I was talking about the future of consulting/freelancing at my disruption training. One thing that we got to talk about was recommendations like as on TripAdvisor.
If you are going to hire a consultant or employee (for that matter), you just have to hope that your skills at judging the person are correct. And also their CV is accurate and has the skills to solve your problems. I’m sure there are some are terrific interviewer, but it may be challenging to find the best person for a job.
If you were going to hire me, you would obviously like to see that somebody has said something nice about me. I’m charging a premium rate compared to what is typically requested via recruiters.
I have only been hired once where the recruiter asked for references from two previous clients. I’m not sure what is the normal way to be checking what is going on. The way this has normally happened is that I have asked “Hey John, I have a new project going on will you give a reference for me.” He will then write a few words of recommendation. Like “Daniel has been really helpful in our SAP PI project. He has been taking the lead and ensured our systems are up to date. ”
The problem with such a review is that my clients may like me for the person that I’m and how I’m helping them. The solutions that I’m providing may not be optimal and not live up to the promise that I gave or is telling them. In some cases where I’m helping with skills that are outside their expertise, they will not be able to tell if I did a good job.
There is the third party review as a second approach. Here either I or future clients need to pay another consultant to review the work that I did. He would need same skills as I have to be able to verify what I have done. It would probably be the most reliable sources of review because it is judging the work.
Though it may have some challenges. How am I supposed to give third party access to what I have done and shown it the best way? In most contracts, I’m not allowed to share confidential data with outsiders. I have made some solutions that are not optimal if you look at them from an end perspective, but there may have been changes during the development that meant we ended up with some crap data.
A solution: Another way could be to agree on two rates: a normal one and one for good work. For the first period, I’m at the standard rate. Then after two-three months, my client gets a third party reviewer to go through the content that I have made. And if it is okay I got the premium rate (paid back for the 3 months) otherwise we go for the normal rate. And the contract may end. With this latter approach, I’m giving the client some risk reversal to ensure they only pay the premium if I’m really good. And most consultants would be able to wait for it. The only price for this would be the third party review, which anyway would be an excellent way to ensure that you are making good quality.
How do you judge the quality of consultants? Let us know on LinkedIn.
