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Archiver > APG > 1999-12 > 0945146321


From: "Mills" <>
Subject: [APG] Professional Opportunities for Genealogists
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 22:38:41 -0600


Jan writes:
<In fact, taking Maralyn's comment a step further, we need professional
genealogists to actively step "out of the box" to look at ways they can hire
and encourage individual genealogists of promise in their own locales.>

Agreed -- with a caveat around those words "can hire," as covered below.

Jan continues:
<Take . . . a genealogist with clients stacked up and waiting 3 - 6 months
for work to begin. How much more money can that person make if they hire
someone to help start that client sooner, and lay some of the ground work?
Do it 2 or 3 times, one right after another, and during that three month
period, they've just increased profit by 50 - 70%. It's less about what
you're paying your research assistants, but what they're getting out of it.>

Here our thoughts part ways, Jan! I've been overworked and I've had clients
stacked up way in advance -- in which case I'd *refer* them to the
up-and-coming genealogist whose potential I admired. But, no, I would not
have considered hiring the newer genealogist as an assistant to work--or
help work--the cases that I'd been hired to do. The issue here is *not*
"encouraging others." mentored my share over the years, but never turned
over to them client work for which I had contracted.

The issue here, of course, is the relative value each of us place on
research assistants. It's a very individual decision and probably a
controversial issue. But one of the clearest lessons I learned during two
decades of client work is that most of the problems brought to me were the
result of somebody's failure to recognize important clues in the routine
records they checked. And, sadly, that somebody was a professional in
too-many cases.

As NGSQ editor, I no longer take clients; but if returned to client work, I
still would not hire research assistants to conduct work clients
commissioned me to do. That groundwork the less-experienced-but-promising
person does would be the very straw with which I would attempt to make
bricks. That groundwork requires just as much skill as any evaluations I
might attempt to make from it. If a client hired me and my name went on the
finished product, it would be my work from A to Zip. Mentoring would not be
done on a client's commission.

Just my opinion, of course. (And that profit increase of 50-70% would not
tempt me at all -- but, then, that's probably why I've never gotten rich at
genealogy <g>.)

Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL

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