even the only criteria that could be used. We have to weed
> through hundreds of resumes. You end up doing what "feels right". You
> either survive, or you don't. You get disciplined by the market and
> progress or die.
I think is good you admit that your hiring practices are not objective.
That is a hard thing to say in todays ultra-PC world. The fact is,
virtually no hiring practice in the world is objective.
However a hiring practice does not have to be "objective" to still be
smart. The key is to hire people who are a good fit for your organization.
Clearly your organization has much different criteria than a lot of
others.
Andrew Plato
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