Over on TechCrunch late last week, the co-founder and CEO of voice-application startup SayNow, Nikhyl Singhal, wrote a very interesting post titled Phone Numbers Are Dead, They Just Don’t Know It Yet. The idea behind the post is that with the development of resources like Skype and Google Voice, telephone numbers are dying a slow death. With the growing mainstream acceptance of online communication tools, will we be facing a time in the not-so-distant future where telephone numbers will be obsolete? There is a very real possibility of this. Don’t believe it? Check out some of the main reasons Singhal cites to qualify this theory:

1. No control. Anyone can dial your 10 digits, including your ex-girlfriend, a political campaign worker, or a solicitor.  Unlisted numbers, Caller ID and do-not-call lists all tried to solve this problem, but these solutions still don’t prevent unwanted calls.
2. Phone numbers are tied to a device, not to you. Everyone has multiple numbers, yet your home line is shared, leaving callers guessing the best way to reach you.
3. User experience is very limited. The phone was designed as a utility—dial a number, have a conversation. It’s remained this way since its inception.  It’s not optimized for other experiences, which is why voicemail and conference calls are tedious, and why checking flight status is worse than a root canal.

keep reading »

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Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc., the leadership advisory firm providing executive search and leadership consulting services worldwide, announced late last week that K. Steven Blake, executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary will leave the firm as of August 31, 2010 to pursue another opportunity.

“Steve has been an asset to Heidrick & Struggles and will be missed by people across the organization,” said L. Kevin Kelly, chief executive officer. “He has made a positive impact on the way our company functions and we thank him for his service to the Company and wish him all the best as his time with us ends.”

Previously, Mr. Blake, who joined Heidrick & Struggles in 2005, was general counsel of Aquion Partners, LP from 2001 to 2005 and from 1998 to 2001, he was associate general counsel for General Electric Capital Corporation. Upon Mr. Blake’s departure, Stephen W. Beard, Deputy General Counsel, will assume the role of interim General Counsel and Corporate Secretary until the Company has named a permanent replacement.

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Scott Ginsberg, AKA the Nametag Guy, is a well-known author and speaker. He started wearing a nametag 24/7 as an experiment in creating more ‘warm’ encounters with others back in November, 2000, and hasn’t missed a day since then. In fact, he even had his nametag tattooed on his chest. Scott writes about business networking, being approachable, how to make a name for yourself, and has been dubbed “The Authority on Approachability.” In 2008, he was voted as St. Louis’s “Young Entrepreneur of the Year,” by The St. Louis Small Business Monthly. (he lives in St. Louis) Most importantly, he is a straight-shooter and he talks about some topics that most other people wouldn’t touch because they’re afraid of offending someone.

Scott Ginsberg is one of my favorite writers. In fact, he recently sent me an autographed copy of his book, Stick Yourself Out There, pretty much because I ‘fan-girled’ all over him. I’m in the process of reading it now and will happily share my book review with anyone who is interested once I’ve completed it.

Ginsberg wrote an article yesterday called 10 Strategies Stop Acting Like an Expert and Start Being a Thought Leader. This is a topic that keeps coming up in recruiting circles and I felt it would be a great discussion topic here. Scott’s thoughts on experts:

“With the right tools, the right resources and the right strategy, pretty much anyone in the world could position herself an expert (on anything!) in about a month. Which brings me to my thesis: Experts are morons.“

keep reading »

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We are beginning to make preparations for the 2011 Fordyce Forum, which will be held at the M Resort from June 1 – 3, 2011, so mark your calendars! As part of the prep, we would like to get your thoughts on whom you want to hear from! If you have a recommendation for a presenter or a session topic, please email it to amybeth@fordyceletter.com. As well, if you are personally interested in presenting, please submit your interest along with a topic idea and links to prior presentations (podcasts, videos, etc.). Any media you can provide to show us past presentations will be helpful. We will evaluate each submission thoroughly and begin making speaker selections shortly.

Thanks, and hope to see you in Vegas for Fordyce Forum 2011!

