Technology???

With all of the hype about social media, job boards, LinkedIn, Facebook all of us have gotten away from the good old telephone and face to face meetings.

Over the past month I have had the opportunity to meet face to face with 3 of my client and next week I will be meeting with a fourth. There is something to be said for a good old fashioned hand shake and a good face to face meeting.

The Black Hole of an applicant tracking System

I am sure many of you have experienced the frustration of applying to a job posting only to never hear from the company. I can understand your frustration because even as a recruiter working with client companies I too am frustrated with the lack of response or the delayed response. As an experienced recruiter (25 years) I find that I am able to effectively work on 4-5 assignments at any given time. In talking with many internal company recruiters I have learned that they may have 15-20 openings across multiple disciplines. They also get frustrated when hiring managers do not respond to them and the circle just keeps rolling along.

What can you do? When applying for a position know yourself. Know what are you good at and what are you trained to do? Where have you been successful? What do you have to offer your next employer? Your resume is more than just a list of job titles and duties. It is your biography of accomplishments.

Call me. Email me. However, remember I am going to want to talk about how well you have done in your career. Will you have an answer for me?

Change is Circular

Where has the time gone. I had a client congratulate me for being a recruiter for 24 years. It seems like only yesterday that I made my first phone call. We did not have computers, fax machines, the internet or e-mail back then. It was a telephone business and a personal contact business. Where has the personal contact gone. E-mail has replaced the telephone and fax machines. Job boards have replaced the newspaper. Everything is changing. However, just like in the Lion King and the circle of life we are getting back to the personal contact and with the use of Skype face to face contact is now available just about anywhere in the world. It is a great world we live in and I am happy to be a part of it.

I have been asked many times by clients and candidates what is the number one reason that will cause a person to make a job change. A few years ago I night have said geography, travel or possibly a long commute. What it all boils down to is quality of life. Today's economic climate have caused a great deal of stress on everyone and when I ask a person what would drive them to a new opportunity I am constantly hearing: I need to get a better work/life balance.
Lesson learned. Money is not the driving factor.

Accepting Responsibility

An excerpt from The Power of Disciplineby Brian Tracy
Your ability and willingness to discipline yourself to accept personal responsibility for your life is essential to happiness, health, success, achievement and personal leadership. Accepting responsibility is one of the hardest of all disciplines, but without it, success is impossible.
The failure to accept responsibility and the attempt to foist responsibility onto others has dire consequences. It completely distorts cause and effect, undermines our character, weakens our resolve, and diminishes our humanity.

This guest post is by Alan and Harriet Lewis, owners of Grand Circle Corp.,

Risk-taking has fallen out of favor in the last two years, the victim of the economic downturn and global unrest. Indeed, the current business mood has become cautious to a fault. Sit tight. … Keep your head down. … Above all, minimize risk. This is what passes for sage advice in today’s business press. Here are a few guidelines for risk taking.

Risk-taking requires support.
Risk-taking doesn’t come naturally to everyone, and it can be hard for employees to embrace it. Managers can help by specifying what risk-taking looks like in their workplace. Employees should be expected to speak up, ask tough questions of leadership, move forward with decisions without always knowing the outcome, and accept new assignments gladly. At the same time, managers must identify and reward such behaviors. They must teach them. For us, this happens in the office, on team off-sites, and at our annual companywide training, which incorporates risk-taking exercises from Outward Bound and other experiential learning programs. In other companies, risk-taking might look different. For example, employees might be expected to speak in public, lead a cross-departmental team, or go after three new accounts a week. The behaviors may be different, but the support is the same: identify, teach, and reward.

Risk-taking must be embedded in a larger corporate culture. Of course, employees can’t just go off half-cocked, doing any risky thing they please. Risk-taking must be guided by the company’s vision and mission, and bounded by the company’s values. A company’s mission, vision, and values are its greatest assets, but they are worthless if you don’t cultivate them. Leadership must refer to them constantly, and employees must be held accountable to them in performance reviews. When the corporate culture is completely clear, risk-taking will always support the goals of the company.

Risk-taking means you will make mistakes. Every risk-taking organization will make mistakes once in a while. We’ve made lots of them. In the 1990s, we invested $11 million in a computer system that didn’t work for us. Around the same time, we divested financial operations on our overseas offices and got robbed – several times. Mistakes and losses are part of the risk landscape. To succeed as a risk-taking business, you must do two things at a minimum: You must create a safe environment for employees to make mistakes, and, when a risky decision is on the table, you must always be ready with a fast exit plan.
Risk-taking is one of our six core values and has helped build our business in good times and bad. What risk will you take today?

According to Seth Godin ideas come from 20 places


Ideas don't come from watching television
Ideas sometimes come from listening to a lecture
Ideas often come while reading a book
Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them
Ideas hate conference rooms, particularly conference rooms where there is a history of criticism, personal attacks or boredom
Ideas occur when dissimilar universes collide
Ideas often strive to meet expectations. If people expect them to appear, they do
Ideas fear experts, but they adore beginner's mind. A little awareness is a good thing
Ideas come in spurts, until you get frightened. Willie Nelson wrote three of his biggest hits in one week
Ideas come from trouble
Ideas come from our ego, and they do their best when they're generous and selfless
Ideas come from nature
Sometimes ideas come from fear (usually in movies) but often they come from confidence
Useful ideas come from being awake, alert enough to actually notice
Though sometimes ideas sneak in when we're asleep and too numb to be afraid
Ideas come out of the corner of the eye, or in the shower, when we're not trying
Mediocre ideas enjoy copying what happens to be working right this minute
Bigger ideas leapfrog the mediocre ones
Ideas don't need a passport, and often cross borders (of all kinds) with impunity