Okay, so the other day I got a phone call from a lady inquiring about a website. My partners and I have a long-standing policy that if in the first five minutes of a phone conversation if we don’t get a good vibe from the client, meaning that we think we can have a good working relationship w/ the client, we simply don’t follow up. At the end of the day it saves both us and the prospective client a lot of time. One thing that I have learned over the years is that if I can’t have a good working relationship w/ a client, I can’t do them any good.
Ms. Woman w/ an Attitude…
Well, this phone call was one of those situations. Honestly I don’t even remember this ladies name, not that I would point her out or anything, that’s not what this post is about. Here’s how our conversation went. For the first 2 minutes of the conversation she told me that she was shopping around for a development and hosting company to work on her companies website. She then went on for the next 3 minutes and told me how she was “appointed” the overseer for the project, and then she went on to tell me that she was over 15+ people in her department. So far, 5 minutes into the conversation and we hadn’t even discussed the project. I sat there patiently and finally was able to get a word in edgewise to ask her what the project consisted of. She then gave me about a 3 minute overview of the project, finally parking on the fact that she needed to have the ability to update content internally. This got us on the topic of content management.
Usually content management discussions w/ Pleth either go one of two directions once we get a good idea as to what the clients needs are. We predominately build upon MODx and WordPress for our client projects. Occasionally we will bring in other CMS solutions if it’s a good fit, but 90% of the time our client builds go into one of those two solutions. Well, while I was asking some discovery questions about what her content management needs were going to be and what kind of data she was going to be posting, she completely did a 360 and started telling me about her qualifications. She had a bachelors degree in something like business management, a minor in computer science, or vise versa. She then went on to say that she had her doctorate in something else and had been certified as a project manager in the last 12 months. She even went as far as to say that “my skillset is well above average”. It was like she was giving me her information for a job interview, or she might have simply wanted to hear me say “wow”, but honestly that sort of thing just doesn’t impress me.
I asked her if she had ever managed a website before and her response was that she managed a department with 15+ people and headed up two committees or departments in her organization. So, I asked again. If you are a web developer you are going to get a kick out of this one… She finally got around to answering my question with a resounding, “not really”, I mean I used to do our sorority newsletter in FrontPage. LOL.
I then asked her if she had heard of WordPress, she said that she had but didn’t have any experience working with it. Before she could remind me of her extensive educational pedigree I stopped her and asked her if she would like to look around in the backend of a site running wordpress to get an idea as to how it all worked. She agreed so I pointed her in the direction of my sandbox machine and got her logged into it. You would have thought I showed her the schematics to an atomic bomb. It was one of those moments where the other person on the line is completely discombobulated. I could tell by some of her extremely elementary questions like, what are pages?, that it simply wasn’t going to work out. She just didn’t get the idea that she was able to add pages and posts from inside a control panel. I could tell that she was deflated at this point but she spoke up one more time and mentioned her background in Computer Science or something along those lines and quipped about her “above average skillset” one more time before I had enough and told her that there was no way I could get her up and running over the phone.
The Skillset of My Chihuahua…
Then, at this point I was a little frustrated that I had been robbed of 30 minutes of my busy day w/ a lady who was so hung up on herself that she couldn’t listen and learn, that I just informed her that she basically, with all of her degrees and certifications, had the website management skillset of my Chihuahua and that if we did decide to take on her project that there was going to have to be some time allocated in our proposal for training before we could turn her loose on the site.
Upon detecting that I was getting frustrated and was genuinely unimpressed by her, her demeanor changed completely. She said that she didn’t think that based on her qualifications that her board of directors were going to want to spend any money toward training her to do anything. I wished her the best of luck and told her that I had to head to a meeting. I gave her our corporate office phone number and told her if she had anymore questions just to give us a call. Knowing that my partners might have a better shot of working w/ her than me.
Right after that phone call, I felt the need to vent on Twitter about what had just happened. Here’s my post if you are interested, it actually got retweeted a few times too…
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a problem in the world training clients who have zero experience to run content management systems but in order for me to be a good trainer, the client has to be receptive to suggestions, and willing to learn. When this chick started on and on about herself, it quickly became a situation that I wanted to get out of as quickly as possible.
Okay, I told you that story to pose a question…
Why Don’t Colleges Require Business Majors to, at the very least, learn WordPress?
When a student graduates from college w/ a 4 or 6 year degree and enters the workforce, just like this lady did some years ago, what good is their diploma if they can’t even manage their corporate or small business website? I am sure that someone majoring in Business will pick up a lot of valuable knowledge and tools that will assist them in running their own business or in a management position for some corporation that hires them, but at the end of the day, they can’t even operate WordPress, the most simple, widely used, content management solution on the planet?
It just seems to me that educational institutions across the country should at least offer CMS 101, or WordPress 101, to get their students up to speed with managing web content. I am not saying that this needs to be some highly involved technical curriculum or anything like that, but it would be nice if they at least knew the difference between a page and a post??? Mind-boggling.
There you have it, I have spoken my mind. Thanks for enduring my rant. Again, please don’t get the impression that I am opposed to working w/ clients that have no computer skills whatsoever, that’s simply not the case. In a way, I welcome those opportunities because at the end of the day it gives me a sense of accomplishment to see my clients become comfortable w/ their abilities.
As an aside…
Just a few days after this conversation took place I was contacted by the University of Central Arkansas here in Conway to provide them w/ a basic wordpress installation as well as managed hosting for one of their departments. The project that I am referring to has launched a website that will be entirely managed by students who while they are learning to become journalists, they are also learning some valuable skills in terms of content management by working with WordPress.
We have to 'fire' some of our customers from time to time. 🙂
In our professions college is definitely overrated. I went to school for a year and a half. I was working the entire time as a graphic designer. I know I learned more at work than I did in class. I enjoyed work a lot more too. We've hired a variety of different designers out of college in the past, and it just never seems to work out. Yes they know Photoshop, but they don't know how to design anything for the 'real world.' Maybe businesses should be working closer with the colleges on our needs.
Oh by the way. We're looking to hire a designer if you know a good one 😉
That's a good point about Colleges working closer w/ established businesses to get a better idea as to what we need. I pretty sure they have some work apprenticeship type of programs out there already but they should do a lot more than that if they really wanted to equip tomorrows workforce.
I, having a BS in Computer Science from the aforementioned University of Central Arkansas, I can tell you that out of my 50+ hours of CS classes, about three or four of them really taught me something by going to class. Every class is textbook and theory driven. Very rarely did we have real projects to work on after introductory classes. That said, I think a lot of accreditation organizations tend to stay away from any one particular school of thought. I was a CS student for nearly 3 years before I touched a Linux box. Now, the intro classes program C++ with Linux. I think you get a lot of unflavored yogurt in college, and although you can make that into whatever you want, its hard to know what is out there to be had if no one tells you “Hey, you can be a Boston cream pie yogurt one day”. I loved college and thankful I had my opportunity, but I think a lot of institutions shy away from specialization, especially in a business/computer oriented program, just to satisfy accreditation.
Thanks a lot for your comments. You bring up some good points regarding accreditation.
Thanks a lot for your comments. You bring up some good points regarding accreditation.
Yeah for UCA! I know some students at SMU that run a site on WordPress too. It seems to be a trend in the journalism schools or the website/computer schools. Good point about that, however. I have been fortunate to give training over the phone to a couple of ladies with a whole lot more humbleness than that! Talked them through it right over the phone. Very smart ladies.