7 Step Consulting

On a Quick Break

I’ll be out of pocket until next week. See you then!

Your Recruiter Should Care About You

The recruiter you are working with should care about you and your family. This isn’t just a business transaction. If this guy gets you a job, he’s affecting your career, your family, and your financial situation.

I try to care about my potential consultants. It’s all about relationship. You probably aren’t going to trust me if I don’t know anything about you. Or if I don’t know where you want to take your career.

Does your recruiter never call? Never e-mail? Does he mispronounce your name every time he speaks with you? He probably doesn’t care.

It sounds cliche, but truly developing a relationship with a potential consultant is the best thing a recruiter can do. If I know what your perfect job is — the thing you would really, really love to do — I can bring it to you at the right time. I don’t care if it’s 6 months down the road. Because when I’ve got it, you’ll take it.

I’m a Recruiter. I’m not a Sourcer.

What’s the difference between recruiter and sourcer?

Recruiters do everything — they find candidates, initiate contact, meet with them, submit the resume to the client, help with the interview, negotiate salary, etc.

Sourcers only find candidates. Usually, a sourcer will source resumes of candidates to recruiters. Then the recruiter runs with the candidate through the rest of the process.

As a candidate, it’s an important distinction to make. Know who you talking with.

A Great Resource for Recruiting News

As you might expect from the domain name, Recruiting.com is a great resource for recruiting news. It has a bit of a digg feel to it — you can vote on articles.

Might want to add it to your RSS reader or bookmarks and check it periodically.

San Jose PD is Recruiting NYPD Cops

Apparently the baby boomer retirement era is pinching police departments around the country. The San Jose Police Department is now recruiting cops from the New York City area. I’ve never had to travel across the country to try and snag a candidate, so I can’t relate.

But it makes sense. NYC is a huge city, and there have to be some cops that are interested in beautiful sunshine and great weather 95% of the year. You know, other than the earthquakes, wildfires, and mud slides.

Demand > supply is great for candidates. For some skill sets like RF engineering, SAP, or some obscure government programs you can simply name your price.

I wonder if it’s the same for police officers.

Any Questions?

Any questions for the Recruiting Mole?

I’m here to help.

Sports Recruiting

I’d love to get into sports recruiting. Sign on with a major university and help them find great athletes? Sounds like fun. College football would be my sport.

Unfortunately, I don’t want to travel all over the country to find people. That is, unless my wife can come with me. They’d have to pay me well, but I think we could do it for a while.

I’d also love to help professional athletes manage their money. Seriously, you make $20 million per year. How about I let you spend $15 million of it, and I’ll make sure you can retire in 10 years.

Just some goals for the future…

Be Careful with Social Media

For all of the college folk, or just graduated college folk, out there: be careful with your social media sites. I use them too, no doubt. But I’m not a wild and crazy kind of guy. I don’t go bar hopping on Tuesday nights. I don’t have photos of myself streaking through the quad sitting on my profile.

Just like any other tool, it can be used for good and for bad.

I have used Facebook in the past to look up local candidates that would be part of my Facebook “network”. I’ve reached out to people via Facebook. For them, I would think this would be a good thing. Who doesn’t want to have someone calling them asking if they want to take a new job?

But if I had come across some crazy photos, some KKK membership, or anything like that… you can put money on it that I would pass right on by.

So be careful. Don’t be stupid. Make your profile professional.

Have a Career Plan

The simple act of sitting down and planning out where you want to take your career can truly be a valuable tool. Ask yourself some difficult questions. Where do you want to be in the next year? What about 5 years from now? 20?

It isn’t easy to see the next twenty years from now. I’ll give you that. But having an idea of where you want to take your career can be crucial to success.

Come on, you’re in business. Planning leads to execution. Execution, when done correctly, leads to success. Plan out your career.

Using Open Source to Lower Working Costs

I am a huge fan of using open source software to make yourself more productive and to lower your working costs.

Here’s a list of things I use to blog for this website that are free or open source:

• Linux. I currently run Kubuntu, a version of Ubuntu, on my laptop. Cost? Free.
• A lot of the following programs come installed on Ubuntu/Kubuntu, but are still available for you Windows users out there:
  • Firefox. Why have a terrible internet experience with IE? I absolutely love Firefox and have been using it for years.
  • Gmail. Access your e-mail anywhere. Just remember to POP/IMAP a backup to your computer once per month. I lost access to my Gmail account for a weekend a while back. It was a rough day with a lot of panic. I did a backup immediately after I got access.
  • Every other Google tool.
  • Open Office. It’s like Microsoft Office, but absolutely free. There are not many details missing that you would notice compared to Office. A great, great tool.
  • WordPress. Of course if you are into blogging, you need a blogging platform. WordPress is free to install on your hosted server space. The most flexible and popular tool out there. Good stuff.

That’s just the beginning of this list, but I use the above tools every day. What about you?