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Staffmeup Reviews


JWlt

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Just recently started my Staff Me Up profile, and was wondering if anybody on here might mind voicing their thoughts on it? As someone who's trying to establish themselves in this business and therefore needs to find work, it'd be great to hear the good the bad, and everything in between. Is it a good place to find work, or at the very least a good alternative to Craigslist? Interested to hear your thoughts.

Cheers!

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I think I may have gotten 1 decent job out of it.  I stopped paying for it.  What it seems to encourage is for desperate out of town mixers to come into other markets and snipe the bottom end.  "Work as a local" is used way too much and often in "quotes".  (Wink wink nudge nudge)

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Interesting, and also too bad to hear. It'd be great if it promoted a stronger community and a better platform for people like me, newbs, to find veritable work and get a foot in the door, instead of having to essentially resort to cold calling people's names I find in the credits of favorite shows/ movies and hoping for a response.  Tom that's really interesting you mention that, definitely good to know; don't want to start out by swiping jobs out from other people. Jesse, do you use the paid version? I just use the standard, i.e. free, membership, figured, I'd test it out before buying in. 

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I think I may have gotten one gig from SMU maybe two years ago. It was fine. Generally speaking, the quality of jobs has degraded greatly in the last year or two. Most of the posts are reality-type gigs that are low-ball offers like $450/12 using their gear, or if there is a gear rate, it is something like $300/day for an obscene amount of wireless...

To be honest, any serious PM wouldn't use services like these. They have a shorthand list of qualified people they use to crew their shows. Unless maybe if their show travels outside of their market, and even then, they would probably contact people within their network to locate referrals.

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Thanks Jose for the heads up, really appreciate it. Any of you guys had experience or know any one who has used SMU on the video side of things? A couple of the guys I work with now, first and second ac's, are looking on there for work too; figured I pass along the warning if its the same/similar situation for video as it sounds like it is for audio.  

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Tell your AC friends to really step up their game, be real pros, i.e. work with our dept, and they will get gigs. But bottom feeding from CL or undercutting people (intentionally or not) using payed services, which are mostly feeding off of the frenzy caused by media and tech schools, are only putting them in the same place as everyone else with nowhere to go.

 

But in short, jobs come from relationships you have with others, not adds and paid services.

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Tell your AC friends to really step up their game, be real pros, i.e. work with our dept, and they will get gigs. But bottom feeding from CL or undercutting people (intentionally or not) using payed services, which are mostly feeding off of the frenzy caused by media and tech schools, are only putting them in the same place as everyone else with nowhere to go.

 

But in short, jobs come from relationships you have with others, not adds and paid services.

​Hey Jon, thanks for your input, just wondering if you could elaborate on " be real pro's, i.e. work with our dept."? Work with our department as in work with audio, or do you mean something else? My friends and I are both fresh out of school, they majored in film, I majored in computer science/ music, and we've all been working at a local studio for about a year, and have kind of hit the ceiling here; hence our attempts to find other work. This is all to say that none of us want to scab or undercut, but finding those pathways to better work and identifying the people who can and are willing to help,  can be pretty difficult when you're new to the field/ industry and have little, if any, leverage. How did you make those initial contacts and jobs, if you don't mind my asking? How did you recognize which opportunities were dead ends and which were potentially fruitful when you were in my situation, other than just jumping in and seeing where it lead you? Thanks.

Edited by JWlt
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I got 6 or 7 jobs last year from SMU and they were all decent jobs. it isn't worthless, and it can really help shows which are looking to travel and get a local someplace that they're hoping to be. the jobs were well paid, and expenses were covered, but I assume that it's more likely because of how our conversations went, and what my requirements were, versus what they posted in their ad.

not useless, but not always as useful in all markets. ymmv.

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What I mean by being a professional in the AC world is to actually know what they are doing, don't try to create a divide between departments, but try to nurture the fact that we all have to work as a team for the sake of the project. I see a lot of young ACs that know less about the camera that they are suppose to know inside and out than I do (we read the manual for every new piece of gear, but ACs don't seem to know how to read, let alone reference a manual). People who do not know how to use a Lockit Box, or slate properly. Once upon a time, my job ended when I handed off a Lockit Box to an AC. Now I have to hold their hand, show them how to navigate the camera, and then repeatedly tell them how to slate and how NOT to treat the slate. A lot of these people also try to create an "us vs. them" environment on set between camera and sound, as if it is some sort of pissing contest. This is the kind of thing I am talking about. If they can manage to be competent, and not jerks, they will do fine. Seems obvious but you'd be surprised.

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  • 2 months later...

Worthless!!  I have been a paid member for awhile now with ZERO response.  I contacted MICAH M via telephone and we had a long conversation about his "service".  This is apparently how it works:

You fill out the profile and list your credits. They say they verify your credits through BASELINE. You cannot verify Basline's info about you and there is no directory of freelancers on SMU site. Micah told me that you need to continually update your profile with every single job you ever do, as their algorithm searches for the "most qualified" freelancer.  This is total BS and I have responded to jobs that were a mere 3 miles from  m y house, with NO response. I, too, have noticed that most of these jobs pay a sub-level fee, but even if you agree to the heavily discounted rate, you still don't get a response. Micah told me that the people that use his SMU service are people that are just filling job positions and they have no   incentive to thank you for applying for the job or to tell you that you didn't get it in the first place.  Micah says that he was once a freelancer himself, which I find hard to believe.

