Sending your CV to translation agencies - Is it a waste of time?

Most new translators start off by sending out CV’s to translation agencies. This strategy is both time consuming and actually quite ineffective, many because few translation agencies actually pay attention to them let alone respond to them.

To be fair some agencies receive as many at 70 CV’s a day, ranging from nothing more than a blank e-mail with a CV attachment to “all-singing-all dancing” CV’s with colours, photos you name it! Responding to them requires a significant amount of labour, something that most companies cannot afford.

Of course, you could argue that agencies should invest more time in finding qualified linguists - after all every agency website seems to claim that they are “the fastest growing agency in the country” using only “the most qualified linguists”. Such claims are a ridiculous marketing tactic designed to attract clients who know nothing about the translation process. If such claims were really true all of these translation agencies would be industry leaders, there would be a massive shortage of qualified translators and agencies would meticulously check CV’s just in case they were losing a potentially amazing translator.

Despite claiming that they work with “thousands” of freelancers the reality is that most agencies actually work with a small number of skilled - but preferred - translators who are the first port of call when a job comes in. When this small group is working to full capacity or the source document is out with their translation speciality then the agency will look further afield and other translators might have a chance.

Sadly translation agencies seem to forget that many new translators are not necessarily new professionals but are individuals who may have spent decades working in other fields. As such their lack of experience as translators is outweighed by their knowledge of their specialist subjects.

So is it worth even sending your CV to agencies in the first place? Is there a better way to break into the industry? Should the new translator use their time more productively to get better results? 

5 Tips for Beginners Using Social Media

The use of social media is seen as a key element of business development for many professionals. Yet many small business owners often see the time required to develop and maintain social media sites such as LinkedIn or Twitter as a major obstacle to their use.

How can you effectively manage all the different social media sites without getting “maxed-out”? Well, there’s lots of advice out there, but here’s 5 tips that I’d recommend:

• Have a plan

Very few businesses need to use everything that’s out there. So it’s important to think about what you want to achieve with social media. Do you want to attract new clients, keep existing clients informed, follow market trends or establish yourself as a bit of an expert in your field? Pick the social media mix that best suits your goals.

• Learn, learn, learn

It’s far better to use one or two social media formats and use them well, than have poor blanket coverage of everything that’s going. So if you want to use Twitter, for example, take some time to learn how to use it properly and get the most out of it. Look for blogs that can give you some hints and tips about improving your use of different sites such as http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/

• Dedicate time to participate in social media.

“That’s just the problem I don’t have time!” I can hear the screams. Random participation can send out a negative message to your audience, so set aside specific dedicated time to maintain the profiles you set up. This can be as little an 10 minutes twice a week or one morning a fortnight.

• A little (but often) goes a long way.

While many professional bloggers post as often as once a day, let’s face it, the rest of us humble mortals can only probably manage 2 or 3 posts a month. If your readers see a regular pattern in your activity they will continue to follow you, but there’s nothing worse than looking at a blog month after month only to find that there’s no new posts.

• Cross post where possible

You don’t have to spend hours posting different items on each site you use. It is often possible to adapt or reformat posts to several social media sites at the same time. There are some great tools out there - like Tweetdeck - which allow you to do this. Often a comment on your Facebook business page can direct readers to your blog etc. So if you have some good, regular content spread it round the sites you use, that way whatever form of social media your client is using they can pick up on it.

Do you have any good suggestions about using social media effectively? Why not leave a comment and share it.


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