Yesterday was the first official day of BullHorn Live and what I want to start off by saying is the following:

If you choose to participate in a recession, you can't be surprised when things don't go your way. Bullhorn has 14000 users and I think about 200 people came to Bullhorn Live to ensure the grim reaper of placements would not find them this week. I guess everyone else was too busy making placements.

The day started with Art Papas who is the CEO and Barry Hinkley taking the stage and talking about Bullhorn, the industry and giving some interesting and out of the box suggestions as to what recruiters can do in order to boost their profiles and talents within the markets they serve. Some were practical and some were a little, well, like I said interesting:

1. Business will take place, money will change hands and you can grow your business but you will need to take market share and get aggressive and creative.

2. You should consider running for office. The idea is that you will lose but the byproduct of all that will be that you will get publicity.

3. Call the White House and see about getting obama to come speak in your town about job creations. It's about getting rejected over and over until you might become pain in the ass. write letters, become an instigator.

4. Read the following book. " A new Earth' by Eckert Toole - it's an Oprah special

5. We have 5 senses, we use sound the most. We talk the most and once in a shile we use site. The most powerful sense is smell. Send floweres to your clients the day before you arrive for a client visit. They will remember this and the lobby will smell good

The great thing about this conference is the reason behind it. Bullhorn sells software to recruiters to manage their candidates and clients. Lots of companies do. Thing is here that Bullhorn put this conference on for their customers in order to help them use their systems better and in order to provide additional training, ideas and insight in order to increase productivity. It's a good way to invest in those who help make you successful.

The overall feeling I have this morning about yesterday was that this is still a business with enough people not down in the dumps about the fact that most are making less placements and some may even be having some real trouble figuring out what to do. There is a way to fix it. Maybe not make it perfect like the way it was a little while back but it's still exciting and there is still much to learn and there is a ton of room for improvement.

I have lots of ideas, compliments and suggestions about the conference and I'll report back shortly. There is a lot going on here.