I have never met an unhappy, urologist anywhere.

You may not have thought you want to be a urologist. That’s perfectly understandable. But after watching a video — one that ended with the quote above — that won a marketing award, you may change your mind.

This clip called ”Why Urology?” was just honored with a platinum from the International AVA Awards competition. That’s a contest put on by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals, which gets about 1,700 entries.

The video was produced by the American Urological Association, and has been viewed nearly 5,000 times on YouTube.

Within each of us, in the collective unconscious, there lies a hero — an archetype that Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung believed lies dormant until called to action. Studying world mythology, Joseph Campbell built upon Jung’s work, discovering that no matter what the myth, a hero’s journey remains the same. All heroes must leave what is familiar, venture forth, do battle, and then return, forever changed, with new talents and gifts to share. For those of us in talent acquisition, that means we deal with something far more important than recruiting metrics and candidate tracking systems: with each and every recruiting engagement, we bear witness to the hero’s journey.

Each senior executive, each technologist, each professional in some way is forever changed by his or her search for a new opportunity. If that involves unemployment, and even homelessness, the bravery and determination required of our hero is the stuff of which legends (and movies) are made.

The film The Pursuit of Happiness captures that heroism. Will Smith and his son Jaden star in the true story of Chris Gardner, a San Francisco salesman who rises above homelessness and poverty to become a Wall Street legend. The movie reminds me that we need to remember we are not always aware of the random acts of courage required of the candidates with whom we interact every day.

The Hero’s Journey is a story lives in the subconscious — one that speaks to us, that moves us, and inspires us as human beings. As recruiters, we would do well to reexamine the recruiting lifecycle to discover the archetypal phases of the Hero’s Journey contained within. A candidate’s subconscious may influence his actions and decision-making as much as conscious reason. To start, we need to learn to recognize the classic markers of the epic tale. The story always begins in the ordinary world, until something triggers the first phase: departure.

Departure

The Call to Adventure: For executive search and recruiting, the call to adventure comes when a candidate first discovers that the ordinary world at work is going to change. It may be that an executive has learned that his company has been acquired or is going through a massive reorganization. It may be that the boss who hired him has left, or that there are rumors of impending layoffs. It may be increasing unemployment or outsourcing of his work. Whatever the call, the effect is the same; the landscape has changed. The Hero’s Journey has begun.

Refusal of the Quest: The next step is often refusal to heed the call. Candidates may not be ready to leave their current roles out of a sense of duty or obligation. They may fear leaving what has been so familiar. They may worry that they simply won’t measure up in their next place of employment. And so the candidate stays, as other workers depart.

Supernatural Aid. Once the hero has committed to the quest, a magical guide or helper appears — cue the recruiter. The most gifted search consultants naturally assume a Sherpa-like role, reassuring candidates as they make the decision to begin the journey. In recruiting, it may simply mean that we convince a passive candidate to consider the extraordinary opportunity that lies beyond the four walls of their current employer and to agree to exploratory conversations.

The Crossing of the First Threshold. As supernatural guides, recruiters help usher candidates across the threshold to enter the world of the unknown. The candidate submits his resume, reviews a job description, and journeys into the field of adventure for rounds of interviews with your team. In doing so, he leaves behind the employer that is familiar, and ventures into a strange and dangerous place — your company — because the rules of your corporate culture are not yet known.

The Belly of the Whale. This is the final separation from the hero’s known world and former self. Often it is a dark, unknown, or frightening experience to triggers a metamorphosis. They may enter the belly of the beast when they are handed a pink slip or are fired. It may be simply painful recognition that there is no future where they currently work and that they are undervalued. There is no going back.

The second phase of the hero’s journey is that of initiation. Our hero has left what was familiar and finds himself a stranger in a strange land. He has things to learn about himself and about his new world.

Initiation

The Road of Trials. Candidates, particularly those who are actively looking, experience a series of tests and ordeals that force them to undergo a transformation. Whether it is failing to obtain interviews or failing to obtain an offer after being interviewed. In The Pursuit of Happiness the test is being unable to show up for an interview properly dressed. Still he shows up.

The Meeting with the Goddess. The meeting with the goddess represents a time when the candidate experiences unconditional love. That would be the moment we introduce the perfect candidate to the perfect opportunity — the moment the hiring manager and applicant each recognize they have found “the one.” The opportunity is not “just a job,” but rather a calling that embraces all that we are meant to be.

Woman as Temptress. Inevitably, a counteroffer is made by the candidate’s employer or another company vies for your perfect candidate, tempting him or her to stray from the quest. But while the compensation package is impressive, it is more a material temptation. It lacks a spiritual connection with the work. Why did it take the current employer so long to realize the candidate was worth keeping?

Atonement with the Father. The candidate seeks the blessing of his boss or someone with incredible power. It doesn’t have to be male. In fact, in recruiting, candidates often seek the atonement of their spouses who must sign off on the decision. These are delicate conversations for families as they consider whether they wish to be uprooted yet again, only to leave friends and their community behind.

Apotheosis. An offer is being readied and the candidate is deified, entering a state of divine knowledge and bliss. This is also a period or rest and fulfillment in preparation for the return home to a new workplace.

The Ultimate Boon. The candidate receives an offer and achieves what he set out to accomplish on his quest. All of the steps up until now have prepared the executive for this transcendent moment. In other words, jackpot!

The third and final phase of the journey is the return. It represents a coming home when there is no coming home. It will never be the same because the hero is not the same. He has been transformed.

The Return

Refusal of the Return. The candidate refuses the offer, at least initially. Either it is a negotiating tactic or it is a reluctance to return to office life and all the stresses that come with it. It is intoxicating to be courted. It is quite another thing to commit to one’s next employer and the challenges the new role brings.

The Magic Flight. Sometimes it is difficult and even dangerous for candidates to escape with offer in hand. Current employers may threaten legal action, reminding candidates of non-compete obligations and other contractual ties that bind. Often, they must struggle to break free.

Rescue from Without. Sometimes the candidate needs guides and assistants to help them return home to their new place of work. In addition to the executive search consultant or recruiter, the dream team may also include an employment lawyer, a CPA, as well as a realtor and relocation expert. For proper onboarding, the worker may be assigned a mentor and executive coach.

The Crossing of the Return Threshold. The day the candidate becomes an employee, the start date — that is moment the Hero crosses the threshold. To complete this step successfully, the Hero must remember all that he or she has learned on the journey. The Hero must harness that wisdom on the job and then to share those insights with the rest of the world – not an easy thing to do.

Freedom to Live. It is now a year or two later, and the candidate has achieved mastery on the job. He no longer fears death by downsizing, so he is free to live. The hero’s journey is complete, at least until the next recruiter calls.

I remain humbled by the power those of us in executive search and recruiting hold to transform the lives of the candidates we touch and of their families for generations. We are the door through which an executive or professional must pass for a working wage or wealth creation. In large part, we determine who gets in and who does not, decisions that shape the futures of those with whom we interact virtually every day. It is so easy to take that for granted, but I try never to take it for granted because our smallest actions have the most profound effects on people who just as easily could be you or me.

So often, in so many ways, our candidates are legendary. A hero is defined is someone who is admired and idealized for courage, outstanding achievements and noble qualities. Each and every day, let us remember the hero … and then, let’s recruit him.

However, if you consider omitting information that could directly help the applicant successfully understand the process or land a job to be a lie, then there are quite a few areas where corporations are omitting the complete truth.

I call them “dirty little secrets” because insiders are well aware of them, while most applicants and business reporters are not. If you are a recruiter, you may find that this list includes over-generalizations, but in my experience, the problems in this list are certainly not unusual. My recommendation is that corporate leaders need to identify the areas where there is a distinct lack of openness, candor, and authenticity in the recruiting process and instead to proactively provide that information to applicants.

Recruiting Dirty Little Secrets

Here are a dozen areas where corporate recruiting could improve.

