A couple of weeks ago there was a heart wrenching post from a recruiter whose business was going down the tubes. After several months without job orders, and no contingencies in place, the curtain was falling on an entrepreneurial tragedy.

The twenty or so comments that immediately followed varied from words of support and encouragement to practical advice and offers of help. I even called the recruiter and left him a voicemail. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

I wondered if the person who had poured his heart out so openly had thought beyond the moment. Had he considered that a future client might come across his catalog of failure and overlook the virtue of his transparency to conclude they would rather not work with a self-confessed loser? What about a future employer; would they be as sympathetic as the RecruitingBlogs.com softies?

I was talking to our resident high-priestess of enterprise Maureen Sharib about the unfolding conversation. It seemed to me that our recruiter was doing himself a huge disservice. With every reply to new comments the sizzling sounds crackling from my computer reminded me that personal branding shouldn’t smell like burning flesh.

Maureen took a different view. We struggled with how RecruitingBlogs.com could balance the need to provide a place where people could come and get the kind of comforting support and collective wisdom that the comments so generously provided while protecting the identity of those who should have thought twice in life before thinking twice online.

We concluded that our near-destitute recruiter was a hero. Even at the risk of being branded a loser long after he had recovered offline that single post spoke for a lot of people who are similarly going through the grinder, down the tubes. The advice being given to this one recruiter was no doubt being taken to heart by hundreds of recruiters who are also facing ruin but who are too sensitive to throw their guts up in a public forum -- for better or worse -- as he was doing.

The conversation was picked up off-line with some other well-respected recruiting bloggers who are RecruitingBlogs.com activists all: Jerry Albright, Claudia Faust and Pam Claughton. We all concluded that each of us had a tremendous amount to offer this poor fellow including an alternative to bearing his soul online to have a very real and ongoing situation eclipsed by the next human interest post or “is recruiting ethical” dust-up.

Talking it through we also realized RecruitingBlogs.com provides a better forum to have these types of things managed, a better way for practical and meaningful support to be delivered. That forum is "An Hour With...."

So this is what we’re going to do…

Maureen, Jerry, Claudia, Pam and I are available as an panel to spend an hour with anyone who has an issue that requires the experience gained with a combined 125 years in recruiting, absolute discretion, honest counseling, experienced mentoring and a plan of action. Your issue doesn’t have to be the “sky is falling” but it should be something that deserves one of us committing after our meeting to working with you as an accountability partner.

That means one of us will walk hand-in-hand with you as you put our agreed plan of action into effect and that you will commit to following through. There is a lot more to it than that but you get the idea.

If you’d like to discuss exactly what is involved you can shoot anyone of us an email. We’ll explain how the program is meant to work and what the pros and cons of what we’re proposing are. If you think the upside outweighs the downside we’ll honestly assess your “case” and let you know if we can commit to you as a “client” in return.

Don’t forget, as a panel and individually, we’ll be accountable too but there is a difference. We will be working in the open while your identity and business remain completely confidential. The RBC family will be holding us accountable for your success.

If this initiative takes off – and we’ll know that when all five of us has been assigned a case to shepherd – it would be great to see what happens next. Whatever that is, it should be something good. We all hope so.