In a comment on my last post, someone wrote: "I am completely baffled and mystified by Aquent. My background and skills are stellar. I see a few people here and there who do get work through Aquent. But there really aren't that many jobs around when I go searching for them. What's going on? Is there some secret mantra I should know?"
I started to respond with a comment of my own, but thought that other folks who have not found work through us may have similar questions. The short answer is, "Nope. There is no secret." The long answer goes like this:
There is no mantra or secret password as far as getting work through us goes. At the same time, I would say that there is an amount of "luck" in the sense of "timing." After we've interviewed you and reviewed your portfolio, if we think there's a match between your skills and our clients' current needs, we'll usually let you know right then and, ideally, it will lead to a placement. And one placement may well lead to another.
If, on the other hand, it turns out that due to bad timing your stellar skills don't match any of the immediate needs of our clients, that could mean, unfortunately, that you never find a position through us. Why is that?
When our Agents find out that a client has a particular need we can help with, they turn first to Talent they know in order to fill the position. These people will, in general, consist of those who have been working with us for a while and have a proven track record. If the Agent doesn't find the right match in that group, she will then turn to the people we have just recently interviewed, mainly because these people will tend to be "top of mind."
Now, if you were interviewed and placed in short order, then you will probably end up in the first group. If you were interviewed, however, and not placed within a couple weeks, for whatever reason, then you will eventually drop out of the second group. At that point, unless your skills are fairly exotic, in which case your name may come up in a search of our database, your chances of getting a call from us begin to dwindle. I know that sucks, but it's the plain truth.
What is the remedy? Getting placed soon after your interview is your best bet, but that is not entirely in your control. You can steer things in your favor, however, by coming in with a few target companies in mind where you would like to work. If our Agent has a goal like trying to get you an interview at company X, that gives her something concrete to work on.
Naturally, you need to make sure that you have provided us with the material we'd need to make an introduction - resume, portfolio, success stories - you have to be available to meet if we are able to set something up, and your expectations need to be realistic. Still, by doing this, you have increased your chances of getting placed. Or, at least you've improved your luck.
Beyond that, you need to stay in touch with us so that you stay "top of mind." Update us on your availability. Let us know if you have added new skills or experiences to your resume. Ask us what you could do to improve your chances as a candidate. The more actively you can engage with us, the better.
Our responsibility in all this is to be candid with you. If we don't think we're going to be able to work with you or find a position for you, then we need to tell you that. If there is something you can do to change the situation, we should coach you on that. If, on the other hand, there are some insurmountable obstacles to us working together (for example, you are only available to work weekday mornings from 9 to 11), then we need to let you know that as well.
Anyone who has, or has not, gotten work through Aquent have anything to add to this?
Image Courtesy of Capitan Giona.
Wow. It's so refreshing to hear such straight forward honesty. It's appreciated and I'll keep Aquent in mind if I ever need your services.
I interviewed several months ago with Aquent and never heard back despite hearing about several possibilities. When I sent follow up emails, I received *no* response. Not even a "No thank you." I was ready to completely blow Aquent off as they did me. But after reading this, it changes my mind.
Mike - I'm glad you appreciate the honesty, but bummed that you didn't get responses when contacting us. We receive a lot of contacts via phone, email, and the web everyday, but responding to people is something we not only need to do, we need to do it in a helpful and friendly way.
Matt
I haven't worked through Aquent. Either gigs didn't come through (canceled or chose another person) or I was on assignment through a different agency. When I finish a project and become available again, I always update my info through Aquent's site and send an email to my Agent.
Now, Matthew, here is my question: Another agency I've worked through a lot, an administrative staffing agency, asks me to call every couple days when I am available, to remind them I am looking for work. Aquent and other creative staffing agencies usually tell me they will find me in the database if anything matches. Should I be more persistent about checking in with my Aquent agent while I am still out here waiting for work? How often is often enough, and how often is pushing it?
Anna - That is a good and fair question.
I think the best answer is to ask your Agent. He or she should be frank with you about how frequently they prefer to be contacted. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the "don't call us" approach so I'll hope that's not what you are told. When people are looking for work, waiting around doesn't feel great. At the same time, calling in every day might be overkill.
Frankly, if you were checking in once a week, that shouldn't really be too much. Please let me know if you hear something different.
Aquent has several problems that make it difficult for consultants to work with you. First you lack customer focus and intensity. Next you have an extremely narrow perspective on customer needs and issues. Oftentimes, your client contact people fall over opportunitites, get up and keep right on walking. Third, you think you are better than you are. Competition is cleaning your clock. Finally, you only communicate with consultants when you have an immediate need. Your business model and approach is cold and lacks professionalism.