• The corporate black hole — because of recruiter overload, the volume of applicants, and technology problems, a resume submitted to a corporate career site may actually have a zero probability of being reviewed. In the industry, it can be referred to as “the black hole.”
• Looking for an excuse to drop you — there are books written about the need to focus on the positive aspects of individuals, but the entire screening process is often focused on finding a single error or lack of “fit” to quickly eliminate any applicant. If you are categorized as a job-jumper, you are unemployed, you have bad credit or Klout scores, you live in a distant zip code, or they find weird things on Facebook about you, you will be immediately rejected without knowing why. As a result, those who fail to make a single mistake during the process, rather than those who are the best, are the ones that are most likely to get hired.
• The rejection letter is designed to avoid complaints, not accuracy – if you actually get a rejection letter or e-mail, you should be aware that canned phrases like “we decided to move in another direction” or “there were other more qualified candidates” are pretested or lawyer-approved phrases that are designed to quiet you and keep you from making a follow-up inquiry. In many cases, the person sending the letter won’t even know the actual reason for your rejection.
• The interview process will likely be disjointed – applicants invited in for interviews routinely complain about disorganized interviewing, death by interview (having to go through 10 or more interviews), continually getting the same repeat questions from different interviewers, and having to return multiple times on different days. If the process seems poorly managed and disjointed, it is probably because it usually is. The overall corporate interview process is more often more whimsical than scientific and integrated.
• Some jobs are not really available to outsiders — although legal requirements may require an organization to post all open jobs, in some cases, the hiring manager has already predetermined that they will hire internally. There is no way for an external applicant to know when a job is “wired,” so applying can only lead to frustration and you will never know that you did nothing wrong.
• Some companies are blocked — if you work at a company covered by an informal “non-poaching” arrangement where two firms agree not to hire from each other, your chances of getting hired are near zero. Even though these agreements are illegal, they are secret, so your application will never be considered and you will never know why.
• Recruiters won’t know if you are a customer – you might think that being a loyal customer might help your application, but most corporations have no formal way of identifying an applicant as a customer.
• We will keep your resume on file (but we will never look at it again) – is certainly true that when they tell you that your rejected application will be “kept on file” it will be. However, it will be kept almost exclusively for legal reasons. The odds of a recruiter scanning through a corporate database of thousands of names in order to revisit a resume that has previously been rejected are miniscule. Unless a recruiter remembers you by name, assume that your resume has been dropped into the “black hole.”
• You will never know the real odds – although corporations regularly calculate the percentage of all applicants that are hired, you will never find that number on the corporate website. Although the lotto is required to publish your odds of winning, corporations keep it a secret. For some jobs, the odds are well over 1,000 to 1.
• Technology may eliminate you — and most large organizations, resumes are initially screened electronically. Unfortunately, if the software is not fine-tuned, the recruiter is not well-trained, or if you fail to use the appropriate keywords and phrases, no human will ever see your resume. In one test, only 12% of specially written “perfect resumes” made it through this initial step, although in theory, 100% should have made it.
• Busy people are forced to take shortcuts — during a down economy, the volume of qualified applicants can force recruiters and hiring managers to take shortcuts. For example, recently a coordinator asked the recruiter which one of a handful of resumes should be invited in for an interview. The response was “I don’t have time to look at them; just flip a coin and pick them.” Hiring managers are also known to make choices based on snap judgments or stereotypes that add a degree of randomness to getting a job.
• Don’t call us, we’ll call you — if an applicant is rejected at any stage, there is no formal process to help you understand where you need to improve in order to be successful when applying for a job in the future. Unlike in customer service, there is no 1 -800 number to call, and because of weak corporate documentation, recruiting might not actually know (beyond a broad reason) why you are rejected and how you could improve your chances.

Final Thoughts

Almost without exception, corporate recruiters are hard-working and ethical people. But most are too overworked to be able to take a step back and to formally assess where the recruiting process could be more open, honest, and transparent. Unfortunately, most of the current “candidate experience” efforts that I have seen are focused more on increasing courtesy and politeness rather than being significantly more open, honest, and transparent. If you would like to add to this list of “secrets,” add them to the comments section immediately following this article on www.ere.net.

We start with a job seeker good deed from the Challenger people:

Free Job Hunting Advice By Phone

For two days next week, job seekers will be able to get career advice directly from professional counselors at no charge. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST on December 27 and 28, counselors will accept calls from job seekers nationwide, answering questions and offering advice about the job hunting process.

The number is 312-422-5010. Job hunters can get more information about the call-in at firm’s website and blog.

This is the 26th year that the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray  & Christmas will offer this free call-in service .

Salesforce Acquires Rypple

Rypple, the company that brought a social, collaborative networking approach to performance management, is being acquired by Salesforce.com. The CRM company announced last week that it was buying Toronto-based Rypple for an undisclosed amount.

When the deal closes next year, Rypple will be renamed Successforce and become the foundation of a new Salesforce HCM business unit.

Both companies are entirely cloud-based operations, addressing different parts of the HR landscape. Primarily a CRM service, though it has a significant presence in candidate and applicant tracking, Salesforce has been broadening its product lineup. In the last year it ha acquired a number of companies including Assistly for $50 million, Mobile Metrics (price undisclosed), and social media monitoring company Radian6 for $326 million.

However, the Rypple deal is the first pure-play HR buy. It signals an aggressive push by Salesforce into human capital management.

Said the press release announcing the Rypple acquisition, “The company plans to expand into other areas with a new social model that will revolutionize the way companies recruit talent, build teams, empower employees, and achieve results.”

Salesforce Losing Force?

That’s one way to put it, says an analysis this week from writer Drea Knufken. In her list of the 10 Most Controversial Stocks of 2012 she calls Salesforce “one of the most overvalued stocks on the market.”

Pointing to a P/E ratio of 400 and receivables growing 300 times faster than revenue, the one time Business Pundit blogger declares, “The question seems to be not if Salesforce.com’s stock will drop, but when it will happen — and how the company will handle it.”

Solving the Mystery Applicant

Much like the weather, the “candidate experience” has been talked about for years but fewer folks do anything about it. Companies often not only don’t tell folks why they didn’t get a job — but decline to tell final candidates that they didn’t get the job.

The topic is getting new attention. A recent webinar on the topic drew a large crowd. And, a new award was recently launched just for providing a good candidate experience, with two winners of that award set to talk about their hiring-process improvements in March in San Diego.

Now, a startup out of the UK is also making the candidate experience its niche. Mystery Applicant is launching quietly while it builds up some clients and gathers data.

Director Nick Price says the product is a lot like the consumer surveys you take after calling in with a question about your credit card, satellite TV, or cell phone plan. When a candidate applies for a job, they get an email asking them to answer some short questions about how the process went for them. They’ll get another after being hired or rejected.

Price says that he hasn’t done any big splash, and is quietly working with applicant tracking systems to tell them about the product. But, he says, he has gotten the interest of some large companies, and one of the world’s largest employers is already using the service. They can filter the responses to see if it’s working better in certain geographies, or among young people vs. old.

A Recruitment Campaign or Is That a Wanted Poster?

The Hamburg, Germany police department is more than a little embarrassed after it discovered that one of the four models it used in its 50,000 Euro recruitment marketing campaign is a suspected thief.

Seems that after the we-want-you posters went up all over the city, one of the four models posing in full police uniform was identified as a suspect in a petty robbery. The victim saw the poster and called the (real) police. The suspect denies the charges, but the posters he has in have been taken down.

What’s That Internship Pay?

Students looking for work on Internships.com will now be able to see what the job pays and what the range is should it turn into a full-time opportunity. Glassdoor’s salary data will now be a part of the listings on the site.

New Sourcing Suite Version Released

Talent Technology Corporation released a new version of its  Talemetry talent generation suite. In particular, the company says the release includes a “significant update to Talemetry Match which delivers a redesigned user interface designed to help novice and experienced recruiters search, rank, and contact candidates from virtually any internal job database, job board or social network.”

In my upcoming workshop at the spring ERE Expo, we’ll be discussing many of the common issues that are faced by those who manage and hire recruiters, and will share some of the most groundbreaking research in this arena.