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Most candidates — even high-level executives — need to be prepped before the interview. The reason for this is obvious: they all think they’re great interviewees. Most aren’t. Making matters worse, the hiring managers they’ll be meeting think they’re endowed with some special instinct that allows them to accurately assess candidate competency. Most aren’t.

Since I don’t like to present great candidates who get inadvertently excluded for dumb reasons, I need to prep both my hiring manager clients and my candidates to increase the likelihood the candidates are appropriately and accurately evaluated. This way I don’t have to do searches over again and rely on luck to make placements.

To be taken seriously on this point I had to write a book: Hire With Your Head. Basically it describes a process on how to get hiring managers and candidates on the same page. From the hiring manager’s perspective, it’s describing the work as a series of performance objectives required for on-the-job success. (I refer to these as performance profiles.) From the candidate’s perspective, it’s having them describe a comparable accomplishment for each performance objective. For example, let’s assume the job required the new product marketing manager to develop and launch 25 new iPad apps over the course of the next year. During the interview you’d ask the candidate to describe in detail some comparable product-marketing-related accomplishment. I suggest spending 10-15 minutes getting lots of details for each accomplishment. (Here’s my one-question interview article I wrote for ERE in 2001 on how to do this.) These performance objectives can be split among the hiring team; then, during the collective debrief, the team can rank the candidate on how well the accomplishments compare.

At least that’s the theory. In the field other things happen to mess up this plan. keep reading »

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Let’s say you’re in the middle of a batch of marketing calls. You’re smiling and dialing, wheeling and dealing, spinning and grinning. You get a new prospect on the line and they like your MPC. You talk through your candidate’s skills, walk them through the fee agreement, when suddenly… you’re hit with an objection. You’re trying desperately to close the deal, but your mind is drawing a blank. What do you do?

You whip out your iPhone. There IS an app for that.

Earlier this month, Cardone Training Technologies Inc. released its CloseTheSale app on iTunes. CloseTheSale is a complete list of closing lines from Grant Cardone, international sales expert, sales trainer, sales motivational speaker and NY Times best selling Author. According to the app description, “Every situation from, “I need to think about it”, to “price”, “affordability”, “budget”, “third parties”, “terms”, “payments”, “down payment”, “difference”, “the economy”, “never make rash decisions”, and every conceivable stall you will ever hear is covered here.” Check out these screenshots from the app:

In this day and age where nearly everything we need or want is available at the swipe of a finger, I have to think that while convenience is great, is it dumbing us down regarding basic skills? What do you think?

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The Washington Post recently ran an article discussing the cautious attitude with which businesses are still approaching hiring, even though profits appear to be on the upswing. According to the article, “Corporate profits are soaring. Companies are sitting on billions of dollars of cash. And still, they’ve yet to amp up hiring or make major investments — the missing ingredients for a strong economic recovery.”

Instead, it appears that companies are busy making up for the fixed assets they had to scrimp on last year and investing in things like new furniture, equipment, and so forth.

ABC News ran a similar story at the beginning of August. The Jobs Report that came out in July also showed a slow-down in hiring: in the private sector, employers produced just 71,000 new jobs in a country where 14.6 million people are looking for work. What’s going on? According to Wall Street Journal reporter Jon Hilsenrath, what’s happening here can be boiled down to one word: uncertainty.

I believe that what is going on can be explained by simply taking a look at how the human body handles stressful situations.   keep reading »

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In a recent discussion, an unemployed job-seeker shared that she had been on five interviews and was certain that she wasn’t offered a few positions because the salaries they were offering were lower than what she was making at her previous job. She had concluded that the companies were most likely wary of hiring her at a lower wage, for fear that she might leave for a higher paying position once the economy improved. Frustrated, she asked for help on how to approach the delicate topic of compensation for future opportunities.

There were responses coming from all kinds of perspectives for this inquiry:

• “Remember that salary requirements should never be spoken about in first interviews (provided you know that there will be a 2nd or 3rd round of interviews). Unless the employer brings it up in the first interview, don’t bring it up.”
• “Start by being honest with yourself, why are you taking a step back? Are you going to bolt when something better comes along. You need to research the position you are applying for and tell them that you are aware of the difference in salary. You need to look at the role and state honestly why you want it and what you could do for them.”
• “Generally candidates try to deflect discussions about salary and benefits until they have been offered the job and persuaded the interviewers that they are ideal candidate for the job. Smart candidates will do everything to avoid answering direct questions about salary and benefits. Try to bring him back to the parameters which he is looking for and put emphasis on your your suitability for this job.”

