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Blog Post: 81+ Troubling Workplace Stress Statistics [2022 Data]: The prevalence of stress in the American workplace is so high that most workers have accepted it as a way of life. Odds are, so have you. But is something wrong when stress, instead of being an…; Added by Phil Strazzulla at 2:39am on October 22, 2022

Blog Post: 10 Eye-opening Tactics to Successful Diversity Recruiting: Generating diversity awareness and finding diverse talent is one of the top…; Added by Ngan Pham at 4:37pm on October 9, 2015

Blog Post: The 4 P's of Employee Generated Content.

Employee generated content creates a powerful direct…

Added by Katrina Kibben at 2:54pm on February 22, 2016

Blog Post: Meaningful Employee Recognition Ideas: Have you heard the saying, 'People may not remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel?' This sentiment applies not only to platonic and romantic relationships,…; Added by Phil Strazzulla at 6:25am on October 22, 2022

Blog Post: Cultural Fit Assessment: How to Interview Potential Hires for Culture Compatibility: A company's corporate culture is made up of how people interact, the company's goals and values, the atmosphere in the workplace, and the practical ways in which …; Added by Phil Strazzulla at 3:42am on October 25, 2022

Blog Post: Strategic HRM: Its Definition, Examples, & Implementation: In its infancy, human resources was simply an administrative function that focused on an organization’s personnel-related and compliance needs: Maintaining compliance, hiring employees, managing…; Added by Phil Strazzulla at 3:56am on October 24, 2022

Comment on: Topic 'Recruiting Scientists News': private ownership and control of the means of production, and I generally agree with his analyses. I couldn’t possibly agree with him more with regard to one of his concluding paragraphs in the Times article entitled: "$1 trillion package has something for everyone." Obama’s appointees to the energy and environmental regulatory agencies will work to prevent new coal plants from being built, and to arrange financial and regulatory subsidies for wind and solar power. Pressure on the car industry will be unrelenting and irresistible. In hock to the government, the big three Detroit automakers will have to respect the wishes of congressmen who have never sold a car, and produce green cars in which consumers have shown little interest. Change there will be, but whether it will contribute to economic recovery and long-term growth, or impede it, is an open question. I would like to add to the above that I have noted that deceptively simple phrases to describe and therefore supposedly to help us to understand complex phenomena are all the rage in our contemporary sound-bite utilizing, attention deficit reinforcing, society. Carl Marx would be glad to know that one of his philosophical/psychological tenets has been adopted by the poorly educated personnel of the media and its punditry; they have discovered that by just repeating a phrase often enough it becomes established for their non-discriminating readers and auditors as the “truth.” We therefore now have “global warming” used to describe not only any rise in average temperature anywhere in the world for a time period selected carefully to illustrate whatever point of view is being professed, but, astonishingly, the same phrase is also used to note cooling and record cold anywhere as somehow predicted by the very existence of “global warming.” I note today that we now have wide use of the wonderfully non-informative and non-descriptive phrase, “advanced batteries”, to describe experimental and frequently peripheral science, i.e., inquiries that are not uniformly reproducible-sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t-that cannot and do not in fact result in an advance over the practical technology in place. The morally undefined philosophical/sociological term “better for the purpose intended” is assumed in all such references to “advanced “technologies of any kind. If you’re skeptical about my point then explain to me please why an atomic weapon is an advance over a bomb constructed with chemical explosives. It has turned out that the rapid changes in technology of the past generation have left journalists far behind in their economic understanding of what is practical and what is advanced. This has spawned a genuine advance, a better form of hucksterism. The scientists and engineers whose agenda it is to get funding for their projects now sell the press, and through it hopefully the public, on the idea that their particular technology or discovery represents an advance and is therefore better. The logic is “all advances are improvements….” Of course there is always the problem of economics, but since economic analysis does not lend itself to sound bites it is ignored by the media. Advanced Nonsense: The Politics of Alternate Energy We live in the age of Harry Potter solutions to economic problems. This means that our politicians and financial elites get to ignore the physical laws that have been discovered to govern, without exception, the utilization and conversion of energy from one form to another. Our leaders also feign complete indifference to the actual measured quantities of, and the accessibility to us of, the natural resources of energy, metals, and minerals which the earth possesses. Finally they claim that the most basic of economic laws, that of supply and demand is too complex to be understood except by a few who are skilled with the use of computers. The popular song asks “Do you believe in magic?” It would be less mellifluous but more accurate to ask “Do you believe in the bullshit coming out of Washington and Wall Street?’ The political bias of the mainstream media (MSM) is so obvious that its readership has nosedived to now be constituted of just those partisans who are true believers in whatever cause the newspaper, magazine, or broadcaster supports. The nonsensical and so-called financial analysis in the same publications has now entered the realm of pure fiction unless you filter it through the political bias already mentioned and a cultural elitism that simply reeks of the philosophy that one mustn’t question one’s ‘betters.’ Once serious, i.e., relatively balanced in their reporting, publications such as Newsweek and Time now have the form and, more and more, the sound bite and snippet style content of graphic novels, the euphemism that has replaced the more accurate term “comic books.” The New York Times, for example, is so incredibly biased, and generally inaccurate as well, as to be unreadable. It masquerades as serious by publishing biased, factually inaccurate, polemics. In my own travels, I once had the occasion to watch Nicolai Ceausescu speak on Romanian television for 6 hours on the glory (accruing to his masterful leadership) of meeting factory production schedules for tractors in a five year plan. The difference between socialist Romania in the 1980s and oligarchic New York in the 2000s is that everyone in Romania knew that the factory production figures were made up to fit the leader’s analysis and that; in any case, the tractors were crap that needed fixing every day. The New York Times thinks that its crap analysis doesn’t stink and so never needs fixing. Why should investors in minor metals care about any of this? Because they are getting nonsensical “analysis” of future supply and demand-the key factors to future price-from the glib ignoramuses populating the airwaves, the press, and the seats of financial and political power. Investors in minor metals need only to look at the results of following the advice of the self-centered greed-driven financial wizards and mining analysts of Wall Street firms in combination with the crisis solution agendas of the single minded, i.e., driven solely by the desire to be re-elected, hereditary politicians and their appointees in Washington to know that not a single one of these elites knows even how to salvage their own assets from the current massive destruction of confidence, credit, and wealth except by gaming the system, i.e., using insider knowledge and connections, and breaking the very rules and laws they themselves have written or sworn to enforce, to take the risk out of the equation even though those actions are always unethical and mostly illegal. I am speaking of men like Christopher Dodd and Charles Rangel. I’m going to give you some short term and some long term investing advice based not on what the political and financial elites say but on the results of what they have done, are doing, and say they will continue to do: Note first that Wall Street and Washington types believe in magic, not science. Even more important for investors is the fact that America’s elites, in particular those who have never worked for a living nor had the need to do so, such as Al Gore or HRH Princess Caroline of New York, only admit into their inner circles, for basking in the radiance of their presences, those who, like them, do not have a clue about the economy that created the America they dominate or the economies that are growing, successfully, in China, India, Brazil, and Russia. The elites believe that it is not important to take notice of the fact that the world’s strongest economies, from the point of view of future growth, are all based on two paramount factors: 1. Domestic self-sufficiency in, or control over, the exploration for and the production of natural resources of metals, minerals, and energy, and 2. The creation and maintenance of a domestic OEM heavy industrial sector that can manufacture consumer goods such as motor vehicles, aircraft, locomotives, ocean-going freight carrying vessels ,construction equipment, mining machinery, and home appliances, and is always ready to produce armaments for national defense. The above two factors are the reasons that the United States entered the 21st century as the world’s largest economy and the only military power able to project sufficient force to win a war to any location on earth. Americans believe that