For now, let’s discuss one issue in the hiring of recruiters, and one issue in the performance of recruiters and talent acquisition professionals.

Hiring Recruiters

It is safe to assume that most professionals enter the recruiting industry into highly transactional positions where performance is mostly measured by how much they “do.”

For example, how many calls they make per day, how many e-mails they can send, how many interviews they can set-up, and how many people they can get hired are core methods of measurement. This is especially prevalent in entry-level agency recruiting environments where most recruiters are brought into the industry.

Of course, recruiting is not the only profession where this is the accepted method of hiring new talent, but it is the most essential, simply because recruiting is not, in its core, about transactional items. The argument that is used to justify giving new recruiter incentives to engage in more “doing” or transactional activity is that activity is correlated with results. But the truth is that activity does not guarantee good results.

This matters because to many recruiting professionals, recruiting is about the process of recruiting and not the larger picture of acquiring talent. In entry-level and junior-level positions, this is not an issue of contention. But when recruiters become managers and directors they are unable to provide the strategic value that top organizations need.

For example, high-volume recruiters sometimes fail to understand the relative quality of talent needed by internal corporate recruiting professionals, because they have not been developed and trained into thinking about the long-term goals of the business. They may see a job description as all the necessary requirements on which to hire someone for, but focus less on soft items that are increasingly important as that candidate moves up in the organization.

I believe that this is because of how they were trained and developed — to focus more on prioritizing fast hires over quality hires (within reason of course). This is not a criticism of agency or “fast” recruiters. This is a criticism of how their managers and leaders develop them.

In an organization that has a strategic plan to move overseas, for example, it will fall upon the strategic recruiter to ask the question (for each position): “Will this person possibly go overseas when we expand there? And if so, where?” to which she/he may receive a response: “That’s a great question John/Jane. Yes, they may have to go overseas to China in about two years when we move our operations there.” To which the strategic recruiter may respond: “Excellent. I’ll try to recruit someone, based on our conversation and the job description who may also have some experience handling Chinese businesses or something related.”

The transactional recruiter, because she/he has not been developed to think strategically over the years would likely not gear his/her questions in such a way. They’d would focus more on questions that would allow her to make the most efficient hire possible. Although both recruiters will get the job done, one will bring long-term value that cannot be measured, and which she is not being assessed on.

Hiring recruiters in the right way is an issue of early training and development. Recruiting leaders and managers are entirely responsible for this phase.

We will discuss how to develop your recruiting staff (in the early phase of employment as well) to suit your overall needs, as well as when process execution is more important than strategic thinking.

Performance Management

Typically, recruiters are measured, assessed, and evaluated based on hard data (which for some organizations is still a step forward) in some of the best organizations. This is an excellent start, and any performance management system should include process-oriented data as part of an overall performance appraisal.

However, where the industry falls short is in developing enough career development as well as leadership opportunities to augment that appraisal. In fact, only a minority of recruiting professionals actually receive an opportunity to expand their academic, professional, or social knowledge either on or off the job, which in turn, never allows recruiting leaders to develop career paths, professional specialties, succession management, or leadership development opportunities for their employees.

To add, the best most organizations will do is send a small number of their internal talent staff to external training programs, without any thought or planning on how that new knowledge could be disseminated and integrated into leadership development opportunities. In short, even this potentially expensive training is done in a very tactical way and is not sustainable.

The importance of getting this right is paramount: Performance management is one of the main reasons that CEOs of major organizations throughout the entire world rarely (if ever) come from a talent acquisition background.

In addition, there is new and groundbreaking research that top performers in recruiting environments are not necessarily the most independent individual contributors, but individuals who manage internal relationships and social connections with stakeholders.

In fact, social dynamics are better predictors (statistically) of recruiter’s performance than human capital metrics and measurements.

We’ll talk about all these challenges in detail in my workshop at the spring ERE Expo.

The behavior I witnessed at this event and many others is predictive of how these recruiters behave in the office and how they represent their company through other communication tools such as social media. Later as the candidates flowed into the fair to meet the companies, I witnessed these individuals sitting behind their tables, eating food, talking on cell phones, and displaying body language that suggested they didn’t want to be bothered.

Fortunately, I witnessed several individuals that did exhibit proper career fair behavior and strong recruiting traits. They were the ones that had long lines of candidates and also the ones whose companies are always recognized as recruiting industry leaders. The difference in success was clear.

We can all gain market intelligence by speaking with prospective candidates and finding out where they have applied, who they have interviewed with, and what their experiences have been like. Some of the experiences that I have heard are horrific, yet not surprising. So why do HR and recruiting leaders continually hire or put the wrong people into recruiting positions? I don’t get it.

Each year there are new tools, technologies, and platforms developed to help take “recruiting to the next level,” as the cliche goes. The problem is, all of these wonderful breakthroughs can be fruitless due to inadequate operator behavior. Moreover, if companies and organizations really want to eliminate or lower their agency recruiting spending, then start hiring similar profiles and not promoting an individual out of customer service or demoting someone from another department and sending them to recruit.

Regardless of where your next recruiter comes from, I have developed some essential skills, traits, and qualities that successful recruiters should possess. Aside from the regular “good communication, ability to work hard, team player” skills that everyone wants — here are a few of the most important must haves:

1. Strong sales skills — if you haven’t figured it out by now, recruiting is sales. If you disagree, you are in the wrong business. Not only do recruiters need to sell their clients (internal or external), but they need to sell candidates on opportunities and be able to articulate why company X is an employer of choice and why a particular opportunity is not just a great opportunity, but how it is the opportunity of a lifetime.
2. Ability to cultivate and build relationships — anyone can pull a name out of a database and place a call. It’s another thing to actually cultivate and build relationships with the candidates we recruit. Perhaps knowing a little about what makes them tick, what their hobbies are, engaging in a conversation rather than just following a script, etc. Social media, smart phones, and other communication platforms have built bridges straight into our personal lives. By creating a more open, friendly, and communicative relationship with candidates, the candidate experience will increase, making the recruiter and company stand out professionally and as an employer of choice.
3. Hunter’s mentality — there are so many ways to source for talent these days. There is an abundance of sites, networks, tools, and platforms all built in some fashion to make a recruiter’s life easier. But it is how each recruiter uses these tools that will make the difference. It all starts with the mentality of the individual. Recruiters are big-game hunters, and having the mindset to hunt and be relentless until the hunt is done is a priceless skill set. If a recruiter is going to sit at a desk, log in to Monster and keyword search all day — that is not the hunter mentality you want. You want someone who will use cold calling, social media, Boolean searches, networks, etc. in order to find the strongest and most-qualified individuals.
4. Big-picture thinking — simply focusing on single searches each day is great, but having the ability to see how candidates can fit into an organization, the potential value they can bring, or even knowing where a superstar candidate could fit in, even if there is no immediate position available, is invaluable. Moreover, keeping an eye on future tools, technology, and best practices and knowing what is coming down the pipeline will keep your company well versed and competitive in a tough talent market.
5. Strong follow-up skills — probably the #1 topic that irks me the most about recruiters – follow-up skills. How hard is it to return a call or an email — I will tell you that it is not hard at all nor does it take a severe amount of time to update a candidate, hiring manager, co-worker, etc. on events. I have heard all the horror stories of a recruiter (agency or corporate alike) calling someone frantically, building them up and setting them up to interview, only to never reach back out to the candidate again. All that does is breed negativity and it is not part of the relationship-building process what so ever.
6. Listening — anyone else ever had the recruiter-talk-your-ear-off presentation about how great they are, the database they have access to, successful placements, etc.? Recruiters need to listen first and talk second. Recruiters must possess the uncanny ability to listen and take a proper job order. Too many recruiters run their traps to no end. It’s annoying.
7. Consultative in nature — recruiting is a science and there are methods and processes. The majority of hiring managers need to be consulted on these procedures and processes in order to build long-term success and proper process flow. Good recruiters have the ability to advise and push back on their clients if need be. A good recruiter will act as a trusted advisor for their clients, and in return, clients will respect and act on given advice.
8. Personable and approachable — how many times do candidates call or meet a recruiter at a career fair and they are nervous on the other line or on the other side of the table. I love taking an approach opposite that which a majority of other recruiters take. I answer my phone calls and return emails. People will call me and are surprised that I even answered my phone. They are even more surprised that I am in a good mood, ask them how they are doing, thank them for their call, and take one minute of my time to let them introduce themselves and follow up with me. My mother always told me that I could catch more bees with honey than I can with vinegar.

