How Some Companies Try to Take Advantage of SEO’s

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I was recently contacted by one of the top sites in the world of online travel. Seems they’ve been looking to fill an SEO position for quite some time. The initial contact came from a recruiter who wanted to know if I would be interested in working in their offices a few days a week here in NYC. I thought, “Sure…why not?” I stated my case and let it be known that I run a company and would work for them with the understanding that I wouldn’t be a regular, full time employee. In other words, on-site consulting on a part time basis, under contract.

The next day I was contacted by someone at the travel broker who was in charge of hiring for the position. After talking for 20 minutes ( if you get me on the phone and we talk SEO, I can go on and on), the woman ask me to look at two pages of their site and lay out, “step by step”, what I would do to improve them. Sorry, but I’ve been around awhile and certianly heard this one before. I told the woman politely that my resume and client referrals should suffice and that providing anything prior to getting the position is something I didn’t do. She told me they wanted to see how I would put information together and to gauge my knowledge of SEO. “Really”, I said. “No offense, but when companies ask for specific proprietary information under the guise of checking credentials, it usually means they’re fishing for a free lunch.”

What would stop them from using the information I provided to do the work on their own? Absolutely nothing. That would be fine and expected as long as I was being paid to consult, but what company says “We like your resume, so please come in for a week so we can judge your performance prior to actually hiring you.”? Furthermore, if they have an SEO on staff capable of passing judgment on my expertise, why do they need me in the first place?

I offered to do the work if they were willing to pay me for my time (which, by the way, would be pocket change to this company), but the lady declined. The odd part came a few days later when the recruiter again contacted me to see how the interview went. I told him it was a waste of my time and that it was apparent they were looking for free information. He told me that the woman calls him regularly to see if anyone has provide any information on how to optimize and build back links for the same two sections that were requested of me. He told me no one has, and I highly doubt anyone will unless they are new to the business.

SEO’s are in a unique position in that we provide a service that every other web designer or two-bit hack with a modicum of internet knowledge thinks they can perform. Most larger companies with a sizeable internet presence have a development staff on the payroll and some wonder why their employees can’t get their pages on the boards and performing well for terms. They feel that with the right information, anyone can or should be able to do it, and so they want a “one size fits all” template that applies to every page on their site - a template they can pass on to their webmaster(s) and say “Make it happen”. Don’t be fooled by unscrupulous companies and HR managers who are too cheap to recognize that what we do is something that takes time, dedication and the commitment to stay abreast of SE changes. You’re likely to invest valuable hours, disclose your hard earned knowledge and get nothing in return. A company serious about hiring an SEO will go about it in the same way that any company hiring an employee or firm will. They’ll look at past performance, ask for references and go over your individual resume or firm’s track record with a fine toothed comb. They won’t ask you to do work for free.

Have you had something like this happen to you? How did you handle it?