the American form of republican government in combination with our type of free market economy is what put our country where it is today. The BRIC economies believe that the two factors enumerated above are the real reasons that America grew to its present pre-eminence and that therefore if established by them individually will underpin and sustain them as great financial and military powers and that such will not depend on whether or not they are politically monarchies, dictatorships, republics, or democracies, and will not depend on whether their economic systems are free market or command economies or a mixture of both. Incredibly, the American elite and self-perpetuating ruling class has bet against the BRIC economies being right and has chosen until now to bet the wealth and security of the USA on a fantasy globalization based on a fantasy global adherence to free market principles, which principles not only do not operate within the USA but do not operate at all among the BRIC economies all of which are focused only on improving their own positions in the global economy no matter what the consequences to any other states. It may well be fatal to the perpetuation of American power to raise the wall of protectionism at this point in our history. Yet the latest person elected to the office of President represents a party the interests of which are dominated by purchasing through paying above market prices for labor the votes of the self serving unions, and economically as well as historically illiterate elites and political leaders the only interest of whom is in the accumulation of personal wealth or perpetual re-election or both. All of these people are what the Soviets used to refer to as “cosmopolitans” defined as individuals who put the interest of a global polity ahead of their responsibility to the well being of the state in which they live. So, you can make money in the market by watching for the resonance, that is to say the reinforcing, of the intersection of magic technologies and the attention of America’s ruling political elites. Magic technologies are those which solve problems without taking into consideration the availability of the raw materials and engineering processes required to build them or the economics of their production and distribution. In the short term I suggest that you invest in the fantasy alternate energy plays. The market will respond to the Obama alternate energy, “green,” stimulus by bidding up the price of the shares of the companies that claim they are working on ”advanced’ anything such as 1) rechargeable batteries, 2) wind generation of electricity, or 3) solar energy conversion. My model for this advice to you is the immediate reaction of the market to the money authorized to be wasted by the Bush administration, in conjunction politically with the self-serving Pelosi-Reid ‘led’ government, on subsidizing the American owned and operated OEM automotive industry for another month or two. The Wall Street ‘market makers’ responded to this destruction (waste) of wealth by bidding up the price of GM stock over just a few days to twice what it was selling for at the beginning of the phony time period during which the government was ‘considering its options.’ As I am writing this I note that it has already begun to sink in to the ‘investors’ that the long term prospects of the car makers are not really very bright if they say that they cannot survive even a couple of days without massive access to the Federal teat. Of course a cynic might just think that the short sellers are exercising their ‘judgment.’ After all, a swing of 16% in one day, such as GM had late in 2008, can make a Wall Street ‘professional’ a great deal of money. Returning to the discussion of fantasy green energy plays: Get out of investments in the future of companies subsidized by government as soon as it becomes obvious that there is going to have to be a second stimulus package given to them. This will be apparent when there are no results from the ‘advanced’ work and all of the companies say that ‘they are on the right track’ but need more money. This should take about 6 months, but as auditors look into, or make, the cost-benefit analyses of ‘advanced’ or ‘game changing’ technologies the collapse of market interest may occur in a much shorter time. Switch your money at that point, when you smell the need for a second bailout, to those surviving companies specializing in producing the raw materials for existing, workable, and economically practical technologies such as, in the case of the vehicle propulsion battery space, lead-acid (SLI and traction), nickel cadmium, and nickel metal hydride batteries. I would also then invest in lithium-ion (storage) batteries, wind for off grid use, silicon based solar, both crystalline and amorphous, and uranium and thorium based nuclear electric power generation. A final word about ‘advanced’ technology development. As a young man I once heard the best politician ever to come out of Minnesota, Hubert Horatio Humphrey (DFL-Mn) give some