Recently there were two jobs for the same company and I live right in the middle of the jobs. I explained all of that in my cover letter, but still, no reply. Either SMU is making up jobs that don't exist, or the PM doesn't know what they are doing. I tried to up my exposure by paying SMU more money, which Micah says is the best way to guarantee your exposure, and wasn't even able to do that. Their website wouldn't let me pay more to upgrade.!!!

I sent another email to Micah and explained how the State Film Commission and Production Hub works, basically a directory of techs, and have received no reply.

MIcah told me that the PM's for these inquiries could care less about who they are hiring. They are basically doing a cattle call for tech staff with no regard for who they hire. Sounds about right to me.

I asked Micah in an email how my experience is noted on jobs that simply don't give you a credit. I do tons of corporate and live ENG style TV work that doesn't necessarily list credits....no response.

I put this SMU outfit right under CL, lower, if possible.  Lousy customer service, lousy jobs.

I'm out!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Staff me up used to be really good when it was known as realitystaff, but it got taken over it went downhill. Now it's become a place for productions to find the lowest cost labor. I was talking to producer friend  who called me up. I've worked with him many times and he was brutally honest with me about how it all goes down in these doc-reality type productions.  The conversation went something like this.

I really want to bring you onto a shoot I'm working on, it's in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota, but the money people won't let me hire you unless you can work as a local. If they can't find a local then they'll pull the money out of their butts to let me fly you, house you and pay a per diem. I know I'm never going to find a local mixer out where we are shooting, but what's going to happen is the money folks will make me advertise  for a local mixer on Staff Me Up. People will respond, but no one will be an actual  local. They'll be from LA or New York  or some other city who say that they will work 'as a local' because they need the work and will eat the travel and hotel costs themselves in order to take the job. The money people will make me hire one of the guys who responded saying that they are able to work 'as a local'. Of course I'm allowed to fly out my DP, a second camera operator and a camera assistant, because thats the way it is,  but I can never win the fight to travel sound because someone always responds to the adverts. So if you want to work as a local I'm allowed to hire you, if not then I have to go with the  best person that will work 'as a local' from Staff Me Up. If no-one responds you might get lucky and I'll be able to travel you, but seriously it's not very likely because someone always responds.

Somewhere along the line it seems that we created our race to the bottom. 

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  • 4 years later...

Staff Me Up is a scam site. I happen to know for a fact if is brimming with fake job postings. Parasites of showbiz, these people don't have the talent to compete, so they exploit those with dreams. Try to cancel, and you'll subject yourself to the most vindictive emails you can imagine. Not Better Business Bureau accredited. What other job listings make the job seeker pay and not the employer. More filthy lucre for them.

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  • 1 year later...

This week I made a post on StaffMeUp to hire a crew member for a low budget website video. The job paid $250/day for three days and so the crew member would have made $750 total. 

 

StaffMeUp said the pay wasn't high enough and so they wouldn't post it. I understand that some won't work for $250 a day and that's fine if they don't want to, but there are others that will. And if the pay is too low for someone, then they have the option to apply and say that they can't do it for $250/day but that they would do it for $??? a day. Then production can figure out if they can pay the higher rate or not. 

 

With StaffMeUp denying a job posting that IS paying the crew member, it's a disservice to the crew members that are paying a fee to be on the StaffMeUp website because StaffMeUp is denying crew members the opportunity to get work. 

 

It's up to each crew person to decide if they are willing to take a job or not at the pay listed and even if they don't want the job with the pay listed then they should be given the opportunity to counter with the amount of pay they are willing to work for; StaffMeUp should not be making the decision for them. 

 

I have plenty of places where I can find crew. My main issue is how unfair StaffMeUp is to the crew members that pay for their service. StaffMeUp will take their money, but at the same time they're also denying jobs that could have been listed.

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As a freelance DP and Sound Mixer, with gear, for out of town clients, in addition to servicing my own clients, I have a Staffmeup account. I rarely get more than three jobs a year from their leads. 90% of the postings are way below what many of us are willing to work for.

 

I suspect Staffmeup is more suited to college kids with a Best Buy camera, Samson wireless mics and limited knowledge.

 

That being said, I didn't know they had a "minimum wage" for postings. I dont mind them weeding out the ultra-low budget projects from their already low budget postings.

 

I dont see them as being unfair. I see it as, "Wow, even Staffmeup has standards."

 

No offense. $250/day seems more suited to Craigs or Angie's list.

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4 hours ago, mcgier said:

This week I made a post on StaffMeUp to hire a crew member for a low budget website video. The job paid $250/day for three days and so the crew member would have made $750 total.

I went to In n Out Burger today and they said they were hiring at $20/hour.  (8*20=$160) + (6*20=$120) = $280 for the 12 hour labor alone for flipping burgers.  Why do you think someone is even going to show up with a Zoom H4 + the cheapest wireless lav off B&H for $250/day?

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On 3/17/2022 at 5:12 AM, codyman said:

 Why do you think someone is even going to show up with a Zoom H4 + the cheapest wireless lav off B&H for $250/day?


Because they don’t want to flip burgers, they want to record sound and might see this as a great opportunity after three jobs with food-only paymemt 

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