This is a tricky topic these days with lots of job-seekers putting themselves up for positions that are a level or two below them simply because they need to make ends meet. There is always the possibility that these candidates will cut and run once things improve, but this is also a very real situation that doesn’t seem to have any one agreed-upon answer.

There are really two issues here: interviewing for positions that are a notch or two below one’s current level, and discussing salary during the interview process. Would you send a candidate to interview for a position that was below his or her current level? How do you advise your candidates on when to discuss salary? Weigh in with your thoughts below.

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How did it come to this?

The resumé was great, the cover letter perfect. The interview went well. After the candidate was placed in front of the client, both sides raved to you about how well it went.

Really, the other candidates just seemed like they were going through the motions.

And so the offer is made. And rejected!

“But…but…but…” is your considered reply. “You love them. They love you. What’s wrong?”

At this point you slip into objection mode to be ready for the answer.

You’re getting an unexpected promotion? “Well, congratulations… if that’s really what you want.”

You’ve been made a counter-offer? “Well, let me give you some highly discredited statistics that have been floating around recruitment for years.”

You’ve decided you don’t like the extra ten minutes travel / puke-coloured company shirt / half hour lunch break / compulsory annual conference in Tahiti? “But we discussed this…”

Where did you go wrong?

Sometimes, it’s not your fault. It really can be something out of the blue. keep reading »

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Most senior level executive recruiters have now experienced more than one market downturn. In order to make it through these lean times many recruiting businesses are forced to adjust their business model in order to survive. These adjustments include terminating staff, adjusting prices, and creating new services. However, when the markets rebound many recruiters rebuild their older, traditional model.

So how will you emerge when the market rebounds?

The Tradition

From the client’s perspective, the senior level executive recruiting model hasn’t changed much over the past four decades. Fees remain about the same, roughly one-third of the hire’s first-year total cash compensation. Average time-to-completion remains around 120 days. And perhaps most telling is that the average successful completion rate remains just under 70% at most big-brand firms.

Even as technology developments have opened access and streamlined the ability to identify and track targets, the internal execution model at most firms remains exactly the same as it was decades ago: Rainmaker recruiters generate business and serve in the lead role on many search projects while a support staff consisting of junior recruiters, researchers, and assistants serve in key execution roles.

During peak conditions in the market, rainmakers may manage as many as ten active search projects, and the firms create a bulging support team to serve them. In these good times individual search profit margins can easily reach 65%, and for small firms it sometimes gets as high as 85%.

Recruiter, Meet Adversity

So, what happens when the market drops? Firm operators know people costs far outweigh the other expenses, so the focus is initially on staff reduction. At most firms the support ranks are the first to get thinned.  After all, these individuals cost the firm money while the rainmakers make money for the firm. After the support staff is reduced to bare bones, firms move on to remove unprofitable recruiters. With empty offices and empty desks, firms usually limp along until the market rebounds. During this period you’ll hear all kinds of rumors and stories about desperation among recruiters, including super-low fees, lower-level search work, research-for-hire, and even freebies. (In desperation, imagine what one would say or do when the quicksand is up to their neck.)

keep reading »

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When I was interviewing for my last job (prior to joining ERE), my soon-to-be boss and I started discussing compensation. At that time, the position I was interviewing for was a contract role, and thus my compensation would be at an hourly rate. I shared where I was compensation-wise in my most recent job, which was a salaried position, and we worked out where that would be hourly. My soon-to-be boss then told me something that stuck in my head – paraphrased, he said:

“I’m going to get you as close to your current compensation level as possible. I know lots of employers will low-ball a job offer and then attempt to meet you halfway, but I don’t play that game. I think it starts the new relationship off on the wrong foot to haggle the cost of hiring someone whom you know you want to work with. That being said, whatever hourly rate I come back to you with is going to be the highest amount I’m able to get approved… cool?”

