An entertainment industry career change, approximately one zillion invoices sent to Almira Gulch, months of non-responsiveness, passive aggressive eventual responses, and your little dog too.
A friend of a friend hired me to help her make a career change. She’s a lawyer seeking employment in the entertainment industry. I interviewed her for one hour, spent two hours writing her resume, and sent the resume to her on January 5, exactly nine months ago. The following May, she hired me to write a cover letter. In June, she hired me to do research on employment opportunities.
So far so good.
Along the way, I introduced her by email to 3 PR folks, 2 TV personalities, and 2 journalists, as well as exchanged 27 emails with her, many seeking feedback on the work submitted. For purposes of clarification, the actual number of emails we exchanged is exactly 27. If I had been trying to exaggerate, I would have said 4,327. Cool?
Right on. Now, because this woman — I’ll call her Almira Gulch — is a friend of a friend, I didn’t ask for a retainer. Until yesterday, I had received no feedback from Almira, and to date I haven’t received payment from her.
Yesterday I sent Almira her zillionth copy of the invoice and respectfully requested payment for four hours of work. Yesterday afternoon I got a response from her.
Carolyn, I reviewed your invoice. I would happily pay for work done, but I’m baffled as to how it took 2 hours to do my resume and 1 hour to do my cover letter. Many people tell me it takes only 1 hour to do a resume and 30 minutes to do a cover letter. I was also very disappointed with the cover letter.
Unfortunately, I do not feel that the resume or cover letter added any value to my job search. Aside from the formatting, the resume is completely useless to me.
Again, this feedback is coming for the first time exactly nine months after she received the resume and several months after she hired me to write a cover letter and months after she hired me to continue doing additional work for her.
