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I had a good chat with Allison O’Kelly, the founder and CEO of Mom Corps, a staffing firm that places professional women/moms in flexible jobs, about whether moms are hiring out their time and skills for less than their experience demands. O’Kelly, a Harvard MBA and cum laude accounting whiz from the University of Georgia, was on the management fast track at Toys ‘R’ Us after a stint at KPMG when she became a mom.
When the corporate world template didn’t fit her life as a working mom, she started her own business, providing small businesses with strategic planning, accounting, and tax services. She began hiring women, mostly moms looking to stay in the workforce without giving up all hope of a balanced life, and an idea was born. Mom Corps.
O’Kelly says Mom Corps does not have a set “rate card” that it provides clients, but generally, women candidates’ time is billed out at between $25 and $100 an hour. “We’ve turned clients away who’ve said ‘you’re just too much,’ “ O’Kelly said. The more in demand the skills, like accounting, the higher the hourly rate. Women need to know what the market rate for their skills/services is so they request a good rate, she said. Remember, O’Kelly added, “Once you start getting a certain rate, that’s generally where you’re going to stay.”
Lee Miller, co-author (with his daughter) of “A Woman’s Guide to Successful Negotiating,” said you need to find out what the job you’re being considered for doing on a part-time or project basis would pay full-time with benefits, then negotiate a good package based on a pro-rated fee.
O’Kelly and Lee both say their number-one piece of advice is this: Don’t act like a company is doing you a favor by giving you a job. You’re doing the company a solid by providing the work needed on a project basis. So get paid well for it.
“You are providing companies with flexible, powerful tools and skills they couldn’t possibly get any other way” for far less than it would cost them to hire someone full time with benefits, Miller said.
So, let’s do this: hold firms like Mom Corps, ourselves, and potential clients to the shared goal of matching highly qualified women who want flexible jobs with companies that need the same flexibility and highly skilled labor and are willing to pay a good wage for it.
