Poll: How many job offers do you usually receive in a week? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "How many job offers do you usually receive in a week?".
This poll was originally submitted by jlrsnyder. View the poll results »
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Strange question. This last May I received a job offer (a book) which keeps me busy until now, and in the meantime I've done a lot of smaller job offers, which arrive erratically. It is impossible to assess even a year average number of job offers.
| | | | Rolf Kern 
Switzerland
Local time: 12:54
English to German
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In memoriam | Fewer than I would like | Aug 15, 2010 |
But this is just for the moment. This is very volatile and can change any day to the contrary. This is one of the characteristic of our business.
| | | | Anja Weggel
Local time: 12:54
Member (2007)
English to German
Obviously it depends a lot on the season. However, when I look at the year in total I am very happy with the amount of work I receive. Usually it is a bit more than I can handle so I have to decline some work. It is however impossible to say how many jobs I receive in a week. Sometimes it is one big job, sometimes few small ones.
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Mary Worby
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:54
German to English
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| More than I can handle | Aug 15, 2010 |
I don't think a week goes by in which I don't turn work down (from existing customers). Which isn't to say I'm busy every day, but often it all comes in at once. But as a rule I'm busy most days and err more on the side of being overworked than underworked.
| | | | | interesting question | Aug 15, 2010 |
Generally I get enough to keep me busy but there are weeks when I have to turn jobs away, usually rush jobs that I don't have time for or where I can't meet the deadline, or simply am overloaded.
However, the last few weeks have been very quiet. Most of my clients seem to have gone on vacation at the same time! Fine with me, I wanted some time off anyways.
| | | | | Generally much more than I can handle | Aug 15, 2010 |
It does vary, e.g. mid-August can be relatively quiet in this part of the world (I'm using the day or two of downtime to do some other work that I'd been having to put off), but I usually have to turn down as many jobs as I accept; I think once I had to decline 6 jobs of varying size on the same day, it got a bit crazy .
| | | | | It does vary a lot! | Aug 15, 2010 |
Sometimes two or three days go by without a single offer and then I have five or six on the same day! In general I get enough to keep me busy...
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inkweaver
Germany
Local time: 12:54
French to German
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Last week it was more than I could handle, usually enough to keep me busy.
April was a bit quiet this year, but apart from that I have been working to capacity and often over capacity, therefore I haven't had a weekend off in quite a while now.
| | | | | Varies a lot... | Aug 15, 2010 |
On the whole, I'd say I have about the right amount to keep me busy. But it really varies a lot. Sometimes it's almost more than I can handle, but I somehow manage. Sometimes I am forced to turn things down. Sometimes I'd have the capacity to do more but nothing much comes in.
| | | | mediamatrix (X)
Local time: 06:54
Spanish to English
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In the 35+ years since I started translating I have never, ever received a ‘job offer’.
When I worked in-house, I received ‘requests’, 'orders', 'chitties' to do such and such a job, which were more or less polite depending on the rank of the in-house author. But they were not ‘offers’ in any sense of the word, since I was employed to translate anything and everything they threw at me (and, yes, I shovelled my fair share of s**t in my in-tray).
As a freelan... See more In the 35+ years since I started translating I have never, ever received a ‘job offer’.
When I worked in-house, I received ‘requests’, 'orders', 'chitties' to do such and such a job, which were more or less polite depending on the rank of the in-house author. But they were not ‘offers’ in any sense of the word, since I was employed to translate anything and everything they threw at me (and, yes, I shovelled my fair share of s**t in my in-tray).
As a freelancer, I have clients who invite/ask/expect me to make an offer in response to their enquiry; and preferably an ‘offer’ that will undercut my competitors - that means you, reading this! - by at least 50%
The point I want to make is that in the translation business, clients (in-house, direct or indirect alike) do not ‘make offers’. We, the service providers, are the ones who make ‘offers’; we offer our rate for the job and our T&C in response to the client's 'enquiry' (and, in my experience in recent years, the client then rejects it since (s)he expects a 50% discount because I live in a 'cheap' country, therefore I don't need to earn a fair rate for the job based on my 35+ years in the business in some of the least cheap countries on this planet ... but I'm drifting way OT).
When colleagues using this site realise that a client’s ill-named ‘job offer’ is most often an invitation to be ruthlessly exploited, and when the site staff decide once and for all to contribute systematically and proactively to the restauration of a proper balance of power in the client/freelancer relationship, I would expect to see poll questions such as today’s expressed thus: How many serious enquiries do you usually receive ….
And when that happens, I would like to see a follow-up poll asking: What percentage of the serious enquiries you receive actually lead to jobs?
MediaMatrix
[Edited at 2010-08-16 01:13 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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