Multiple times a day I get contacted about full-time positions in the tech industry on LinkedIn, Indeed, and via email.  

It’s hit or miss, mostly miss, but sometimes I write back and it turns out that they never needed a full-time on-site employee – they just needed a web guy (or web lady) who’d be there when they emailed, messaged, or texted.

As a man who prides himself in efficiency, not just in code but even in stupid things like putting away the dishes in the least amount of steps, it used to pain me to see inefficient employees doing jobs that could be outsourced, external, or automated.  In fact, I’ve replaced more than a few internal roles by writing business-process scripts and web applications over the last two decades – bittersweet really.

Last week I got a message from a guy named Bill.  He wrote that he was in search of a full-time graphic designer – so I wrote back:

He wrote back the next morning and we had a call.  It turns out that Bill didn’t need a Graphic Designer at all.  He not only just needed someone to upload blog posts and featured images once a week, but he expected that Graphic Designer to fix multiple website issues, including SSL, broken images, and mobile responsiveness problems.

This interaction made me want to write this post, because I’ve personally seen so many situations where companies waste money by hiring tasked-based employees for full-time jobs.  I don’t reply to every message, only ones that seem like they could be a fit, even if in some utopian universe where their want for a VP of Development position could be replaced and improved with a couple smart people on retainer devoting 20 hours a week

Bill now uses 3tone Digital as his web people and doesn’t have to add another employee.  So if your company is in the market for a “Graphic Designer” like Bill was, consider visiting our rates & pricing page and do the math.