Newsletter - Reading between the lines
In this week's newsletter:
Reading between the lines
Giving yourself a leg up
This week's projects
Intelligent On-line Marketing
Reading between the lines
Having moaned about consultants use of jargon last week, this week I've been having the same trouble with clients. We keep encountering tenders where the title is either impenetrable or completely misleading - my favourite from this week is one for 'Fizzbook Spin'. Apparently, these are laptops specially designed for children - a new one on me. Another tender that claimed to be for 'personal computers' turned out to be for a fairly complex human resources related system. Fortunately we read the tender details before posting and do our best to translate the titles into something meaningful - but it can be difficult, so if you see a weird looking title in your daily alert it's probably worth taking a few seconds to look at the summary, just in case! There are some more examples on the Skillfair blog, plus Cath's favourite unusual tenders - a prize to anyone with a more obscure or amusing example.
Giving yourself a leg up
A cynic might suspect that some clients are trying to make sure that they don't get too many bids, but I prefer to think that vague or misleading descriptions reflect uncertainty on the client's part. Which means that there may be an opportunity for you to engage the client in conversation and find out what they really do want. I've been told by a number of consultants that they've picked up projects from us and their own contacts and eventually developed what seemed a quite insubstantial assignment into a long term relationship. The trick, I think, is to keep an open mind and listen carefully to what the client is saying and how they say it. That lets you pick up on other issues and opportunities they may not even be aware of.
This week's projects
Skillfair clients seem to specialise in obscure and hard-to-source projects, we're particularly keen to find suitably qualified consultants for the first 2 projects on this week's list. As usual this is just the tip of the iceberg and we have some interesting new projects waiting for our checking process to complete before they go out tomorrow.
Technical file development supporting medical device CE marking, North West England
Sales and marketing consultants for promotion of a freelance professional event, North West England
Coaching Assignment – Senior Management, England
Heating Installation report needed,Yorkshire and Humberside
Manufacturing Relocation Project Manager,Europe
Business Development and Support - Software Sales
Business Analysts / Process Engineers for Work Flow Improvement, South East
International HR Consultancy Services, North West England
Options Study & Consultancy for HR & Finance Systems,Greater London
External Evaluation of Vocational training project, South Coast
Energy Feasibility Study, Wales
Research into computer games based learning, Scotland
Marketing Strategy , West Midlands
Management Skills Training Programme ,Overseas
Training in use of action learning sets
Short Film/animation commission , North West England
Web Development , England
Youth Arts Centre Consultancy, West Midlands
Soft Skills Programme,Greater London
Marketing and Promotion for Spring Ball , North West England
Art Resource and Research Website Developer , Scotland
strategic IT consultancy partner, Scotland
Voice Recognition Project,Home Counties
Economic & Competition Policy
Health and Safety Adviser, London
Intelligent On-line Marketing
A quick reminder that we've organised a workshop on Intelligent On-line Marketing for 17th March in London. This will include ideas on how best to use Skillfair to support your other marketing activities and a practical assessment of which, if any, social and on-line tools you should be using. The workshop is over half full already, so if you're interested in coming along you need to make decision soon.
The workshop is £30 (£25 for members), click here for more details and to book.