Two important factors need to be considered here of course:

1. I knew my soon-to-be boss prior to this process, so there was an existing trusting relationship there. I already knew he was a guy who would be true to his word.
2. I was honest with the amount I shared with him. I didn’t inflate where I currently was compensation-wise, and he knew that.

The amount he came back to me with was more than acceptable to me. In fact, it was a slight increase to where I had been previously. I like to believe that honesty played a huge role in the end outcome for that job, and the trust between us meant that everyone ended up happy.

Last week, Seth Godin posted an article on his blog called “The right price the first time“. The opening line of this post states:

“The way you price expensive transactions is going to train your partners and customers in how to behave.”

keep reading »

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Back on July 1, Amybeth Hale posted about a recruiter named Jerry Albright who’d decided he’d had enough of Twitter.

I caught up with Albright on the phone to ask him whether his decision to give up on tweeting was a good one. We also discuss:

• The sky-high expectations of new Twitter users, and social media users in general
• Whether Twitter is work or personal
• The convergence of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
• Whether you really need to quantify your social media efforts

On some old browser versions, you may have trouble playing the podcast.

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Yesterday, the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC) released its Q2 2010 AESC State of the Executive Search Industry report, which showed a quarter-on-quarter 12% growth rate in net revenue worldwide and substantial year-on-year growth in the number of search mandates started across most industries and regions. The first quarter of this year showed further positive signs of recovery for the senior executive search industry around the world with annual growth of 30.2% in new executive search mandates and a 22% rise in revenues.

• Industry-wide revenues rose 42% on a year-on-year basis
• There was a reported 38% year-on-year increase in the number of new executive searches started globally
• Executive searches within the Financial Services industry and the Technology industry witnessed the greatest annual growth, at 39.2% and 37.3% respectively
• Other industries with notable yearly growth include Life Sciences/Healthcare (26.4%), Consumer (25%), and Industrial (20.1%)

Based on quarterly regional trends, from Q1 2010 to Q2 2010, North America’s recovery from the recession is currently the strongest, followed by Asia Pacific and other emerging markets. As a matter of perspective, AESC President Peter Felix stated, “Although the industry’s revenues fell by 32.5% in 2009, the low point was still considerably higher than the low point in 2002, during the last recession. If the pullback from that recession took three years to reach the previous high and only another two to reach new all time highs then this pullback is already in line with that and gives us hope of regaining former heights.”

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Our goal is to move beyond ‘vendor’ status to become trusted advisors and consultants with our client companies. So – how do we get past scenarios like the ones outlined in this video?

How many of you have ever encountered situations like these? Clients essentially asking you to work for free, or wanting to ‘test out’ your services with a promise to pay next time, or even haggling your fee to an unacceptable low. Forming strategic relationships does require some negotiation, but this must happen on both sides of the table. Sustainable relationships involve both parties benefiting (known in nature as a symbiotic relationship), not just one (known in nature as a parasitic relationship).

How have you or your company gotten past these types of scenarios? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Beyond.com, a resource of niche career communities, resume search for employers, and job search for candidates released today its quartlerly Career Trend Analysis Report from the 2nd quarter of 2010. This report is published on a quarterly basis and highlights national, local and industry-specific job and resume posting trends. Information is collected from its network of thousands of websites and online communities and analyzed to provide timely, accurate and up-to-date trends in the employment market.

Some of the more interesting points in the survey involve candidate resumes and employer trends:

• During second quarter 2010, over 67% of Beyond.com’s network candidates had 5 or more years of experience. Over the previous quarter, the largest percentage increase was noted in candidates with 1-3 years of experience (1.31%).
• 38.72% of network candidates just started their job search, an increase of 3.28% over the previous quarter.
• The number of diversity candidates remained consistent. 40% of network candidates were members of a minority group with African American/Black candidates representing the largest minority group with 19.87%.
• The Southern region was the majority leader for executive candidates with 26.79%. The job title of Director remained as the top executive title with 29.78% and Information Technology was noted as the top industry for executive candidates with 13.16%.
• A majority of registered companies continued to be represented by Corporations with 63.80%, followed by Recruiting Companies with 19.12%.
• Most newly registered employers had less than 10 employees with 28.33%. Other top percentages were companies with 11-50 employees (24.40%) and more than 500 employees (19.23%).
• The top three industries for employers who registered in second quarter 2010 were again noted as Information Technology (15.43%), Healthcare & Medical (7.09%), and Manufacturing & Production (6.94%).