There will be people reading this that say they don’t have the time to return calls or emails, that they can’t talk to everyone at a career fair, that their clients are too tough to work with — and to me they are all excuses. No one is perfect. I have probably missed an email or call in my time; however, we can all make a better effort to be better recruiters.

The next time you are reviewing your analytics and you see a high time-to-fill number or whatever data is important to you — put the brakes on and see if what you really need to do is recalibrate your recruiting team and get the right people on board first.

The questions were as follows:

1. How do I make the switch into the recruiting industry?
2. How do I leverage my industry knowledge while I’m there to gain enough experience?
3. And eventually start my own recruiting business?

Let me begin by answering the first question and telling you how I made the switch into recruiting. I’d been in the fitness industry, both in sales and working directly with members, for about eight years and really felt like a square peg in a round hole for much of that time. I moved from job to job, both in the health club industry and non-profit sectors. While out of work in 1992 it occurred to me that I should be looking at sales types of careers. I enjoyed sales and I had always been told I had the personality for it. I had a buddy who had been recruiting on Wall Street for many years and, when I told him I was considering recruiting, he said it would probably be a perfect fit for my personality and skills.

I subsequently found four firms to interview with, not having any clue about the recruiting industry. Remember, this was a time without the Internet or cell phones so I was potentially a lamb to the slaughter. Looking back on the interview experience I now know what the red flags were in the interviews. At that time I just didn’t get a good feeling about much of what I heard. Not sure why. Just didn’t feel right. So let me tell you about three of the four companies I interviewed with. (P.S.: All four wanted to hire me.)

One company I met with was a franchise firm. Its branding was that it was “expert” in about 20 different markets. That just didn’t sound right to me. Now I look back on it as the veritable Jack of all trades, master of none. On to the next opportunity.

Another company was privately held. I interviewed first with one of its recruiters who always did first interviews. I remember him saying, “We don’t need to lock our desks at night.” I thought that was a bit of an odd comment. All he did was put into my mind the question, “Why would it be necessary to lock my desk when I’m not here?”

Now I was concerned. He also made sure I met with one of the few women in the office so I’d know that there were other females working there. I was invited back for a second interview with the VP of the company (he was #2 in charge). As with any appointment, then and now, I always leave 15-30 minutes earlier than necessary just in case there is traffic. I was 15 minutes late for the interview, as there had been an accident on the highway. Remember, no cell phones. I was upset, as I can’t stand being late. Upon being introduced to the VP, I apologized for being tardy and said I’d left enough time but still got delayed by an accident. I’ll never forget his response, “I hate people who are late.” Needless to say, I didn’t join that firm.

The third firm was interesting, but too far of a commute for me. The fourth firm, and the one I subsequently joined, knew what they were doing when it came to recruiting recruiters. I interviewed with a number of people and it really knew how to sell me. It had a training program, and once I got my feet a bit wet I would get a territory and be sharing an office with the person who would be my mentor and teacher. I liked that.

The message here is that if you want to make the move into recruiting, be sure to do research and due diligence on agencies (retained and contingent) and corporate recruiting departments. With no experience it will likely be impossible to get a job in a retained firm or even a corporate recruiting department, outside of low-level grunt work while you’re learning. Contingent firms are usually more apt to hire folks with no experience because they will most likely be paying you on commission only. Less risk for them. More risk for you.

They each have their pros and cons. They each have different comp plans. Each of the firms I interviewed with had comp plans that were very misleading for a newbie like me. Three of the four had splits. They were in the neighborhood of 60/40, with 60% going to the individual who found the candidate and 40% to the person who found the job order.

What I didn’t realize (and they didn’t offer the info) was that this was a percentage of what’s left after the search firm takes its fee. For example, let’s say the total fee for a search is 20k. The split with your firm is 65/35. Therefore your firm takes 13K (65%) of the 20k fee and your share is 7k (35%) of the total fee. So if you were in a split fee arrangement with another recruiter in your firm as I said above, you and the other recruiter would split the remaining 7k 60/40, or 4,200/2,800.

No wonder so many contingent recruiters sling spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. And don’t forget about the possible problems splitting fees inside a firm can cause. No wonder the guy at the second firm made a point of telling me about the not needing to lock their desks. The firm I joined gave me a territory and told me I’d get 100% of my search fees (100% of my split). When I first started, I got 30% of the total fee, so on a 20k fee I’d earn 6k. My contract also showed me when I’d move to the next commission level and would eventually reach a max commission of 50%. I didn’t have to worry about anyone else in the company poaching my territory or candidates.

Call people who no longer work in these organizations you’re interviewing with and ask why they left. Make sure you listen for sour grapes. Ask about their culture, the management, what type of training they provided, if they had a mentor, how the company pays, if there is a non-compete agreement and about the laws about that in your state, etc. If it’s a corporate recruiting job, also make sure you ask how the management perceives and works with its recruiters and if the management is committed to a recruiting department that works. Remember, actions speak louder than words.

In hindsight I joined the right firm for me. That said, there were things I didn’t like about it, which is why I left after nine years to work for myself. I liked that I learned so much of what I know now and kept what worked and threw away what didn’t work for me. They were wonderful at teaching both tactical and strategic recruiting methods.

I also know many recruiters who were in industry (in my case tech guys) who left tech sales or sales management and jumped right into recruiting, which partly answers both questions one and two above. How do I leverage my industry knowledge? Every guy I know who left tech called everyone they knew in the industry, starting with the companies they had worked for in the past. In fact, one buddy who has been recruiting for 10 years now said, “Most of my clients to this day are those who worked with me in the past who respected the fact that I had the strong operational experience and a reputation for reliability and integrity.” He has used his background in software to his advantage.

In and of itself, though, this isn’t enough to make you successful. You have to know how to recruit. In the case of this buddy, I’ll never forget him telling me that he had no idea how hard it would be to make the transition from software to recruiting. There was so much he didn’t know. He also told me recently that he’s “still learning. The dynamics of the marketplace have changed so much in the last 10 years, and as a result you have to adapt in order to succeed. The hardest part is learning to qualify both the client and thecandidate and making an objective assessment. The goal is to be a trusted advisor to both sides.”

Lastly, how do you start your own recruiting business? You can do it like the guys in the example above or start with a firm that trains you. The latter is my recommendation. How many years will it take for you to learn enough to go out on your own? I’m sure I’d get almost as many answers as recruiters I asked. So the answer is, “It depends.” It depends on whether or not you have a non-compete agreement. It depends on your relationship with your clients. Will they follow you? It depends on how much you know about recruiting, so that when you leave and are on your own, will you be able to know the answers to the hard questions or be able to get the answers you need?

I remember a situation with a candidate after I was about 12 years in the industry. It was something I’d never dealt with and was blindsided by it such that I lost the deal. You will run into situations that are new; maybe you’ll figure them out or not. I can only hope that when you do make mistakes you will learn from them so as not to repeat them again. Do you want to work by yourself or build a firm? There’s much less to deal with if you just hang up a shingle. If you have interest in people working for you, then there’s much more to consider, like training, payroll, splits, collecting fees from clients who don’t want to pay on time, etc.

The bottom line is that recruiting is a great industry. Ask yourself why type of recruiter you want to be. Do you want to be a recruiter who slings spaghetti or one who becomes a trusted advisor to your clients?

Yes, I know. Astronomically, summer won’t end for another 18 days. But, I’m talking symbolically, not scientifically. And in that context, the U.S. Labor Day marks a transition from summer white to fall brown. It’s when kids go back to school, and the pace of the office quickens as workers return from vacation.

