Travelling at Magenic
- by Chris G. Williams
I occasionally get asked if we travel "a lot" at Magenic. Sometimes the question comes from job candidates. Other times it's clients, recruiters or friends. To give a simple yes or no answer would be a disservice to the person asking the question. So here is my standard answer:It depends.(That was the short version. Here's the long version...)We do have some guys that are more "national" in
focus, and they can travel a fair amount. They also receive a little extra in
compensation for doing so. It's a balancing act, and not necessarily a one-size-fits-all situation. Not everyone is well suited to constant travel. Some folks enjoy it and some folks hate it.With our local guys, our general
policy is to TRY and keep them close to home whenever possible, but sometimes the needs
of the client will dictate otherwise. (As Spock would say... the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.)In most cases though, we really do try
to avoid sending our guys on extended travel gigs (i.e. every week for 6 months)
when a simple kickoff trip and occasional visit will do. This depends on the nature of the gig, of course. Some types of work lend themselves to this model better than others. Additionally, this can and
does vary by office. If one office is having trouble staffing a gig (not
enough available bodies) and another office has a few too many folks on the bench, well...
you can connect the dots. But again, we try to keep that to a minimum.Lastly, we all have our own thresholds for what we consider "a lot" of travel. There are two parts to this threshold:Half of it is whatever you're accustomed to already. The other half is being honest with yourself about how much you [like/hate] dealing with airports, car rentals, taxis, hotels, disruptions to your workout schedule, time away from friends/family, etc.Knowing a bit about yourself will definitely help you decide how much travel is too much for you.