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Evolution of Cold Calling & Recruiting

Cold calling came about as a way to find and close new clients. Given leads, a “real” salesperson needed to be able to call on prospective customers to sell a product or service. These prospective customers were not expecting the call. Hence, the term “cold call” ensued. For a powerful depiction of cold calling, watch the 1992 movie Glengarry Glen Ross.

During the early days of recruiting, technology was nonexistent. There were no faxes, computers, databases, Internet, social networking, applicant tracking systems (ATS), webcamming and mobile and cloud technology. The only tools were the Rolodex, file cabinet, telephone, physical transportation and advertising (newspaper, TV, radio).  Recruiters developed leads through incoming resumes from advertising, referrals and networking at job fairs, user groups, and other venues.  Many recruiters were already cold calling clients. When they could not find candidates through the usual methods, they easily turned to cold calling into companies to find candidates.

The Best Choice

Yesterday’s scenario was much different. There was good reason to cold call. Resumes were limited and mail could be slow. Networking and searching was cumbersome and often had to be done in person. Advertising was expensive and did not always result in the best matches possible. Being able to call into a company and pull out a targeted passive candidate saved time and money and often resulted in superior matches.

To be truly effective in today’s sophisticated market, one needs to be able to determine if cold calling is the best choice. Asking and answering the following five questions have helped me to determine whether or not to cold call. keep reading »

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As in any business, the world of Recruiters, “Headhunters”, “Executive Search Professionals”, etc. includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. There are those in it for some good cash for now, and those in it to build a great long-term sustainable business. Which are you?

This industry is characterized by a glut of new recruiters when times are good, and dramatic reductions when times get tough. It’s an easy business to get into, but it’s a tough business to stay in during economic downturns. I often tell people… “This is a business that, when times are good, there’s almost nothing better. There’s a lot of relatively easy money to be made. However, when times are bad, there’s almost nothing worse. The ‘gravy train’ dries up very quickly and companies recruiting budgets disappear.”

There are a number of factors that go into making someone successful in this industry over the long run. However, I believe one differentiator is being willing to add value for people whether you’re likely to make an immediate buck or not. Especially in a down economy, when many good prospective candidates, and perhaps some former (and potentially future) clients are out of work, finding ways to be of help to them pays great long-term dividends. Do you invest significant time and energy into people that can’t be of immediate value to you? Do you view people as people, or simply evaluate them by whether they are worth money to you or not? Are you willing to find ways to assist people that don’t even seem to be of potential value to you down the road?

Many recruiters do, and many, many recruiters don’t.

keep reading »

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Today, TalentDrive, an online resume aggregation search engine, released the results from its “Job Market Perceptions” survey. The findings uncover a widening gap between current employers’ expectations and job seekers’ actual skill sets. The survey was conducted to get a better understanding of current job seekers’ perceptions of their own skill sets compared to expectations held by hiring managers. Are candidates’ skills and employer requirements aligned? Results uncover key “skill gaps” between the two groups.

79,000 job seekers (86% considered to be actively seeking employment) were asked to assess their personal skill set and attitude toward the current job market. The results:

• 71% were pessimistic about their career search, feeling they possessed the required skill set but were not getting hired
• 37% were extremely frustrated, with no hope for improvement in sight
• 34% unhappy with the environment, but starting to see signs of improvement

Employers were then asked if they had noticed a change in the quality of candidates since the recession’s start. The results: 42% of employers indicated that the recession had not only increased the quantity of candidates, but in fact they are finding more qualified candidates than in years past. These two results seem to contradict one another…

keep reading »

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Do you remember the 1976 film Network? The movie produced a very famous scene in which Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) has a breakdown (some would argue an epiphany!) on live television (PG-13 clip of course!)