Coldness, lack of professionalism, neglect of consultants, narrowness of focus that prevents us from recognizing opportunities - all things we strive to avoid or avoid being. On top of that, the conceit of pride, "you think you are better than you are."
I'm sorry that we made this impression on you but I thank you for taking to time to leave this comment. I know that we can be better than this as an organization. Your comment reminds me that being good, or at least better, isn't a goal you reach, but a state you've got to work to maintain.
In my case, I found myself putting together proposals that never went anywhere and getting contacted for work that was not in my field of expertise. I often felt as if I was being contacted simply because you were digging through to the bottom of the barrel and were desperate.
I often see you guys advertising for my particular skill set but I have discovered that many times you're just trolling for resumes and don't actually have an opportunity available in which I would be interested in.
In one case, I found out that you guys were charging your client 3 times what I made on the project. This is highway robbery and only makes me not trust you people.
I've also not cared for your restrictions on portfolio pieces and have come to view posting my portfolio as nothing more than a tool to help you in your marketing efforts without any benefit to me. IOW, if you're not going to permit me to use my portfolio URL to post my pieces, then it is incumbent upon you to provide a space where I can showcase my work under your umbrella. To have pieces rejected because your potential clients can see that the URL is listed under my brand, is in at best, kindest and most diplomatic of descriptions, frustrating.
Although I've found the people I've been in contact with rather pleasant, Aquent has been the furthest thing from me as a source of work that I could count on and have simply lost any interest in keeping in touch with because it has just not been worth my time.
I hesitated approving this comment, in part because it was submitted anonymously, but since it echoes some other complaints about us, I decided to put it up and offer a response.
The central issue here is trust. You don't trust that we understand your skills well enough to offer you appropriate jobs. You don't trust that we are calling you except out of desperation. You don't trust our job postings (just "trolling for resumes"). And you don't trust that we are being fair to you or our clients when it comes to billing them and paying you.
Finally, and in a way worst of all, by rejecting portfolio pieces because they might reveal a URL, we give the impression that we don't trust you or our clients.
Working with Aquent shouldn't feel like this or be like this. We need to be trustworthy and should be doing everything we can to demonstrate that we can be trusted. That starts with setting realistic expectations as to whether we will be able to place you with one of our clients or not. If it's a long-shot, we need to tell you that.
In terms of pricing, we need to be getting you a rate at fair market value and we need to charge the client an amount that covers your rate and compensates us for our service to them. We don't just shuffle around resumes nor do we troll for them mainly because our clients don't want to look at a ton of resumes (which they could get easily enough via Monster or some other job board).
Our clients only want to look at one or two resumes and they pay us to match the skills of the people we represent with the needs they have because that saves them time and effort (though it would be pretty unusual for them to pay us three times what we pay our talent).
Finally, as far as "scrubbing" portfolio pieces or sending over resumes with blacked out contact information, I'm not personally a fan of that because, as I said, it implies that we don't trust our clients NOT to contact you directly, and we don't trust you to tell them they have to work with you through us. Our job is to build that trust so that we don't worry about stuff like this. In fact, it's stupid to worry about it because finding people's actual information is just getting easier.
In any case, we didn't successfully build that trust with you, and I'm sorry about that.
My experience with Aquent was just as frustrating and ultimately pointless in getting any assignments with them. Weekly calls, requests for advice from the "job counselor," and frequent updates of my skills and resume did absolutely nothing. Eventually, I decided to withdraw my name from the Aquent pool and wrote to their CEO, Mr. John Chuang, to explain my dissatisfaction with his company. Of course, I didn't receive a reply, but I didn't really expect one. Aquent is a joke of a job placement firm from what I've heard from other designers also. My advice to other designers is to avoid Aquent and concentrate instead of building/revising your portfolio. That will open more doors than the alleged jobs that Aquent claims they have.
I'm sorry that this was your experience with us, especially because I don't believe it had to work out that way
As you can probably imagine, we are contacted by thousands of people looking for work and, as I explain in this post, there are a lot of reasons that it doesn't work out, timing or a mismatch between their skills and the requirements of our clients being the two big ones.
If people get work through us, I would assume that they are happy. If they don't, they might be disappointed, that's only natural. Still, if we do it right, they don't have to be unhappy.