Once a day of parades and political speeches in praise of American workers, which still occur here and there across the country, Labor Day is mostly now a time to head for the beach or the park, fire up the barbecue, and kick back.

In the spirit of years past, however, I present you some inspirational words on life and work in the 21st century, from two of the most widely seen commencement addresses ever delivered.

First, is the advice given to the graduating class of 2010 at Auburn University by  Tim Cook, then Apple’s COO and now, its CEO:

I know of no one who has achieved something significant without also in their own lives experiencing their share of hardship, frustration, and regret. So, don’t believe that something in your past prevents you from doing great work in the future.

“Give up on the idea of developing a life plan that will bear any resemblance to what ultimately unfolds,” he tells the graduates.  Instead, “Paint in your mind the most grand vision where you want to go in life. Prepare. Trust in, and execute on your intuition. And don’t get distracted by life’s potholes.”

Take the 16 minutes to watch the video. Besides the advice, which is every bit as relevant for mid-career workers as for new grads, Cook’s speech provides clues to the stamp he will put on Apple in the coming months. (Start the video at the 2:20 point to skip the lengthy introduction.)

The second video is three stories, told to Stanford’s graduating class in 2005, by one of the greatest entrepreneurs in all of Silicon Valley: Apple co-founder, its former CEO, and current chairman Steve Jobs.

Story one is about connecting the dots. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards,” Jobs says. “So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. ”

Story two is one the graduates may not have much experience with, but will be familiar to everyone else. It’s about love and loss. It’s moral, says Jobs, is this:

You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

His final story is about death:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

The majority of bosses in a new study admit they knew who they wanted to promote before the formal process got underway.

Published by Georgetown University, the study by Jonathan Gardner, COO and senior managing director of Penn, Schoen, & Berland Associates, found 56 percent of large company (with more than 1,000 employees) executives with more than one candidate for a promotion already had a favorite. After going through the evaluation process, 96 percent of those managers with a favorite gave them the job. Twenty-nine percent of the managers had only one candidate.

No wonder, then, that 78 percent of managers said their promotion decision was easy. And no wonder, too, that 92 percent say favoritism exists in most large organizations.

Remarkably, though three-quarters of the survey participants say they have personally witnessed favoritism where they work, only 23 percent own up to playing favorites themselves.

What is this favoritism? Gardner, the study’s author, defines it as: “Preferential treatment of an employee for assignments, credit, opinion, influence, or advancement on the basis of factors that do not directly relate to a person’s ability to perform his or her job function, such as background, ideology, or gut instincts.”

Despite knowing about favoritism in their organization or having practiced it themselves, 83 percent of the senior executives in the survey said it leads to poorer promotion decisions.

If you find this all has an Alice in Wonderland feel to it, consider that by a large measure the executives said job performance, leadership potential, job skills, and similar work-related measures were among the most important factors influencing their promotion decision.

The study goes on to detail what the executives considered important traits in a leader. Being a good communicator and ethical came out on top.

Your value — what you can get done — depends on increasing your influence and strengthening your reputation. And part of that is presentation: not so much what you say but how you say it.

Presentation skills, or a person’s “presentation” is a package; a combination of tangible and intangible behaviors and skills, including:

• How you perform “on your feet”
• Appearance
• Poise
• Knowledge
• Preparation
• Value

How are you known in your organization? Are you known as someone who:

• Gets things done?
• Challenges the hiring manager to think about what is needed, what skills are required, what skills are nice to have, and what skills could be important that the hiring manager hasn’t considered?
• Presents candidates that match the considerations presented above?
• Is confident and behaves as if the hiring manager was a peer?
• Is as impressive “off-stage” as “on-stage”?
• Demonstrates emotional intelligence?

How you are known molds your influence and reputation. And how you establish and reinforce how you are known is through your presentation.

Some recruiters we’ve talked to don’t believe this is possible. They believe their job is only to find and recruit good candidates. Well, there is one thing about beliefs: what you believe is what you are. This is more than pop psychology because we have seen and worked with some very influential and highly successful recruiters.

To further explore and develop your presentation, it is beneficial to understand that it includes four skill domains:

• Business Skills
• Leadership Skills
• Interpersonal Skills
• Intrapersonal Skills

Business Skills include: general knowledge of recruiting, talent management, the industry, and the developing trends. It also includes a knowledge of how business works, both yours and others in the industry. The value is to be able to talk with the hiring manager about business trends, how recruiting fits in, how other firms are handling their recruiting challenges, and how to explain the imbalance in talent availability across different industries.

Leadership Skills include your ability to influence the hiring manager and the organization and the ability to think and present a big-picture, high-impact or more strategic approach to recruiting. Such as, why talent management is important and why such issues as the connection between onboarding and employee satisfaction with their supervisor impact retention. Also, leadership skills include how to deal with a hiring manager who has a poor retention record. Recruiters do not have positional authority, so their leadership skills are developed through and applied in their ability to influence.

Interpersonal Skills include: how you communicate with peers, candidates, vendors, hiring managers, and your boss. It also includes your relationship and social skills. Interpersonal skills are the window through which others see you.

Intrapersonal Skills are basically self-management skills. From how you direct and correct your thinking, to your day-to-day practices in accomplishing tasks to how you run your day and take care of and handle yourself in the process.

Strengthening presentation starts with awareness: being aware that presentation is important and is larger than a one-shot deal and being aware of what constitutes presentation. But change doesn’t happen with awareness alone. Change happens when awareness meets caring (enough to do something about it) and right action.

We can be aware, we can care, but perhaps we may not know what to do, or more importantly, what is preventing us from taking action in the first place. In our work, we have found there are nine common behavioral categories that impact our ability to take action:

• Fear
• Relationship-building
• Responsiveness
• Overselling
• Quitting
• Perfection
• Personal Beliefs
• Focus Management
• Impression Management

These behavior categories are distributed across the four skill domains; however, a lion’s share sits in the intrapersonal domain, which predominantly reflects our personal habits, patterns, and preferences as they converge in our work.

Take a personal inventory. Assess how you believe you are seen in the organization and consider yourself in each of the behavior categories and across the four domains. And understand that improving your presentation skills is a process, not an event. It starts with awareness and a sincere desire (and belief) that your presentation skills can be improved. The benefit will be more influence and a stronger reputation, which will enable greater results and increase your value to others, both inside and outside of your organization.

To learn more, join us at the ERE Fall Expo for our Pre-Conference Workshop, September 7 at 10 a.m.: Strengthening Your Presentation Skills to Increase Your Results.

I don’t know how many participants the conference has, but the tweet stream is moving fast, especially at the start, when the tweetnote speaker, Republican presidential candidate and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, started tweeting.

His 16-tweet conference opener was a Twitter first. Not only because he was the first presidential candidate to keynote a conference via Twitter, but also because conference organizers say it’s the first conference to be conducted entirely via Twitter’s short messaging.

Being a first didn’t count for much among the conference followers (#Jobs4US) who took Pawlenty to task for delivering a political address and challenged his record when he was governor. This one got loads of retweets: “Number of ppl that can fit in the Metrodome (home of the MN Twins): 64,000. Number of jobs created by @timpawlenty: 6,200.#jobs4US”

Things picked up when he got to answering questions. Tweeted one participant, Oh! @TimPawlenty is answering questions on #jobs4US — this is much more interesting than the speech. I hope it lasts a bit.”

It did, briefly. Pawlenty took a handful of questions, answering most with some variant of this: “My priority is getting the economy moving again — we must create jobs by cutting taxes, and controlling spending.”

For the record, I tracked down a few of the tweeters and found staffers from Pawlenty’s primary opponents online and a few Democrat staffers, too. But whatever your politics, the next sessions were laser-focused on offering job seekers advice and helping them with problems as specific as how to go about approaching your network contacts for help.