legislative drafting advice-I was in law school at the time and I was in a legislative drafting class. Vice President Humphrey, as he then was, said that in the 1950s when he and some other like-minded liberal senators were trying to draft legislation to expand subsidized college education to include not only G.I.s, but also the poor and disadvantaged who were otherwise qualified. The senate majority leader at the time, Lyndon B. Johnson( D-Tx), told Humphrey that if he wished to get the backing of the (Democrat party) majority for a bill that would help not just poor whites but also poor blacks he would need to label it so that questioning the bill automatically meant questioning the patriotism of the questioning senator himself. Humphrey said that Johnson took a copy of the proposed bill and wrote in front of the title word ‘education’ the two magic words “National Defense.” The rest is (legislative) history. Note well that the stimulus package in the Eisenhower administration was the National Defense Highway Act, which created the interstate highway system. Michigan was the first state to spend a billion dollars on the extensions of the interstate highways that went through Michigan and on the state highway “feeder” roads for that system. It was this ‘stimulus’ package not any advances in automotive technology that ignited the boom years for the OEM automotive, construction equipment , and mining machinery industries. The reductions in time necessary to get from the suburb to a job in the city and to get food and raw materials from where they were produced to where they were consumed ignited the dramatic growth of the United States outside of the east and Midwest. This could have been accomplished alternately by building national, intra-city, and intercity railroads as Europe did at the time, but OEM automotive industry politics in the USA overcame railroad politics and both mass transit and freight carrying passed from being carried by durable steel wheels on durable steel rails to being transported on disposable rubber tires on concrete highways that needed constant attention thus created jobs and the need for enormous quantities of raw materials all across the country. What a deal! Consumerism was born, lived long, and prospered. Without further ado, I am going to now list for you a group of companies related by the products which they are trying to develop, their business goals, and their agendas. I think you can make money by investing in them but solely on the basis of their relationship to the political goals of the Obama agenda for alternate energy. These investments are based on the truism that in allocating your investments timing is just as important always as project selection. On December 18, 2008 the Wall Street Journal carried a story based on a press release that day announcing that [L]eading U.S. battery and advanced [emphasis mine] materials companies, with support from one of the country’s largest national laboratories [The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory {just outside of Chicago}], have formed the National Alliance for Advanced [emphasis, again, mine]Transportation Battery Cell manufacture, known as the “Alliance,” to manufacture advanced lithium ion battery cells for transportation applications in the United States. The Alliance is trying to get a lot of taxpayer money to accomplish a completely amorphous goal, the members want to develop some fantasy process technology which will be flexible, so that it is adaptable to the mass production of whichever of the 26 lithium ion battery technologies now being “researched’ turns out to be the one that is safe, durable, long lived, and economical for the electrification of a limited range of passenger carrying vehicles-the electrification of long range high capacity freight carrying vehicles is a topic that is not even whispered about; it is too difficult a task for the foreseeable future. Note well how many times the word advanced appears in just the first paragraph of the press release. Note also that the Alliance is centered upon a U.S. Department of Energy Laboratory operated near the actual home of the soon-to-be sitting President of the U.S., so that the project’s money will flow to and through the new President’s home state. The fact that funding for this particular laboratory has lately been drying up is, of course, coincidental. The fact that the project would make more sense if it were directed by the NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, is also irrelevant. The Alliance is thus founded on that most fundamental of American political practices bringing home the bacon. It will almost certainly get its first allocation of Federal Funding early in the Obama presidency and will get more money as its research advances. The members of the Alliance are: * 3M (NYSE:MMM) * ActaCell (Private?) * All Cell Technologies (Private) * Altair Nanotechnologies (NasdaqCM: ALTI) * Dontech Global (Private) * Eagle-Picher Corporation (Private) * EnerSys (NYSE:ENS) * Envia Systems, (Private) * FMC (NYSE:FMC) * MicroSun Technologies (Private) * Mobius Power (Private) * Silyte (Private) * Superior Graphite (private) * Townsend Advanced Energy (Private) Note well the main reason that companies seek Federal funding; it is because private funding has no political agenda and is therefore not interested in taking the risk of getting little or no return based on 1) the state of development and the quality of the company’s technology, 2) the quality (i.e., competence perceived or demonstrated) of its management, or 3) whether or not the size of the losses incurred by the company so far are such that they can never be recovered in a rational amount of time. Additionally note how many of the above companies are private even the one that has a long and famous history, Eagle-Picher. The fact that so many of the alliance members are private is most likely an indication that they fail all or one of the above enumerated tests that private capital requires them to pass. To be fair some of them may have been ‘taken’ private by a fund in order to fatten them up for an IPO or to consolidate them with another company for a more substantial IPO. No matter how these companies got to their present inability to proceed without an amount of capital that was not available to them as constituted from the private market they are all now in the same boat; they cannot raise enough capital individually to both continue the development of whatever battery technology they have chosen as the one and to engineer a manufacturing process suitable for mass production. Note well that EaglePicher, Enersys, Microsun Technologies, and Superior Graphite are all pursuing or manufacturing other battery types besides lithium based ones. Even so they are in the same boat as the others they do not have nor can they raise sufficient capital to engineer mass production techniques and to build a flexible facility with the capacity to mass produce automotive power train batteries. The Alliance is not the sum of its parts; it is a group of undercapitalized companies, which have come together to grab a piece of the alternate energy pie in the hopes that the pie will be an open ended feast allowing them to keep getting more money even if and when they go down the wrong path or make a mistake. The free market is very harsh and cruel to such supplicants, but politicians allocate money to ensure their own re-election, not to serve a public good, so the Alliance is now on to a good thing. If they get public money they will not have to compete in the market place for it, and if anyone or more of them is successful they will not have to pay back their part of the ‘funding.’ Thus private enterprise as a driver of innovation and economic advantage will be driven out of the market for battery advancement probably therefore killing the possibility of developing an ‘advanced’ battery system. In any case, my advice is simple: If you see that the Alliance is going to receive funding then buy shares in those members of the alliance that are public and then watch the news carefully for mention of positive results by any member of the Alliance, listed publicly or not. Such news will cause the market to rise for whatever play there is in the Alliance. I would sell any Alliance-related shares that I own if they go up by a predetermined amount, say 10%, and then buy them back when the news quiets down and the market loses interest as no news is forthcoming. You will know when the Alliance has run through its funding. This will be when stories begin to follow one another that a breakthrough is imminent but that some further federal lard may need to be spread on the stale bread. The available stock will drop on this negative news. Choose a bottom and buy. When the Department of Energy announces that it will provide the additional funding let the stock rise to your target gain and dump it like an overheating lithium ion laptop battery. I suspect that we will see one or two cycles of this “Advanced Nonsense” this year, 2009. After that it will become obvious that the project is nothing more than An open ended subsidy program, and the DOE will try to get out of it, not by canceling it and admitting an error on the part of the administration but by trying to auction off its ‘share’ of any technology or engineering process development to private equity. The ticking time-bomb for this whole exercise in government mismanagement of the development of “Advanced” technology is of course the progress, if any, being made simultaneously by companies like America’s A123, France’s SAFT [Paris: SAFT.PA], and Korea’s LG [KSE: 066570.KS]. The three companies named above have all been selected by an OEM automotive supplier to develop a lithium ion technology. A123 and SAFT have been paired with Johnson Controls International (JCI), the world’s largest manufacturer of lead-acid SLI batteries in order to have JCI ready to engineer a mass production operation for a successful lithium ion technology should one occur. SAFT and LG have each also been mass producing