ERE scooped the story before we had time to send out the press release! Big news, my gentle readers, JobMachine and Arbita are merging.

Late in the end of the 20th century I arrived at the conclusion that sourcing was more than merely a way for me to meet my recruitment goals by finding talent unavailable in mainstream sources, it was to be my chosen career.

When I started at this Sourcing hardly existed as a function, much less a dedicated role. Back them many though it was impossible to build a successful career entirely upon sourcing. I recognized early on I wanted to leave a professional mark in this world by inspiring a generation of sourcers, and raising the overall level of our industry. I am fortunate to have had so many friends and mentors who have lit the trail I follow, and have lent to me strong shoulders on which I stand.

Since the summer last year (when we found out Sammy Jo was on her way, I began soul-searching to decide which of three directions I would take. As I did that I also began having conversations with my close friends, business advisors and mentors and asked them for pros and cons on each of my three choices. My choices were:

1.      Continue growing organically and slowly

2.      Merge with an organization that could provide us the infrastructure we needed to grow

3.      Scale back to a more manageable "lifestyle" business that made just enough to live on but would not grow

As I had conversations with my advisors it became painfully clear that Option 1 - organic growth - was potentially disastrous because my small company of five employees was already suffering from diminishing bandwidth and serious growing pains which would only increase. Several of my advisers had taken that option in their own businesses and each of them inevitably crashed and burned out.

Option 3 was scary because I had the desire to continue on the trail and shrinking just did not go along with my goals. That left Option 2 but the few I approached wanted to “buy” me and as many of you know I am just not for sale. When I brought up this topic with Don Ramer he never offered to buy me. In fact, he said “Shally, you don’t need me, and I don’t need you, so if we were to join forces it would be perfect!” which lead to a conversation about our core values and business models. We arrived at the conclusion that our two organizations had a chance of affecting a sea change in the industry if we banded together. That kind of change is something in which we are both deeply passionate. After a couple of visits to each others’ HQ and collaborating on a few joint projects it became obvious that a merger on the level of true partnership and collaboration was the obvious choice.

So here we are today – and I would like to use this blog as a way to have a conversation with my friends out there in Cyberspace who may have questions about what, if anything, this means to them. Please also read our official Press Release: http://jobmachine.net/merger along with John Zappe's scoop on ERE's InsideRecruiting here:

http://www.ere.net/inside-recruiting/news/arbita-and-job-machine-merge-182329.asp then come back and let me know your thoughts on all of this.

Cheers,

Shally 

LinkedIn | My Bio | MSN | Skype