That one, to Career Diva Eve Tahmincioglu, got this answer:

reaching out to someone on twitter who really doesn’t know who the heck you are is dumb

start by contacting your inner networking circle, those people who know you, your work, and most importantly…

..reach out to people you know like you. please! i hear horror stories about references that end up dooming job seekers

The followers in this sessions, currently underway, retweeted that advice asking such follow-ups as what to do when you don’t have a big network, and how to get people who do know you into your network. Tahmincioglu, the session leader, is getting plenty of help from recruiters and experienced job seekers, who are responding to questions as soon as they get asked.

“Why not help out at a local business chamber or at your child’s school – even form your own networking group,” was one suggestion for a seeker who’s network, they said, is fairly thin.

You can find the conference agenda here. I suggest using the interface you’ll find on the site, as it’s easier than going directly to Twitter. The American Jobs Conference, which I discussed in a post last week that also talked about tomorrow’s nationwide virtual career fair, is sponsored by TweetMyJobs and CareerArc Group, which acquired the jobs distribution service earlier this year.

Signature, as TheLadders calls the program, was announced on CNBC this morning by CEO and founder Marc Cenedella.

“You sign up. We assign you a career adviser. We rewrite your resume. We have a 10-step program that walks you through the job search; takes the mystery, takes the stress, takes a lot of the anxiety out of the job search,” he told CNBC. “And we believe in it so much — we’ve been working on it so long — that at the end we guarantee you’ll get an offer in six months.”

This is no JobSerf program, where someone else applies for jobs on your behalf. Or even a RiseSmart Transition Concierge that sends participants job listings, and includes access to a coaching library, webinars, and some phone consultation.

Signature is a career coaching program; an online equivalent of executive outplacement. It requires the active engagement of participants who must follow certain rules, including attendance at a majority of online meetings, in order to qualify for the money-back guarantee.

If that seems like a catch, it is. But one that only makes sense. The FAQs tell prospects right up front: “Signature is designed for the job seeker who is dedicated, motivated, and willing to put in the time and resources to get the job that’s the right fit.”

The terms and conditions tell prospects that in the first 60 days they must:

• Attend seven sessions;
• Complete the first several steps of the program;
• Apply to six “well-fitted” positions;
• Complete additional assignments, presumably from the personal coach.

There are other requirements for the balance of the program, including attendance at a majority of the online meetings, and continued applications.

Signature, as Cenedella notes on his personal blog, isn’t for everyone. That’s probably why there is no online signup; interested job-seekers have to call TheLadders to discuss the program.

In testing for several months, Signature claims a 90 percent success rate. Says Cenedella, “More than a hundred people have already completed the current edition of the six-month program with a success rate of more than 90%.”

New job trend numbers from Indeed.com show that human resource job listings grew 4 percent from April to May. For the month, Indeed counted 66,482 new listings for HR jobs of all types. Since May of last year, that’s a 36 percent increase.

At the same time, the number of searches for these jobs increased 53 percent in the year. And the number of clicks into HR jobs also jumped. Most frequently clicked on in May were HR jobs with the title of generalist, assistant, or manager. Recruiter titled jobs got almost 83,ooo clicks.

“Human resources” was the category’s most frequently searched keyword, with 726,000 searches during the month. Add in the keyword variants such as “HR” and the search total bumps up to almost 900,000. “Recruiter” was second, with 111,000 searches.

Indeed.com has similar data for a dozen other industry categories. Only job listings in the real estate sector showed a consistent decline for the year, the quarter, and the month. The biggest percentage growth in listings for the year was in transportation, at 65 percent. Manufacturing was second, with a 52 percent increase in listings. By far, healthcare has the most number of jobs advertised.

When faced with hiring managers who are busy (and some less interested then they should be) and with the best candidates shopping options, like it or not, how you present becomes as important (we would say more important) than what you present.

While brevity and fact-based presentation are key today, if what you present is a recitation of the facts about a candidate, ranking them using some algorithm, this can be, quite frankly, boring. How do you get the hiring manager to not only want to meet with you, but also to listen to you, seek your advice, and respond? It’s in your presentation. For example, when you start working with a hiring manager and as the process continues:

• Are you fearful about bothering them in approaching them with your concerns or questions?
• How responsive are you? Are you slow because you are seeking the “perfect candidate”?
• How good are you at building relationships?
• How focused are you on the hiring managers’ issues and needs? Have you inquired as to their key priorities for the role?
• Are you interesting to talk to and meet with? Do you bring energy, knowledge, and value-add ideas to the discussions?
• Do you conduct yourself like a peer or subordinate?

These questions reflect the “intangible” elements of presentation. Many recruiters we meet believe that their value is predominantly in identifying and bringing good candidates to the table. Yes, this is certainly their role, though only a part of their potential value. And strong presentation will help you expand your value.

Start acting like a peer, bring distinctive and useful knowledge to the discussion, demonstrate beyond what is expected, look and be impressive, and you will be seen differently. Presentation is a package, and the ol’ a la carte approach will only take you so far.

The Techniques for Highly Effective Recruiters pre-conference workshop we’re giving at the Fall Expo will address these issues and more to help you increase your effectiveness and impact as a recruiter in your organization. And yes — it’s in your presentation.

The top three percent? The top three is a small core team that is absolutely essential to set the stage for the next 10 years of a company. The remaining 97 percent? Increasingly becoming a commodity. Recruiters must develop a process to find the “best of the best” who can focus on short-term quarterly goals and drive the company on a daily basis. The key to identifying this ever-changing, fluid group of individuals is to use both global and local social media tools (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) effectively. Recruiters will need to use these tools to identify, track, and be ready to reach out and entice individuals to join their company.

With these changes, the question remains: how can recruiters stay on top of their game? I have the inside track of the CEO perspective and his/her needs from its corporate recruiters. I see three reccurring trends:

First and foremost, corporate recruiters are salespeople. Today’s professional corporate recruiter needs to be more strategic, have a keen business orientation, and more importantly, have the ability to really “sell” prospective employees on the company. Recruiters must understand the corporate culture, the business goals, and talent needs of the company in order for it to attract the right individual.

The corporate recruiter’s role is being elevated to talent management. HR is changing, and many of its functions are being outsourced.  The corporate need to recruit and retain employees is growing in value exponentially as companies seek to hire the best and the brightest to join the company. As hiring begins to increase in the post-recession economy, the skills and experience of a talent manager are critical. Recruiters will be judged on who they invite to the corporate front door and how they contribute to the company.

Developing new data analytics is required. Yesterday’s cost-based data (how recruiters show their value and progress) are being replaced with “quality-based” cost analytics. How many recruiters did it take at what price to hire X number of employees is not as important as the percentage of new hires are performing at or above average (based on peer review) and how many are still with the company after one year. The new data should reflect how the performance of new hires and their longevity within the company push the company closer to achieving its business objectives.

If you want to hear more, I’m speaking at the Fall ERE Expo in Florida. My topic “How to Make Recruitment Relevant When Only Talent Matters” will discuss the art of recruiting and retaining great talent as a business objective and how to keep a company competitive as recruiting evolves into a more strategic role for the company.

I pose this question because I see a multitude of job postings for “experienced” recruiters with five years of experience. To me, this is an oxymoron. I had extraordinary search training, broke the 100k barrier in my third year, had lots of clients, and I was just beginning to really know what I was doing in year six.

Each year I learned more and got better at my craft. Recruiting is highly complex, when done properly, and it concerns me that companies that wouldn’t consider hiring a sales rep with five years of experinece would hire a recruiter to build a talent process who only has five years of experience. There seems to be a considerable disconnect here and I’d like to try to get to the bottom of it.

Since this is my assertion, I posed this question to a number of recruiters I consider “experienced” to determine if I was barking up the right tree. One of them has six years, one has 10, and the rest have at 15-30 years in the industry. They do retained and contingent work. Here are the three responses I found most interesting and believe they say it all:

• That’s a good question. For me it feels like I am still not an “experienced recruiter.” Mainly because I truly am learning new things and meeting new people every day. But a basic level of experience for me came somewhere in my seventh and eighth year. That’s when I went on my own. From that point on it seems like I am tweaking and learning incrementally with no end in sight to being completely ”experienced.” (He has almost 30 years in the business)
• That is a tough question because there are so many variables. I will say it is a lot tougher and more complicated than most people think.
• Having real impact on the process and recognizing where the hard problems lie and chasing those. The experienced recruiter relishes in addressing and fixing any high-impact problems that exist.

