Championable | Love, parenting, politics.

This is a note I had to send from Florida. It’s an amazing example of someone talking VaporSpeak because they’re afraid of being exposed as average.

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Dear [Soon-to-be-ex-Client],

My office just told me you called… I mentioned in my last email that I’m 1000 miles away from NYC, and you got the autoresponder when you wrote me, so I’m not sure why you called the office looking for me…

Anyway, I’m taking the time to respond because of how much effort my staff put into this.

At this point, if you choose to hire any of our people, you are welcome to do so via my company on a paid, unguaranteed, trial basis. I think you’ll see the reasoning in the responses below. Frankly, when I believe my people are being set up to fail, there’s nothing else to do. I tried to find examples of your work (since you did not give us any), and the only thing I came up with was your other company and your somewhat pornographic (and archived) MySpace page.

So honestly, I’m not sure what’s going on here. For the record, responses follow your answers.

Our Question: What was the “digital signature” you wrote in on the first form? It didn’t appear to be a digital signature of a kind Acrobat could recognize or we could certify, so I wanted to make sure we didn’t miss anything.
Your answer: It allowed me to E-mail the form without printing and scanning. I however filed a new one with Palmer that is ink signed.
Our response: Since you claim to be an expert in the digital realm, you should clearly know that the “digital signature” you sent was not legal, and if we accidentally accepted it, we would be operating under terms that weren’t clearly enforceable (although they do show intent).

Our question: Was the list of links you sent Palmer a list of sites completely designed and executed by [Your Company], or was it more of a “mood board” list?
Your answer: It is a list of progressive site I’ve come across, and best examples of who we are looking for in a interactive freelance designer.
Our response: Understood. Some examples of [your company's] work might have been helpful. And you repeatedly referred to them as “my links” and “our links.”

Our Question: Why doesn’t [your company] have a website? (I ask this because you were very concerned about [one of my candidate's] reel being old – happily, she’s been working at [three rocking shops] and elsewhere over the last few years – and the only online info on [your company's] work I can find is the splash page at [your domain].
Your Answer: Yes [your company] is only currently splash page, we have had bad experiences with people directly stealing our creative verbatim so we opted to take down our work. We also do not pitch clients though websites so we have no need to show our work there.
Our response: [Your company] has never had a website, at either this domain or the one listed in the Redbooks directory… at least according to archive.org. Perhaps archive.org is mistaken. Regardless, not publishing the work as [YOUR COMPANY'S] does not make it unstealable, it just makes it unstealable from [YOUR COMPANY'S] WEBSITE… unless you never show your work to the public, which I’m assuming you do.

Our question: It would be exceptionally helpful to know why you were concerned with the font choices of the samples on one of the sample’s of someone being submitted as a developer… the developer has literally no say in these issues, so I’m confused about this. A developer who insists on making font choices would be terminated (and properly so).
Your answer: I agree font is always the design choice of the creative and not the developer, but when it comes to the font choice and development of they personal work we look for a specific aesthetic, which will translate into complete understanding and not simple execution.
Our response: Your answer translates into a core misunderstanding of the roles people play in agencies. If you’re looking for us to judge the aesthetic of people who are specifically not being asked to play any aesthetic role whatsoever, then you are setting us up to fail particularly when we do an excellent job. If you were asking us to judge their code, that’s another kettle of fish.

Our question: Could you give us some details on the type of IA you are looking for? Some IA gigs are more User Experience oriented, some are data structure and management, others are simply for clarifying the flow of things as a user moves from place to place.
Your answer: We look to build metecognative Information Architecture and intuitive design to result in an effective positive UE. The navigation should be dynamic fast and seamless.
Our response: This is just a non-answer, AND it’s misspelled. Obviously, any user experience design requires metacognition. I mean, that’s the whole point behind usability and experience work. However, you didn’t really answer the question anyway.

Our question (modified by you): ActionScript Devs: AS3? AS2?
Your answer: Yes knowledge of both.
Our reponse: Without detail, this is totally unhelpful.

Our question (modified by you): Any data integration/external sources?
Your answer: Yes would be great addition do you have software developers for mobile iPhone and BB, also if we can build more flexible e-commerce engine. ALso OPen GL and C++, Paper vision, and the mergence between Maya + CODE.
Our response: Adding C++ to a Flash job, along with directly writing against an Open GL API, indicates that your simply casting a very, very, very wide net, as opposed to looking for specific people.

Our question (modified by you): Tween-class animation?
Your answer: Sure, more interested in full screen HD flash containers, that also work for onscreen presentations through local servers and online.
Our response: Your answer has nothing to do with whether or not elements are animated in the timeline or in code.

Our question: In what part of Flash development do you need them to be utterly fantastic? (Toughness bonus: the answer can’t be “all.”)
Your answer: Let me preface by saying we are looking of the top one percent of flash developers, the kids that studied with John Meada and Joakim Sauter. We are looking for the next generation of programing.
Our response: If you’re going to drop names, you should spell them correctly (both were wrong). Regardless, this is another non-answer, providing no helpful data whatsoever, except that you are rejecting all candidates except those who took certain UCLA courses. The “next generation of programming” is another common buzzword for non-defined goals.

Our question: You still want to interview candidates with whom you had issues, as a “capabilities interview.” What questions are you intending to ask them? If you tell us, instead of waiting to ask them, we can make sure that the candidates we submit to you have what you need. Please be as specific as you’d like with your answer to this. The more detail, the better.
Your answer: Yes we can, I would never want to pass judgement based on a website alone, but we are very clear when we say we are looking for a very specific type, if you feel this will be a waste of their time then that’s your call.

Our response: Clearly it’s a waste of time for our candidates, because you haven’t remotely defined your needs.
Your comment: We are looking to create the new experience in interactive, If you are trying to place people who just want to do what their told and collect their check then maybe this is not the place for you to place people.
Our response: Okay, if we come across people who won’t listen to what they are told, we’ll be sure to send them your way. Until then, I think we’ll stick to people who can operate within parameters. For some reason, you think that clarity equals a “lack of ingenuity.” And you want to operate “outside the paradigm,” except as defined by Mr. Sauter and Mr. Maeda. Also: ”A new experience in interactive” is something we hear almost daily.

Your comment: Again this is your choice, we want to fill the positions as fast as possible, but we will not compromise when it comes to the quality of our work or the quality of the people who work with us.
Our response: Agreed in full. Exposing our people to a set of completely undefined goals is unfair to them.

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Love to all. Even you, the above mentioned fakey-fakey-fakey guy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Work.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.