What makes you good at what you do? Do you live for your job? Are you vigilant in your follow up with candidates and clients? Perhaps you concern yourself with the ethics and moral dilemmas that Recruiters and HR Professionals face every day. The rules you work by can define who you are. So, what is your definition?

Eddie Cantor said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get." It is absolutely true that fortune may smile or frown on any one of us. Do we have the opportunity to choose our fortune and success by implementing hard work and preparation? Of course we do. The Yankees didn't win the World Series 26 times without a significant amount of homework and training. Luck may have helped them out of a tough inning or two. But hard work and diligence trumps luck any day of the week.

The world is a tough place in which to to live and work these days...

Work your way up from the mail room. Climb your way to the top. Not everyone gets to start in the corner office of the glass tower. I sat in a room with inadequate lighting, my back to the door, and a window facing a wall with a phone and list of hospitals in front of me for the first six months. And I always had a yellow pad in my hand - taking notes consistently. Earn each step up you take.

The early bird gets the worm. Be to work on time and start your day ready. Stay ahead of the curve by preparing the night before for your next day's work. Make the calls, chirp the tweets. Don't be the work. Franklin D. Roosevelt: "I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. "

Put your shoulder to the wheel and your nose to the grindstone. It is called work for a reason. The career you have chosen requires you to labor. This is not easy: if it were, how many of you would still have a job? "Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work" ~Peter Drucker

He who hesitates is lost. Have the courage and fortitude to stand up and do the thing you think you can't. Make the call, conduct the interview, do the research, go after the big one. Make the presumptive close. If you don't, how will you ever know if you could? Be tenacious and committed.

Thomas Edison will close out Part One.
“The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”

Read Part Two