Seems a little too timely, doesn’t it! Over the last couple of days, two news stories have surfaced of individuals who decided they were “mad as hell, and were not going to take this anymore” with their jobs. They quit in style. keep reading »

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RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing). Seems fairly easy to make an educated guess as to what this really means, but think again.

I myself own an “RPO” firm (or so I thought). I have attended several national and international RPO professional symposiums over the last five years. Typically these gatherings include RPO firm executives, as well as industry gurus, and more times than not, one of the breakout sessions at these meetings revolves around a panel of experts discussing what their definition of RPO really is.

Interestingly enough, and coincidentally, each individual always seems to have a slightly different take on what “RPO” really means. They are a group of peers, all in leadership positions within the “RPO” business, yet their definition and perspective of what this actually means and what services should be and are delivered under this type of model vary widely.

RPO EARLY ROOTS

Contrary to the opinion of some, RPO did not just appear as a business model out of thin air over the last five years. The RPO model’s precursor really started in the early to mid 1990’s. The semantics of those days did not include the RPO vernacular, but was described as “Project Staffing”, or “Staff Augmentation”, or even “Stampede Recruiting”. Many firms were created in the “RPO” style in the 1990’s based on the need of Technology companies to grow exponentially on a “real time basis”. Technology companies at that time, and still today, often need to “reactively” hire very large numbers of people to fulfill the demand of a newly produced technology product or service (i.e. think Google or Apple). It was, and is, extremely important to get new technology products to market as quickly as possible, and to do that, you needed increasingly large numbers of developers, sales staff and marketing staff. Because of the large increase in headcount in those areas, it became vital to hire large numbers of infrastructure roles to support the larger organization (i.e. HR, Finance, Procurement, etc.)

keep reading »

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It’s Friday – so let’s have a little fun! Today’s challenge:

Tell us about the craziest thing you’ve done to either win new business or close a deal. This could include things that helped you get a candidate to an interview, get an offer to close, get in front of a new client, etc.

Here are a couple of examples:

Julia Stone – President, BizWerks: Julia once took a candidate to the dry cleaner and made him strip out of his wrinkled clothes to have them pressed before going to an interview.

Paul DeBettignies – Managing Partner, Nerd Search, LLC: One of Paul’s candidates had a babysitter lined up to look after his three young children while he went on an interview. The babysitter no-call-no-showed, so Paul played babysitter while the candidate went on his interview. (as a plus, the candidate is going on a second interview)

Share your crazy story in the comments below. Who will have the most outrageous tale to tell?

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For those of you who own your recruiting business, do you remember the first day you either figuratively or literally opened your doors? What a special moment – becoming your own boss. You call the shots. You are fully responsible for your own success (or failure!). You put your hard-earned money, probably almost all you had at the time, into opening your business with aspirations of seeing it grow and prosper. Your business is something you can be proud of, because it’s all yours.

However, there seems to be a new (and somewhat disturbing to me!) trend on the rise with new college graduates. The Pew Research Center recently released a report showing that unemployment is the highest it’s been in more than three decades amongst 18-29 year-olds. According to an article I read yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, some parents are now purchasing businesses for their new graduates, since the job prospects for most new college graduates these days are pretty grim.

While the WSJ certainly puts a happy spin on this new trend, I wholeheartedly disagree with the idea of buying a [child] [college graduate] grown adult an entire business as a gift. When I graduated college, I got a $50 savings bond that has yet to mature so I can cash it in. There certainly is something to be said about working for what you have in life and taking pride in the journey. But perhaps I am just bitter or jealous because my parents didn’t buy me a franchise when I graduated. (with honors… just saying) I guess I missed the part where business ownership is a privilege, because apparently for some it is an entitlement.

“…some parents I interviewed described it as a way of recapturing for their children a stake in “the American dream”—the opportunity to control their destiny and have a chance at gaining wealth.”

