Back in the 1990’s, credit card “pushers” were visible in the student union on nearly every college campus in America. We were living in a time of ‘have fun now, pay later!’ and kids like me were their ideal target audience. We bit hungrily like fish who had been frozen in their parents’ lake of adolescence in suspended animation for 18 years.
Now we had access to our own credit, money, and bills to pay without anyone looking over our shoulders.
I am not an expert sourcer. 
That feels good to say, after so many years. I’m a good sourcer, but I’m not going to be building APIs and hacking into the back end of databases this week. This isn’t because I don’t have the curiosity to do so, but because my role expands beyond being a pure sourcer. In other words, it’s just part of my job, albeit a part of my job that I tend to love. This is mostly because nothing is more self-satisfying for me than finding gold among the internet rubble and coming out the other side with the right candidate. But time also gets in the way.
Aside from the usual suspects of time and desire, my role requires me to be able to provide a high-caliber end-to-end experience for the candidate as a representative of my company. We (like most other companies) run lean on the recruiting and sourcing side. Therefore, I have to make sure I’m covering all the angles and proverbially leaving no stone upturned. Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good, and I absolutely subscribe to that. But when I meet people newer to the recruiting industry, and more precisely the sourcing function therein, they often turn to tools first. And while logical, you still need to “crawl before you walk.” So many recruiters and sourcers want to be “in the know” with the latest and greatest, while forgetting, or outright not having mastered the basics. Hence, this is advice I give to new recruiters and sourcers. Read More
Each year, those of us who still have some burning passion for Hollywood (for whatever reason), gather to watch the Oscars.
For 3-4 televised hours, there’s excessive backscratching and a celebration of the Cult of Personality going on. Inevitably at some point in the show, there is a tribute to those in the industry who have passed on since the last gathering of the cinematic lemmings.
In the music ecosystem, its very much the same, and we’ll likely see tributes for the Chester Benningtons of the world at the next Grammys. Rest in peace, Chester Bennington, but I’m not sure why people are acting as Led Zeppelin‘s surviving members just went down in flames.
But I digress; that’s not the point.
Somehow, this all got me thinking about the families, co-workers and fans, and what they go through when they lose someone they were fond of. Having been there myself, and having been a Psych major back in college, I was already familiar with the Kubler-Ross stages of grief and bereavement. I wondered what the equivalent for this would be in the recruiting world, since we lack not for drama and a plethora of interesting situations to find ourselves in with this profession of ours.
The irony of me writing about this is not lost on anyone who has known me for a long time.
No matter how long you are in a profession, you are going to make mistakes. I think
that’s actually healthy, because if you stop learning in your profession, then your eventually going to hit a wall and peter out. This week was one of those days where I learned something. That I need to trust my gut and intuition, despite talking myself out of it in one recent scenario. Read More
As promised by the incoming administration earlier this year, immigration is fast becoming a focal topic within the confines of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And where there is
immigration, jobs are not far behind in the discussion. And jobs have played a prominent role in the early days of this administration. Specifically, American jobs. The ones allegedly being lost to the recipients of 85,000 annual awarded H1B visas. Read More
Recruiting In 3D 