I thought my future in recruiting was shrinking. By that I meant I thought prhaps I could retire in a year or two or three. But that dream is no longer viable as the past two years have caused me to rethink my priorities and rejuggle my finances. While some of my peers have closed their doors (3 friends in September alone!), I went ahead and hired four young enthusiastic recruiters with 1 - 3 years experience each. They were all in a certain niche, which wasn't my niche, because I really never had one. My future is now and I am still here working and training so someday I can look back and relish my career in recruiting.

I got into recruiting in 1989 and quickly progressed up the food chain to owning my own franchise office, then expanding it to two offices. I sold the business back to the corporation in 2000 and went on my own with a 2 year non-compete. At that time I became more involved with HR consulting and sat out my agreement. Once the non-compete ended, I went full steam into heavy recruiting in all functional areas. Maybe that was a negative to some, but it helped me survive and thrive while others were pained.

I got more involved with government contracts and used the many certifications I acquired to the best of my ability. I landed contracts and kept them. So where is my recruiting future now? It is continuing to stick with bids and proposals and contracts and continue to diversify. This strategy has kept us alive and although not wealthy, at least well.

Our recruiting has grown from just the good old phone to internet job postings and cybersourcing. We listen regularly to the "names" in the industry to learn all we can. We remain honest, open and easily accessible to all. Our recruiting focus will continue to be building relationships while others just throw resumes against the wall hoping something sticks.

Our balance will continue to be both the client/job order on one side of the teeter-totter and the candidate/future opportunity growth on the other side. In this way we can cultivate candidates to represent them as "agents" (like the stars and sports celebrities) and still work on the job orders that need immediate fills. Variety is the spice of life.

My recruiting future is to constantly strive to stay ahead of the curve while serving our clients and candidates and making sure we don't give up the personal touch with the introduction of more technology and less human interaction. We continue to get up every day; work our call plans and job orders; verify references and hope to turn them into new clients; brief and de-brief with candidates and customers; and negotiate between the two to make placements. Although much has changed to give us better training and more tools, our future in recruiting is to learn from the past and put those lessons to work to survive in the future.