Last time I checked, the American Dream was something you actually had to work for, not something you were gifted. keep reading »

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William Tincup was featured recently in John Sumser’s Top 100 Influencers, which is a running series that Sumser is doing on recruiting and HR professionals who have made an impact in our industry. While Tincup isn’t a recruiting agency guy, he is a self-employed professional services guy, just like many of you. Tincup, along with Bret Starr, co-founded their company Starr Tincup in November of 2000. Starr Tincup is a marketing consultancy that serves the recruiting and HR community. He has been responsible for building the company brand, including the website, book (Try Not To F&ck This Up), direct marketing, email marketing, event strategy, social media strategy, and so forth. Tincup has been known (affectionately? notoriously?) throughout the recruiting and HR community for his low-brow sense of humor, colorful language, and yet his approachability and willingness to have conversations about his work and his thoughts on business and marketing strategy.

Recently, he fell out of love with his work and decided to move on.

At this point, you may be wondering “What does this have to do with me? This guy’s a marketer; I’m a recruiting professional!” I promise – there is a good point to all of this.

Falling out of love with one’s work is common. We’ve all had days where we’ve sworn that if we get on the phone with one more rude person or if one more client tries to cheap out on paying a fee, we’re through. Of course, few are the time when we actually follow through on those threats. But that thought is still lingering in the back of our minds – “Is this all really worth it?”

William Tincup’s story struck me because he detailed the reasons he decided to throw in the towel. He stopped believing in the outsourced marketing services business model. He was frustrated with the double standards applied to his efforts vs. in-house marketers’ efforts. He became annoyed that, as an external service provider, his status was constantly being threatened by these ridiculous standards. And the final straw for him, as he states:

“…the realization that over the course of 10 years in the game I might of [sic] been told “thank you” seven or eight times.  I (read: my firm) changed lives, changed destinies, built lasting brands, created market share, created real value, got people promoted, etc, etc. Yeah, I know – payment for services rendered was my thanks.  Yeah, well, that wasn’t enough.”

I would be very surprised if just about every person reading this article hasn’t struggled with at least one of these issues at some point during your professional recruiting career. Who hasn’t felt like the red-headed stepchild at least once when working with a difficult client? Who hasn’t been held to some crazy standards as an external recruiter that an internal employee would never be held to? And who hasn’t wished that once, just once, someone would thank them for all of the amazing talent they’ve helped shepherd in to an organization?

When you really fall out of love with your work, how do you know when it’s time to say “Enough!” and leave before you become bitter? Is it just a bad case of the Mondays, or is this a recurring gut feeling that just will not go away? How do you get past the rut and fall back in love with what you do? Weigh in with your thoughts in the comments below. Sharing your experience might just save someone from calling it quits!

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When I started in search in 1998, conventional wisdom said that if you were not on the phone, you were not working. In fact, two of the firms for whom I have worked had call tracking software built into the phone system. Every night, the head of the office would send out a report to the entire company detailing how many calls each recruiter made and how much time they spent on the phone. It was implied that recruiters who spent time sending e-mails and performing internet research did so because they lacked the spine to make cold calls. This attitude became deeply ingrained in me.

However, times change and technology changes behavior. Many people today are not likely to answer the phone if they do not recognize the number on the caller ID and even less likely if the caller ID is blocked. A few candidates in their twenties and thirties who work at big companies have confessed to me that they frequently go a week without checking voicemail. They feel that if information is important, it will arrive via e-mail.  keep reading »

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I know many of you enjoy occasionally sidling up to the poker table to play a little Texas Hold’Em. There’s something about bluffing your opponents with a crappy hand and still managing to win the pot that is thrilling to anyone. The best poker players in the world know how to mask their ‘tells’ and read other people like a book. It’s this in-person interaction that makes the game enjoyable, challenging, and rewarding.

The World Series of Poker began in 1970, but poker has been around for much longer. Some trace its roots back to a 15th century German game called Pochspiel. Others liken it to a Persian game called Nas, recorded around the turn of the 20th century. One of the more commonly accepted stories is that the game of poker originated in the mid-1700s and was played widely throughout the Mississippi River region by 1800. Games were played by groups of men sitting around small tables, trying to convince each other that they had the best hand through bluffing and betting. Social skills were an important aspect of playing the game successfully – one had to know how to read his opponents in order to, as Kenny Rogers puts so eloquently, “know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.” keep reading »

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