I received one telling response I think may be a contributing factor to my original inquiry. It was from the retained recruiter with six years of experience, the first year and a half of which she worked for a staffing company doing technical recruiting. She was the only one who didn’t have the time for a thoughtful response. I’ve had a few conversations with her and she feels like she knows much more than her responses to me indicate. I think, looking back on my own career, I probably thought I knew “everything” at six years. In hindsight, of course, this was not the case. Maybe the more we know, the more humble we get? Maybe the more experienced we become, we realize how little we actually knew in our past? Maybe the reason for this is that we are more secure in who we are and our craft.

At five years, could I have implemented a talent process? Yes. Would it have been successful and effective? Probably not. My concern is that companies think they can hire recruiters low on experience and training to implement complex processes and to find and attract high-level candidates. It’s imperative that organizations get clear on what they want to accomplish with respect to talent, that this process is aligned throughout the organization, and then hire professional recruiters high on experience. And remember, you get what you pay for.

My mother was my career coach and the classiest woman I have ever known. While most moms in our rural community spent their days at home or as laborers in the glass factory, my mom was an executive who wore nice clothes to work in the nearby town of Weston. She and my father were life-long entrepreneurs who evolved through dairy farming, chicken egg production, and then a commercial insurance agency, which is still in operation since 1958.

Life as a teenager was awkward at times because my schoolmates referred to my mom as a good-looker. They ogled her as she drove our team at breakneck speeds down country roads to basketball games. She was a local beauty queen who got married and had her first of seven children within 14 years after graduating from high school. Rather than attend college she held a series of secretarial positions, including a stint in Washington, D.C. at the height of World War II. Thereafter, she worked in partnership with my father and was the catalyst behind their success.

Dad passed away in 1986, leaving my mother as the sole owner and principle agent of G. J. Garton Insurance. Not long before this happened, my parents recruited my younger brother Josh into the business. They must have done a good job training him since he has grown G. J. Garton Insurance into the largest independent agency in the state. Reps from the biggest U.S. insurance companies often visit my brother to discover his secret. They would never be able to duplicate the residual influence of our mother.

In business, my mother was bold, persistent, persuasive, and impatient. She was a wellspring of good ideas and maintained contacts with movers and shakers across the country. If she thought calling the White House would make a difference, she would make the call and inevitably get help from someone she knew. She was a natural born networker who delighted in helping people while maintaining their dignity.

Not long after Josh moved into the CEO position, my mother decided it was time to do her own thing. I cannot imagine how he dealt with her intensity on a daily basis for as long as he did. At the age of 65, and while hauling around a portable oxygen tank, my mother started a travel agency with the idea of capitalizing on reduced fares for worldwide travel. Not only did she see the world, she built and eventually sold another business. Sadly, the new owners could not keep pace with her indomitable spirit, customer focus, and get-it-done attitude. The business failed soon after transferring ownership.

While much of this drama was taking place, my mother was simultaneously coaching me through college and into my career. I was the first in our family to graduate with a four-year degree and take the corporate route. She encouraged me to leave our hometown for greener pastures. Her advice was simple: You will know what to do.

After graduating from college, I still did not know what to do with a degree in history and political science. There was no Internet at the time so I put over 300 resumes into the mail and received back nearly two hundred rejection letters. Apparently, there was no market for hillbilly historians who were willing to accept any job.

Six months into this shameful and embarrassing disaster, my mother and I were sitting across from each other with the stack of rejection letters between us. This was unfamiliar territory for the both of us, and we were clueless about next steps. Our only connections inside the corporate world were the faceless people who signed the rejection letters. Then it occurred to us, if those people could write those letters, so could I. My writing was just as good as theirs.

My career plan was established. I would become a Rejector rather than a Rejectee, and with this specialized knowledge, I believed it would shield me from future periods of unemployment. I sold everything I owned and made the decision to go back to graduate school and get a master’s in personnel administration. While in school, I accepted a commission-based recruiter position — and this is when I discovered the existence of this job title. The faceless Rejectors were recruiters. This brief experience helped to qualify me for my first corporate recruiter position. From then on, I was committed to become a staffing expert, and my goal was to write a book about my experiences so other people would not have to suffer through prolonged unemployment as I did.

In 1976, I left West Virginia for graduate school in New Mexico. At least twice each week my mother and I were on the telephone, and we maintained this routine until 2009 when she died peacefully in her sleep at age 84. She always said that through me she was vicariously experiencing the corporate career she never had. She encouraged me to stay specialized and said my recruiter skills would eventually come in handy one day. She said I would be able to make a living on a rock with a cell phone. Years later, her words would become a reality.

After graduation, I spent the next 23 years building staffing departments, creating college recruitment programs, introducing cost-per-hire metrics and new recruitment technologies, and eventually led the global staffing functions for both Kraft Foods and the Miller Brewing Company. I had worked on four continents and made it to the top of my chosen field and was fortunate to have won three SHRM/EMA Best in Class Awards for recruitment marketing. Along with our ad agency, J. Walter Thompson, we set the foundation for what would become employer branding in the early to mid 1990s. My colleagues in human resources could never understand my devotion to staffing, which they described as rote and unimportant. From my perspective, there was nothing more important than building my specialized knowledge so I could one day write my book. I was on a mission.

In 2001, after consulting with my maternal coach in West Virginia, I decided it was time to leave the corporate world and concentrate on research and writing. She encouraged me to leverage my recruiting skills to start a business. I figured what the heck. If she can do it, so can I. My first two clients were Kraft and Miller Brewing, and we quickly added SC Johnson, JohnsonDiversey, Johnson Bank, General Mills, Fiskars, and Gerber Legendary Blades. Unfortunately, 9/11 interrupted our plans. This is when I became a certified professional career coach and opened my next business.

My insider’s knowledge as a recruiter proved invaluable to my work as a career coach. I could speak with authority from both sides of the desk. If the market went down, I began coaching. When the market went back up I began recruiting, and I was earning more money than I ever did while on the corporate side. If only I had the courage to follow my mother’s advice sooner. She had started several businesses with no education or related experience while I had a master’s degree and nearly three decades of related experience. With fewer advantages than I had, my mother was able to accomplish more, and still raise seven kids. She was truly amazing.

In the meantime, I was still chipping away at my first book, which finally made the bookstands in 2008. This was about the time my mother experienced several small strokes resulting in her short-term memory loss. She would never be able to read the book I wrote or know it became a best-seller.

Following my mother’s death, I began a speaking career, launched a talk radio program, and published a second book and series of learning resources. I also started a training company to distribute our products through government agencies and academic institutions so jobseekers can avoid the embarrassment of prolonged unemployment.

Our clients thank me, and I thank my mom every day. Happy Mother’s Day, Mrs. Jeanne Vassar Garton. I love you and hope this article pleases you more than a box of candy.

CareerBuilder says 15 percent of workers are actively looking, but 76 percent of the rest would jump ship if the right opportunity comes along. Given the acceleration in hiring, that right opportunity may come along sooner rather than later.

Manpower said this week that 16 percent of employers expect to add jobs in the second quarter, which begins tomorrow. When seasonally adjusted, Manpower says its Net Employment Outlook is a plus 8 percent.

CEOs are even more optimistic, a good thing since they are the ones to give the thumbs-up to hiring. The Business Roundtable’s CEO survey found 52 percent of them expect to increase hiring over the next six months.

So if you happen to be one of those active job seekers, or you’re just waiting for the right job to come along, you should know that HR jobs generally and recruiting positions in particular are trending up.

Next week, Indeed adds HR as the 13th category to its employment trends report. We won’t know until Tuesday what the March numbers show, but last week Indeed’s Jason Whitman gave us a preview at ERE’s Expo in San Diego.

Whitman, Indeed’s VP of client services, was joined by John Younger, CEO and founder of Accolo, an RPO, in detailing where the HR and recruiting jobs are now and what the industry can expect in the coming months.

