The Entrepreneur and the Recruiter

In early 2016 I was reached out by a recruiter for a freelance remote position with a small company based in Florida. I thought it couldn’t hurt to have some extra income come in for a couple of little projects. The lady who reached out to me was a talker. She was the type who would get a thought out and then string it together with something she said in her first sentences and kept on talking and talking. I wondered if she ever had time to catch her breath. Most of the conversation was taken up by her with me occasionally getting in an answer now and then. As always I walked her through my experience, and what I am doing currently. I told her was working full time and that if this was a part-time gig, I could do it in the evening. She said that wasn’t a problem, which everyone worked remotely. She liked everything I had to say and wanted to set up a call with the owner of the company. She said she’d get back to me with a date and time. A couple of days went by, and she called me. When I answered the phone she went right into introducing herself again–so I’d remember who she was, and then started talking fast without gasping for air. She had that California “Valley Girl” accent where she used the word “Like” in every sentence. “Like Oh My God.” She told me that she was trying to lock him down for a time. She also said she worked remotely and was hired as a freelance recruiter to help him search for candidates. Because he does a lot as the owner of the company, it was hard to track him down or schedule him for a call, but I was assured it would happen.

A couple of weeks went by, and I didn’t hear anything, so I decided to call her back. The phone rang a couple of times and for a second I didn’t want her to pick up because I didn’t want to have a forty-five-minute conversation about random stuff that had nothing to do with the position or even her rambling on about why she couldn’t get him on a schedule to call me. She answered. I introduced myself assuming she remembers me. Immediately, she got catty and said “who?.” I said, “remember, we spoke about the freelance position a couple of weeks ago, you were going to set up a time?” The memory clicked, and her tone completely changed. Again, she went into a mindless ramble of why she didn’t get him on the phone. Telling me, he’s busy, etc. By this point, I didn’t want to have my time wasted, and I was upfront and blunt with her. I explained, “Look I appreciate you reaching out, but if he doesn’t have a chance to speak with me then I don’t think this is going to work out.” She explains he loved my portfolio and wanted to speak with me. She promised me she would get him on the phone. At this point, I didn’t care if I spoke with him or not. If I did and got the gig great—if I didn’t, no big deal. It wasn’t worth stressing over.

She called me the following day to tell me she set up a time for later in the week around 7 PM. I was relieved to finally have a time locked down. The night arrived, and it was 7 PM. I excused myself to a quieter room to focus on the call. The call came in, and we started speaking. The owner and I proceeded to chat about my experience, what his company does. And what he was looking for. He seemed very personable and excited to potentially be working with me. He told me I would have to do a design test. I died a little inside when I heard that I would have to do one, but it was what it was. We said our goodbyes, and I called the recruiter to let her know how it went. It went to voicemail, and I left her a nice message telling her I thought it went great and went about my business. Days went by, and I heard nothing. I called the recruiter back and asked her about the status of the position. Again, she told me the owner was hard to track down, but she’d let me know. Weeks went by. It has been over a month since this interview started and I heard nothing. By this point, I was getting irritated with how the process was turning out. In my frustration. I sent a stern email to the recruiter letting her know I wasn’t into games or wanted to be strung along. I got a response. I’m working on it. By this point a month and a half went by.

One day, I get a random call from the recruiter. She told me without warning he will be calling me that evening around 5:30 PM. I told her it was too last minute and I wasn’t available then. I asked if it could be moved to 6:30 PM. She pinged him online and said that was fine. She said, “If he doesn’t call you, call me and let me know.” I told her I would. She seemed to be in a rush, so she had to hang up. Surprisingly, our conversation lasted five minutes. I was relieved.

Later that evening 6:30 PM hit. I waited for the call, and nothing came through. I waited a couple of extra minutes, and my phone still hadn’t rung. At this point, I thought this was hilarious because I apparently always run into the weirdest situations. I called the recruiter back and told her he didn’t call. It was fifteen past the time we were supposed to speak. She told me to sit tight and wait a minute or two. She hung up, and I waited a couple of minutes. My phone starts to ring with an area code from Florida. I picked it up, and it was the owner of the company. He started out by asking “if I spoke with the recruiter,” I said I did. I thought this was an odd question since she set it up. He then proceeded to ask in an awkward tone, “What did she tell you?” I told him “she said this call was to go over some project opportunities.” He then told me he wanted a “refresh” on myself and my work because he didn’t even remember. So I had to retell him everything the recruiter told him–multiple times. He proceeded to ask the same questions but phrased them differently. “What have you been doing?” “What have you been doing the past couple of months?” “Tell me what you’ve been doing recently?” At this point I can only give him the same answer so many times, so I kept them vague. “I’ve been working on a couple of projects recently, been focusing on UI/UX.” “I’ve finished up a couple of projects, and ready to start my next one.” He then wanted to know if I was available the next day (Wednesday). Unfortunately, I wasn’t, but I was available that Friday. I told him I could start Friday, but doubt started to enter his voice. As soon as I heard it, I knew getting him on the phone again would be a big problem. I asked him when he could chat again? What time would he be available the next day, mid-day, end of the day? Maybe he could chat with me and give me some work so I can do it through the weekend. By doing this I got him to open up and give me more detail about the work, so he explained I would be redesigning his websites and working with him closely. His end goal was for me to redesign everything and see his vision without any of his feedback. He wanted me to start right away, but then out of the blue, he remembers someone was starting in-house in his office the following day, so he wasn’t going to be available. This was confusing for me because one, he wanted to work in close collaboration, two he wanted me to start the next day, but he wasn’t going to be available. He seemed to overwhelm. He asked when I liked to work, and I told him the recruiter said I could do this at night because I had a full-time job. He said that was fine. He said he wanted to set me up with the project the following evening as well as a phone call to walk me through what I had to do. He wanted to send me a contract later that night so we can get started working the following day. Because he was so forgetful, he asked about my rate. I told him what I told the recruiter. He lowballed me by ten dollars for the first month of work, then after that, I’d have my normal rate. I didn’t want to lose the gig, so I accepted. I called the recruiter to let her know how it went, again. This time she picked up. I told her I wasn’t going to be available the next day, but because he was so hard to track down I was going to rearrange my schedule to make it work.

Later that evening I got the contract, signed it, and sent it back to him. The following night he called me to discuss the project and gave me directions on what he needed. I worked through the weekend and prepared delivery for that Monday. On Monday morning I got a call from the recruiter all distressed. The Recruiter told me she was quitting because she was sick of the owner not being available and not returning calls of candidates she was sending him. She said it was hurting her reputation and she was just done with the crap. She wished me luck and warned me to be careful. Red flags shot up in my head, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work with this guy and his company anymore. I figured I'd do what I can and if it gets bad, I’ll walk away. A few days went by, and her warning became a reality. Everything she said was true. He was always unavailable when I sent him stuff, but needed me during times I told him I wasn’t available at. He would say one thing and then do another.

I left after three weeks because it was turning into a full-time role rather than a part-time freelance position I was told of. I called the old recruiter to tell her she was right and if had any advice. She never bothered to call me back. A couple of months later he hired a new recruiter who reached out to me on Linkedin to do more work for them. I respectively decline and told the recruiter to get the hell out of there.

In 2018 the New York Times and CNN wrote a headline article about a guy who set up a company that has people, celebrities, politician, purchase fake followers on social media to grow their audience. It was a huge scandal. The guy headlined in the article was the same dude I spoke with and did work for that month. I knew leaving was the right decision. You can read the article here.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html