batteries for many years. None of them even though they may plan to mass produce lithium ion batteries for vehicular power trains in the USA will join the “Alliance,” because they don’t want to share any competitive advantage either in battery technology or battery mass production technology with the small, undercapitalized, jonnies-come-lately. It is therefore very important to watch the press releases and progress of these three. If a car such as the GM Chevrolet Volt is introduced into the market and performs well with a battery from A123, SAFT, or LG or any combination of them and it is announced that JCI or, perhaps, EXIDE will put the battery into mass production then the purpose of the Alliance and all of its work will be perceived as valueless as will the price of the shares of any of the members of the Alliance at that point-even if this is unfair. A123 was supposed to launch an IPO last month; it did not, for obvious reasons. SAFT and LG are both listed on their home country exchanges. For the moment then I would take any profits I made by investing in the Alliance play I have here discussed and buy shares of JCI, SAFT, and LG as a hedge. I have not discussed the relative merits of any lithium ion battery technologies, because they don’t really matter when an investment has become totally politicized and has left the arena of the free market. With “Advanced” battery technology and the Alliance for developing and manufacturing it play the politics. The hereditary political and financial elites of this country do not know and do not wish to know anything about technology; they will throw other people’s money at anything that buys them votes and power. The rest of us may as well make some of our own money back in the meantime.…; Added by Melissa Furtwengler to Wanted Scientists, Energy experts, Engineers at 9:55am on January 12, 2009

Blog Post: Top 4 Virtual Event Platforms for Your Next Virtual Career Fair: For the event industry, especially career events, 2020 has not been a kind year. Instead of a catastrophic regression, however, the industry has found a new way to…; Added by Ngan Pham at 6:59am on July 13, 2021

Blog Post: How to motivate employees - 11 protips from Steve Jobs: Looking for new ways to motivate your team? We’ve put together this guide so you can learn from a motivational legend and the famous creator of Apple - Steve Jobs. His methods of motivation may…; Added by Phil Strazzulla at 7:52am on October 19, 2022

Topic: Meet Alex Putman, 'Social T-Rex': A Paper Resume Unfolds Over 13 Years: Bryant • RecruitingBlogs Profile • Linkedin Profile • Facebook Profile • Twitter Profile • Personal Blog • Community Volunteering: Habitat for Humanity of Atlanta (3 consecutive build years), Sentinels of Freedom (Gwinnett County, Georgia), Susan B Komen Breast Cancer Walk • Personal Causes: Angel Tree Program, March of Dimes, Toys for Tots, and Church Outreach • Phone: 770-346-7216 (o) | 678-557-0469 (c) • Email Alex alex@alexputman.com, or aputman@eusebeia.com Alex Putman is the first of a series on the most active members of the RecruitingBlogs.com community. He has contributed recent blog posts that have attracted attention such as "Dirty Words Recruiters Use", "Be a Social T-Rex", "Do Your Prospects Know", and "Big Shoes Leave A Lasting Impression." Alex enjoys consulting & coaching other recruiters in techniques that enhance their marketability and capabilities. He has lead workshops for new and seasoned recruiting professionals via a managed training program focused on goals, objective and time management. In the past decade, Alex's teams have been responsible for the fulfillment of 3,200+ requisitions and job orders. Alex has a driven passion for utilizing social networking/social media, to benefit human resource services, talent acquisition, career coaching and assisting people in their search for career fulfillment. Q&A with Alex Putman Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world. ALEX: I have been married for 7 wonderful year to my wife Tifany. We have 4 children including our beautiful twin daughters Alexis & Kathryn (6 yrs old), Gabrielle (3 yrs old) and son Corban (18 months). I am extremely active in the lives of our children; participating in their many church and school events. I believe one of the greatest gifts given to us is the ability to see the world through the eyes of our children. This blessing has changed my entire outlook on life. My personal hobbies include home renovation projects, working outside, getting together for cookouts with friends (especially during football season) and reading the Bible. I also enjoy Golf, College Football (Roll Tide), Basketball, pretty much a sports enthusiast. I am a strong family person; I do everything with my wife and children! We have a strong commitment to giving back within our community. I have had the honor of working with The Habitat for Humanity – Atlanta in partnership with 13 other local technology organizations. As a deacon at Shadowbrook Baptist Church, I am embedded in a multitude of