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Hi Fishes, I cleared technical and MCQ round at Accenture. And got a mail stating i have been selected for HR round. Later the same day a hr called and asked me to upload all documents and asked my expected CTC and stuff. Earlier in portal it was showing interviewing , now it shows review or pending and has a message ' we regret to inform that you experience does not align with req, we will contact if anything comes up' , what does this mean. How can they put something like this?
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Hahahahaha this is hilarious
Rising Star
If your agency is able to bill a client 12x your salary as the bill rate - the person who should get a raise is the person who negotiated that pricing with the client.
Your finance person probably.
I’d love to shake their hand. 🙌
Your raise should be based on the quality of your own work. Not what someone else did (Ie: get you paid for)
You should probably sit down with your account lead or a finance person and they can explain how it all works.
It also depends on whether the account you’re working on is on retainer or billing per project. The latter would be based on a pre-negotiated SOW which means that the clients agreed to a certain fee to be paid for that project. I sincerely doubt the production and account teams would have you allocated for enough hours to cover 12x your salary, meaning that the additional hours that you’re billing are taking the job into the red. You working that many hours and putting those hours against jobs doesn’t necessarily equate to profitability, it actually shows a lack of profitability for the job bc it’s taking it over budget.
So again, it has not that much to do with what was billed to the client, more with you working overtime or more efficiently than anticipated, which is good and should be rewarded. But imho pulling the “billing hours” card is just confusing and can be viewed as you not really understand how agencies make money. If I were you, I’d focus on what you bring to the table (efficiency, quality of work, time management, expertise and experience on this account) rather than what the client is paying.
OP. I hope this was a joke. If it was, it was a great one.
Rising Star
I guess everyone else already covered it, but do you really know what those numbers mean? Is 12x a special number or is everyone contributing around 12x? And then is 12x your salary what the agency actually bills, or is it reduced and changed after the finance dept looks at it, agency side and client side? If you’re underpaid, you could just learn what creatives in your market are making, and ask for an appropriate raise. This just sounds like raw data.
@ACD1 I'm pretty sure it's approved - I got it through the estimated hours scoped (and then delivered) for my role across my clients x my billable rate. To my understanding the billable rate is where the negotiations happen on what that is between agency and client.
So I'm actually paid a little above market. This is specifically around what I saw to be an extraordinary amount of money billed to our clients because of my labor. Like don't wanna get too specific, but 12x my salary.
No, if all my assumptions are right it's mainly me and another senior creative
Pro
Go freelance and try to bill that.
Jump for a raise (and maybe promotion). Then at your next place, do a better job setting and keeping boundaries from the beginning so doing triple work doesn’t become your baseline.
In all likelihood, leadership is not contesting the number because it’s not a relevant metric when evaluating salaries and costs per employee. Agencies evaluate AGI per employee across the company, even for employees who aren’t directly client-billable. If leadership is seeing the average drop too low, they aren’t likely to give anyone a raise.
In order to make your individual case for a raise, you should be looking at what is fair-market value for your skills elsewhere, the value of your client or clients to the agency (are they top-AGI clients, or are there major write offs), and how hard it would be to replace you if you left.
loyalty never pays, big guy is always looking to profit as much as possible from you.
Rising Star
Are you talking about your hourly billing rate or that you personally brought in new business worth that?
Not clear what you mean by “ I brought my agency…”? You brought in a client or pitcher/son new biz?
Gotcha. I still don’t think the logic of you numbers matches the business of the agency. Nor do I think the agency is billing for more hours, my guess is they aren’t reporting hours to the client and it’s cost of campaign or other people across the agency are severely over. And yes, you should have a conversation on your skills and value to the agency. If you are doing the work of more senior level cw then make a case for a promotion. What you are describing will never net you a salary more than it sounds like you already have. And spot bonuses for a scw are also probably not happening unless you are at an independent shop. If you are paid more than market value and work a very comfortable 45 hours a week and you want a higher salary, promo or a new shop - even a counter isn’t likely if you are already over market.
If they bill you 12x don’t they bill all the other creatives 12x? The economics of what employees get in agencies is atrocious but I don’t know if your case is that great
Strategist 1 you are so correct I am dumb
Depends what you mean. Let’s say you make 200k. A 2.4 million account if it was your relationships or you were a personal conduit to it would be extraordinary. If you “brought it in” as part of a pitch team - then I agree with your bosses. That’s like one decent account. Expected if you have a role in new business
That assumes you only work 1800 hour base if that’s the per person hours on contract. I haven’t had a year that wasn’t 2200-2400 for about 10 years. So usually the agency bills for me around 90-100 percent and the non
Billable times comes out of the rest. I would say 2100-2200 is rather common
I’m still v confused how you got to 12x. How many hours a week do you work?
R/ga - none of you had to take the time out of your day to reply, also I did get some good insights out of it, so I appreciated all the comments :) have a good weekend!!
Curious as to how you did that as a copywriter?