Especially for the “Where the Jobs Are” session last Thursday, Whitman offered up a look at the recruiting-related job posts. In the last 12 months, Whitman said, job postings for recruiters have increased 49 percent. HR jobs of all stripes have risen 37 percent during that same year.

The increase is not as stunning as transportation job postings (106 percent increase), but the HR category is ahead of seven other categories in percentage growth. It’s a sign that employers are, indeed, feeling more optimistic about the future. (The Business Roundtable survey found 92 percent of CEOs expect to grow sales in the next six months. Not one expects a decrease.)

With more job postings comes more interest. Because Indeed is a search engine and sends traffic back to the originating site, it can’t say how many people applied to each job. But it does track the clicks into each listing and for HR jobs those clicks jumped 59 percent since February 2010.

Curiously, clicks into the recruiting-related job postings increased only 25 percent during that same time.

Why that is, is anyone’s guess. However, it tallies with what Accolo’s Younger told the 100 or so session participants. Now is a good time to be looking for recruiting jobs, especially in IT, healthcare, and financial services. If you’re a “needle finder,” Younger may even want to hear from you, as he pointed to charts showing the rapid growth in sales jobs and the difficulty in finding top talent to fill them.

As an RPO, Accolo needs to track job growth by sector and geography so it knows what to expect and how to ramp up its recruiter force to fill reqs. Needle finders are in demand to fill reqs in sales, research, software development, and nurses.

On the other hand, Younger told the group, forget about it if you recruit sheep herders.

Check out the slides to see all the additional information on recruiting jobs as well as on resources recruiters can use to predict workforce supply and in recruitment planning.

If you take the time to talk to recruiters who have garnered a reputation for success, you will discover that they share a few traits in common.

It is these common interests, inclinations, or skills that differentiate them from all the others. It would be useful to look for these traits whenever you are trying to find more recruiters or to identify those most likely to add the most value.

These recruiters are not real people. They are composite people that I made up from some of the best I have seen and worked with.

Trait 1: Great at networking because they have a strong interest in people

I know this sounds trite, but it is true. Every great recruiter has a need to be around and with people. They like to meet new people and seek out opportunities to do that even when they are not recruiting.

Bill Warren is a great example. He began recruiting when he was just 23 and a new college hire. The college team asked him to help out on campus and he immediately put the network he had developed in his fraternity and social activities to work. As he worked in a technical industry, he put together an on-campus special interest group sponsored by his company. They sent engineers to talk and demonstrate uses for their products in applied situations. With the blessing of his boss, he was able to spend several weeks each semester in campus building the reputation of his firm and their research. Recruiting was easy after the first year and remains that way today. Bill, meanwhile at 28, has become a full-time recruiter, where he is quickly becoming a star. When you ask him why he is successful, he just says: “I like people and want to help them do what they want to do.”

His networking skills are massive both in person and online. He cultivates relationships and understands that all solid relationships are built on quid pro quo: doing something for someone who, in turn, does something for you. It is this give and take that makes for success, and he is willing to share his career advice, mentoring skills, and technical expertise. In return he gets the loyalty and commitment of many candidates.

Trait 2: Marketing and influencing skills

Sue Smith is ranked as the top recruiter in her retail organization. Hiring volume is aggressive and needs are changing all the time. Turnover is often high and seasonal hiring presents many challenges. She has to recruit contingent as well as full-time staff, and is involved in lots of internal politics.

Yet, Sue is able to ride these waves and still make progress. While she is a good networker, where she really shines is in influencing and selling. Sue aims to get candidates interested in the work, project, and hiring manager by identifying and communicating their positive aspects, pointing out challenges when appropriate, and generating excitement. She presents well-vetted candidates to the hiring manager whom she has “presold.” Through Facebook, email, and phone calls, she uses her networks as marketing channels and targets them for specific functions and sometimes even for specific hiring managers.

Trait 3: Personalizing and leveraging uniqueness

They transcend brand by personalizing each hire and each hiring manager. Each of these recruiters has found the power and importance of personalization. Rather than rely on a generic recruiting brand, they instead brand every job and manager as unique. They know how to steer the right candidates to the right managers because they have deep knowledge of the needs and capabilities of each through their networking skills and ability to influence. While each takes a different approach, there is lots of overlap and commonality between them. They can push and pull candidates and managers toward a mutually desirable end.

Trait 4: They use technology; they are not consumed by it

Neither of these recruiters is a technology nerd. They use what works for them and whatever they can understand. They make sure both candidates and hiring managers also understand and are willing to use the tools.

Bill does this by creating special interest groups that can be either virtual or face-to-face. He lets candidates and managers gravitate toward those that match their interests and abilities. He has leveraged more technology than Sue because his primary candidates are dispersed and distant, but he is not a “techno freak” in any way.

Sue uses technology to enable communication. She has the amazing ability to implement a technology seamlessly by starting out small, experimenting with a few candidates and hiring managers, and growing it slowly when it works. She probably spends no more than one or two days a month where technology is her focus.

Great recruiters are focused on getting results, but what is more important to them is that both the hiring manger and the candidate feel that they have had a real exchange of information and that both are comfortable with the decision. I am amazed that their candidates have few regrets about accepting a job and the short-term turnover is remarkably small. Hiring managers, too, are content and pleased with their hires.

The recruiting process is not about individual recruiters, though. It is about making good matches in a seamless and efficient way. Great recruiters figure out how to do this while appearing almost in the background. The greatest praise you can get is when the hiring manger says, “Wow! Did I make a great hire last week.”

Then, says Chris Twyman, Zapoint’s founder and CEO, the HR departments will be presented with skills maps for their company’s personnel.

“If some of the 300 don’t like what we are doing that is fine,” says Twyman in a press release going out today. “It will not be long before they need to consider the implications of this campaign.”

Talk about throwing down the gauntlet. The 300, as the project is called, is nothing if not ambitious and attention-getting.

Once over the affront, though, HR and division heads might just discover a hidden reservoir of skills and talents among the workers. At a minimum, they’ll be able to see how their work groups compare to others.

Behind the stunt (and yes indeed, I played along with that reference to dossiers, which more accurately are talent profiles), behind the goading press release is serious purpose. Twyman acknowledged that the project is “as much a political statement to HR and recruitment” as it is a door opener for Zapoint’s sales staff.

By combing the Internet, particularly the social networks, and compiling employee profiles, Zapoint is demonstrating how much more information about a worker is available than a company has in its records. Not only might that be valuable intelligence for succession planning and talent management, but when aggregated it paints a picture of the workforce that can be used for comparison, benchmarking, and recruiting.

For example, Twyman told me during a briefing last week, “We can show an analysis between the top five salespeople in the skills area (and) the top five in the skills area of a competitor.”

Zapoint’s SkillsMapper crunches the data from the public web, marries it to an organization’s internal records, then presents the results in a graphical format that makes for easy comparisons. Since The 300 project won’t have access to internal records, it will only analyze the publicly available information, which can still be substantial.

If nothing else, when Zapoint is finished with The 300 it will have significantly broadened its database, allowing it to further refine its talent and skills benchmarks. That was behind its acquisition last year of the ill-fated Jobster. The purchase brought it some 800,000 profiles and about 250,000 active users.

(Besides selling its SkillsMapper to employers, Zapoint offers career planning services to individuals. Their profiles are searchable by recruiters.)

Zapoint has posted the 300 companies it will profile, and the dates when the skills mapping will be completed. Check here to see if you’re on the map and when you might expect to hear from Zapoint.

Before you get all ballistic, keep in mind that Zapoint’s employee profiles come from public sources. When the sales team comes calling, all you’ll get will be aggregate information. The individual names and profiles won’t be yours, unless you buy the service, which is, naturally, the point of The 300 project.

If HR shrugs off a corporate buy, Zapoint will pitch to the individual departments. Eventually, the employees themselves may get an opportunity to claim their profiles and make them public and available for review by outside recruiters who just might be your competitors.