Here's an example of how one of our Agents responded to an applicant:
"Thank you for applying for the position listed in the subject line. We have reviewed your application and your skills and experience are not a match for what our client is looking for at this time. Too brand focused, not enough Industrial Design experience. Although you have not been selected as a candidate for this particular opportunity, we will certainly consider you for others that match your qualifications more closely."
This is how the applicant responded:
"Thank you Jon for taking the time to send this update, I wish more people or companies followed your lead in communicating promptly regardless of the outcome. My industrial design experience is buried a bit in my resume, something I will now remedy."
Ideally, all our interactions would go like that.
People can live with bad outcomes. They have a harder time with bad feelings. Looking for work or a new job can be frustrating enough. We need to make sure that dealing with Aquent doesn't add to that frustration but alleviates it somewhat, even if we can't find you work.
Because of the negative things I see here, and my extremely positive and respectful experience with Aquent (especially compared to other agencies), I really felt the need to leave a comment.
I contacted Matt Paulus at the San Francisco office, after I'd registered with Aquent and was getting no response. He was honest and really advised me about what he recommended I do for my portfolio, and if I remember right, actually called me the next day about a some freelance work. He continued to make an effort to help me out, and I was eventually placed at a contract job, and have been here for three months.
I just wanted to put in my two cents and say how well I was treated by Matt--and Jennipher Pham too in the San Jose office. Thanks!
Thank you very much for posting this. People often feel more compelled to talk about bad experiences than positive ones. I don't blame them for venting and I don't want to pretend that Aquent is perfect, but it is nice to hear from those, such as yourself, who have had positive experiences with us.
For a long time, Aquent struck me as being *THE* agency to get in with. For years, I sent my resume/information in response to positions I thought I had potential for with no response back. Then, last year, you guys called me. I thought I had finally arrived. :)
I had a great interview, if not a little too briskly paced, with my Agent, and I really liked her a lot. I really felt she understood my skill set, and for the first couple of months after I registered, she called me frequently for additional portfolio pieces that a client might need to see--I even had a couple rounds of interviews for temp-to-perm work.
The problem was that your follow-up sucked. I would call right after the interview, relay my thoughts and opinions to the Agent, and wait to hear more. One job I knew I wasn't right for, but I never got any closure or official "they hired someone else." With the other job, the client supposedly said I was the top candidate, but he was too busy with other things at work to proceed at this time, etc. etc. I could say you guys strung me along for three months, but I'm not naive enough to pin all my hopes on one maybe job, so I kept looking and eventually found a temp-to-perm position on my own.
I never heard from Aquent what happened with that job, and it might be useful to mention that neither of the Agents who sent me on these interviews were "my" original Agent who I thought understood me. Then, my original Agent left Aquent, and I got assigned to a new one, who never invited me in to meet him. I tried to do my end of keeping up contact, but I never got much out of my new agent. So I gave up.
As a side note, another thing Aquent could do is be more helpful when I asked questions about any deficiencies in my experience or tech skills. You guys see what's out there, what employers want, and the desired skill sets. Help me be more competitive for you by telling me what you think might make me--on paper-- a less viable candidate. I want to know so I can target those areas and do something about them. I'm a big girl.
Melanie -
I appreciate you taking the time to relate your experience with Aquent and I'm sorry that it didn't go down differently. I absolutely agree with you that follow-up, especially post-interview, and providing constructive, career-oriented feedback to job seekers are two things that we should be doing as a matter of course. These aren't really above-and-beyond things, they are fundamental to our business. This view is shared at ever level of the organization and when we are at our best, it is the experience of all those we work with. Obviously, we weren't at our best in your case. Your comment reminds me that good experiences with Aquent don't just happen; we have to work hard to create them and we can't let up.
As anyone who follows this blog knows, I don't have a problem posting comments about negative experiences with Aquent, even when such comments are anonymous. However, I don't feel obligated to post anonymous comments generally and will only do so if I think that others will benefit from it.
PLEASE, if you aren't happy with Aquent, but don't want divulge your name in a comment here, email me or call me, Matt Grant, at 617-535-5000. If I don't know who you are or which office you were working with, I cannot address the situation, let alone remedy it.
I wrote the original comment that led to this reply thread, and I'm glad I did so. Matthew's frankness is welcome. I hope that some of the respondents' postings open eyes at Aquent. If no jobs are available because of the season and the economy, no one can blame the agency. But if you've put a lot of time in with a recruiter or placement agency--and particularly if it's an agency where you've been a client and given Aquent a lot of business over the years--you expect consideration and feedback when you're the one looking for work.