activities offered at our church. My wife and I are invested in the College & Career class, Awana, and Children’s Worship. Warm and fuzzy: Every month I take one of our daughters out for a date night! They enjoy going to the mall, having dinner at McDonalds and getting a giant pretzel. I hope this never changes! Six Degrees: How many years have you been in the staffing industry? ALEX: I have been in the industry for 13+ years. I started in executive recruiting and then made the change to the corporate side (Panasonic). Once I made this change my career rapidly progressed from an individual contributor to the HR Manager for Employment, Immigration and Employee Relations. We grew form 88 people to 450 with a Canadian office. After 6.5 wonderful years, we closed the facility. I then went to work for a DoD contractor in the satellite communications (VOIP) field and found myself in the growth mode again (375 employees to 600 in 1 year!!!!). Too fast, we began to experience the pains of layoffs. I then incorporated myself (Eusebeia Consulting Group LLC www.webstarts.com/eusebeia. I quickly picked up 2 contracts as a consultant, one with Danger (www.danger.com) – they make the Sidekick for T-Mobile and another with Synergis (my current employer). I then decided to go to work growing a staffing firm, and what an adventure it has been! Recruiting has provided for my family over the years and I am grateful to this business and the many wonderful people I have met along the way. Six Degrees: How did you get started as a recruiter? ALEX: In preparation for my graduation from The University of Alabama (Roll Tide) in 1996 I was going through the campus career center for job placement. By shear accident I dropped my paper resume (yes paper, email was not so big then) into a file for AIM Executive. Little did I know the ride I was in for! This position took me to Toledo, OH (far cry from the farm in Smalltown, USA) and I was a full desk, commissioned recruiter, recruiting engineering talent for the automotive and manufacturing industry. Short lists of industries I have experience with include: Mobile Communications, Handheld devices, Satellite Communications, Utilities, Media, Automotive and Manufacturing. You name it, I have recruited for it, including; software engineers, hardware engineers, electrical engineers, manufacturing engineers, digital design engineers, network engineers and RF engineers. I have placed Project Managers, Program Managers, Product Managers, Sales Manager, HR Managers…really just about every type of person one can imagine. Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your sourcing/recruiting career? ALEX: Wow, huge question! I would have to say going through a company closure (Panasonic) and a layoff from the very next job. I incorporated myself, built a home office and began my journey of becoming highly networked. This is about the time I discovered people like Dave Mendoza existed. Prior to this I was in my corporate shell and let people come to me. I established a goal, “be the most networked person in Atlanta!”, Still working on this one, but the point is, I was able to quickly transition to perm placement from home and contract recruiting. I never missed a beat (or paycheck) and learned that having a strong network means everything (the 400 people from Panasonic all went to other companies, many of which I still do business with to this day!) Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on recruitment, capabilities, and/or model your career after? ALEX: Many! Dan Bell from my first role was a recruiting machine. This man billed $1.5 million per year by himself! Many would not call Dan the “easiest” person in the world, however he instilled a sense of urgency in me early on. He once told me that he was scared to go to the bathroom during the day because he may miss a call that would lead to a placement! I do plan to meet several “on-line” mentors at Recruitfest this year! This may come as a surprise to these people, but Jenny DeVaughn (whom I have met recently), Maren Hagen, Scott Love, Bill Radin (first person I heard speak) and you Dave are people I see on-line and love your stuff! The Recruiting Animal has some great stuff as well! I really try to find the best in their field and learn as much as possible! Six Degrees: Tell us about your position as Director of Recruiting at Synergis: ALEX: I am the manager of recruiting and currently have 4 direct reports (have had more prior to this year). I am part of our leadership team and have indirect responsibility for sales. Our total staff (Atlanta HQ) is 15 people. I have introduced a lot of social networking techniques and each team member has a personal branding plan. We boast a national client base with 300+ clients serviced. In conjunction with my recruiting, I maintain a few clients with whom we do a good portion of business (one client was $300k in sales last year -- goes back to my Panasonic network). I am also a member of the leadership function and involved in the corporate growth and planning of the company. Six Degrees: (A) What other companies' recruiting operations do you admire or have heard are best-practice examples? ALEX: TekSystems comes to mind, they are huge (12% market share), but what a success story. I respect them for their model, not their size. Apex Systems is a prime example, look at how fast they have reached the $360 million mark (10 years). Many other successful companies have utilized their model and are among the top in our industry. (B) In what aspects are they superior? ALEX: These companies have unbelievable training programs! I was fortunate to go through a strong training program, but TekSystems sets the standards. They really invest in the success of their employees. Six Degrees: What recent general news story or industry trend do you feel will have an impact on your work in the future? Why? ALEX: I know everyone is still buzzing about social networking / social media, but it is a trend that is here to stay! People are so busy and we are use to getting our information in “bits”. I recently read an article on vlogs (video blogs), I believe the industry and technology are merging and we will see this more the norm! Six Degrees: Tell us about your broader involvement within the staffing industry: ALEX: Conferences are great! I am extremely excited to attend Recruitfest this year (booked and ready to go)! I regularly attend the Technology Association of Georgia conferences, The Gwinnett County Chamber of Commerce meetings and the High Tech Career Ministries. Our company is a member of TechAlliance (formerly NACCB) www.techservealliance.org and we attend their annual conference in November. Last year I attended a “Lead Like Jesus” conference where Patrick Lencioni presented (great speaker). This year I will be attending RecruitFest and possibly ERE (potential schedule conflict). I have worked closely with the Georgia Institute of Technology’s career center and participated in roundtable presentations. I am actively seeking opportunities to speak and be published. I am currently working on my first book and my goal is to speak at a major conference or forum in the near future. Six Degrees: Can you detail how the recession has affected your particular industry niche? Has it effected your job or that of your fellow team members within the organization? strong> ALEX: We are in the IT industry and although we have not been hit significantly, we have experienced some down time. In January of this year we (the leadership team) scrubbed our budget to the bare bones. We were able to plan for the year accordingly and to date have had a small increase in sales over last year, added to our sales and marketing functions and remained in the black for 2009. Six Degrees: Aside from simply the generic term “Networking” what specific efforts have you made on your own behalf, or on behalf of colleagues to broaden your opportunities. ALEX: So many! For two years I have aggressively encourage my team to develop their personal brand. We developed plans and events for them to attend. I created my own Yahoo user group (ConnectHiTech) as my initial platform into the social networking world. Recruitingblogs.com has been a real catalyst for blogging. This is something I always wanted to do, so I took the chance and my first blog written was a feature. After this boost of confidence, I have become a blogging machine ? I created my moniker “The Social T-Rex™” and have been running with this brand! I am currently developing a logo, website and many other features around this brand! All of these have proven to be fruitful in extending my personal brand. My on-line brand has widened tremendously and has actually led to referrals, contacts and placements! Six Degrees: Given your own Trial and Error experiences as a Networker, what advice do you have for your peers on what NOT to do? ALEX: Don’t be scared! I know talented people, writers, speakers etc that are just scared of what people will think. I have learned, some people will like me, some will not…part of life! But by all means, put yourself out there and see what happens! In conjunction, be yourself, don’t be something you are not. If your personality can come out in writing or interviews then you will gain respect of peers and others (even if they don’t like you personally). Six Degrees: What is your next career goal? What do you need to do to get there? ALEX: My ultimate goal is to be a motivational speaker! I want to write a book (professionally and personal ideas) to incorporate my life experiences to help others maximize their potential. I want to be the guy that is sought after for speaking engagements works hard from home and creates a socially big personal brand….maybe as big as a T-Rex! What do I need to get there? Advice and assistance from people already there! Jenny DeVaughn has a “pay it forward” concept and I firmly believe in this. If those who are already there can pull us up and then we become the ones pulling others up, everyone wins!…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 5:09am on August 24, 2009