Search Results - specific effort

Topic: Meet Larry Gonzales, 20 Year Veteran "Blessed To Give Blessings": te Photography, Cooking, Good Wine, Reading Interests: College Football, Art (Impressionist, Old Masters, Roden's sculptures), World History Favorite Music: Everything from The Beatles to Hendrix to Opera to Lady Gaga Favorite TV Shows: CSI Miami, Csi Vegas, Leverage, Love Saving Grace!, Burn Notice, Damages, Discovery Channel, ESPN, Favorite Movies: Casablanca, All About Eve, Citizen Kane, Trading Places, Errol Flynn Movies, James Bond, The Princess Bride, Jason Bourne, Tombstone, Armageddon, Army Of Darkness Favorite Books: James Patterson, John Sanford, Of Mice And Men, Osterman Weekend, Dostyesky, Dante's Inferno, The Prince, The Art Of War Favorite Quotations: The Proverbs of Solomon: "The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all, is the person who argues with him", "Youth is wasted on the young", "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" • Office/Cell Number 408-838-0637 • Personal Email Larry Gonzales is actually a colleague I worked with when I consulted at Palm. Unfortunately, as a virtual sourcer I never had the honor of meeting Larry face-to-face, but his reputation then as it remains now was well established as a 20+ year veteran of the staffing industry. I was well informed of Larry's formidable resume - a man of all seasons: experienced in the design, implementation and administration of recruiting strategies, staffing planning, and process improvement programs. Larry has managed a recruiting departments, including budgeting, metrics reporting, and recruiting technology. He has a broad working knowledge of HR practices including compensation, performance management, diversity, branding, and employee retention. Larry is proficient in federal and state employment practice regulations, applying and interpreting employee-relations policies, Affirmative Action, Diversity Hiring, EEO-1, VISA Processing and employment law. His Specialties include the following: Mobile Device Engineers, Human Factor Design, Media Designers, Mobile TV, PC-TV, Embedded Software Engineers, Home Entertainment Solutions, RF Engineers, CDMA handset, Risk Management, Sarbanes Oxley Compliance, SAS70, Specialized areas of finance (AML, FAS109/123R, SOP97-2, and SEC Reporting), Sales/Business Development, and Product Marketing. Q&A with Larry Gonzales Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world. Larry: I am fortunate to be married to a beautiful and wonderful “Texas Girl”. My wife and I were born and raised in Texas and regardless of how long we live in California, we will always be Texans! Our fourteenth wedding anniversary is coming up next week and I thank God for blessing me with such a great partner in life. I have been involved in charitable fundraising since I was in Middle School. Although the charities and my levels of participation have varied over the years, I feel it is important to give back. My minister always reminds us that “We are blessed, so that we can be a blessing”. I am a cancer survivor. I was diagnosed with cancer in January 2003 and through the efforts of prayer, positive attitude, and the fantastic physicians at Stanford Medical, I have been cancer free since May of that same year. After my full recovery from chemo and radiation, I focused on supporting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society through TNT. I decided to train and participate through Century Bike Rides. I hope to become a mentor next season and help train (mentally and physically) new participants to the program. I am an avid reader of fiction/mystery along with many business periodicals. Six Degrees: How many years have you been in the staffing industry? Larry: I have been in the staffing industry for over 20 years dating back to index cards, real cold calls, and ruses. Six Degrees: How did you get started as a recruiter? Larry: Like many of us, I never expected to go in to the recruiting. I had been working for AT&T, designing and selling telecom systems for the transportation industry. I primarily handled air transportation to include airports, airlines, and airline sales offices. I was referred to a “headhunter” that was looking for someone with my background. When the opportunity did not materialize, my recruiter asked me if I would be interested working for her company. I told her that I would rather be a “pimp, than a headhunter”. Famous last words! Needless to say, the reputation garnered by headhunters in those days was less than respectable. She nurtured the relationship and had me meet with the owner of the firm, which was based out of Atlanta. I also meet with all (12) of her colleagues in the Dallas Office. I found myself drawn to the group and to the challenge the job represented. About 90 days later I ended up working for her firm. Since then my experience has included agency, professional services, corporate, and RPO environments. I have held individual contributor, director, and managing partner roles. Regardless of title and responsibilities, I have always been a hands-on contributor. I am a person that gets easily bored, so the ever changing world of technology has been my salvation. To be successful you have to stay abreast of technology trends, understand the industry and known how it applies to business. This requires research and a certain amount of trial and error. Typically, experience helps you shorten your ramp up time to production. You have to continually learn to excel. One of the keys to my longevity is that I always try to specialize. I choose the hottest or up and coming technology and become a subject matter expert. Through the years, I have supported specific software and hardware technology. I get involved in SIGs, Alliance Groups, and conferences. I do not want or expect to be everything to everybody. A “Jack of all trades is a master of none”. However, my experience allows me to talk intelligently across many disciplines. I am equally adept at discussing the hardware design of mobile devices to financial audit and SOX compliance. Right now the mobile device industry is still very strong and within the Silicon Valley area you have a large mix of industry leaders and start-ups. Even with the high unemployment, almost all of my candidates have multiple offers. Find your niche and work it. Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your sourcing/recruiting career? Larry: Moving to San Jose in January of 2000 and suffering through the highs and lows of the dotcom era probably affected my life the most. I relocated from Texas and had never really gone through a downturn in business. The economy in Dallas was very diverse and not dominated by any one industry. Even the oil and gas industry represented only about 10% of the total employment population. So when one industry stalled, you had others as backup. 2002 was a rough year. You saw many recruiters leaving the industry (for the mortgage broker industry!) and we see what inevitably happened to them. You also had a large group of recruiters that held on to the belief that they were actually worth the outrageous rates they were being paid before the bust. They would not even think about going to work for less than they were previously making. I find that arrogance is a very ugly trait. I think that it is a combination of at least 3 of the 7 Deadly Sins (Greed, Vanity, and Pride). I think most of us in the recruiting business learned or reinforced our idea of the value of humility. Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on recruitment, capabilities, and/or model your career after? Larry: I often recall the story about the headhunter that got me in to this business? Her name is Dee Jabaut and she exemplifies all that is good in our industry and in life. She is a valued and loyal friend and everything that I would hope to be in life. She is a consummate professional, wonderful parent, always gracious, diligent, charitable, and patient. Six Degrees: Tell us about your position, (responsibilities, size of your staffing organization) : Larry: I have spent the last three years primarily in an individual contributor role. My responsibilities have included project management, client manager relationship, sourcing, recruiting, and new business development. Six Degrees: (A) What other companies' recruiting operations do you admire or have heard are best-practice examples? Larry: Without firsthand experience, it would be hard to designate who has the best recruiting practices. If you look at the top 25 in Fortune’s Best Companies to “work for list”, I had heard horror stories about some of their staffing organizations. Regardless of the success of the company, I think that the overall candidate experience is vital to managing employee branding. Whether or not the candidate is hired, what they tell their circle of influence is ultimately important to the future of their recruiting. I think that this is even more magnified with the advent of applications such as Twitter and Facebook. I think that it would be a healthy, although not practical exercise, to make corporate recruiters interview externally at least twice a year. This would remind them how it feels to be on the other side of the equation. I also feel that the true measurement of recruiting comes 90-180 days after the hire. Measuring employee and manager satisfaction, employee performance, and attrition are key metrics. There are definitely some companies that stand above the rest, companies where employee and customer loyalty rank high. I admire companies like Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods, Frito Lay, Qualcomm, Ernst & Young, and Boston Consulting. (B) In what aspects are they superior? Larry: Branding, internal and external. Treatment of employees, quality products, and customer satisfaction. Six Degrees: What recent general news story or industry trend do you feel will have an impact on your work in the future? Why? Larry: More tech firms innovate in Silicon Valley but sell overseas! Companies that focus on mass market (China, India, Africa, and South America) are finding greater success. “In down economic times, every company should be thinking: Do I have my balance right? Instead of spending so much money on marketing in some of these depressed markets, some of that should be diverted to parts of the world that are not as negatively impacted.” These markets have typically been ignored. Successful examples are companies like Telegent Systems, Ruckus Wireless, UTStarcom, and Legend Silicon. Six Degrees: Tell us about your broader involvement within the staffing industry: Larry: Outside of local SIGs and affiliations with IEEE (The Consumer Electronics Society and The Antenna and Propagation Society), I have been regretfully reticent. I have been focused on international recruiting to include EMEA, Africa, India, APAC, and South America. I do plan on attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next year. Six Degrees: Can you detail how the recession has affected your particular industry niche? Larry: I am fortunate that my current client has not been greatly affected by the global economic downturn. We have been actively hiring for the last 14 months and have aggressive hiring goals throughout 2010. 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. Larry: Over the last three years I have intentionally built out my Linkedin network by industry segment, targeted companies, and international exposure. That foresight has allowed me to actively search for my current needs. It is an evolutionary process or one might say intelligent design! It is better to be in a revolutionary rather than reactionary mode. 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? Larry: Don’t be afraid to ask for help! Most people are willing to help you achieve your goal if you ask politely. Aristotle stated that “man is a political animal, meaning an animal with an innate propensity to develop complex communities”. By nature we want to help people, preferably if that help doesn’t require a great exertion of time and energy. Using Linkedin as an example, if you use the route of requesting an introduction in order to present an opportunity, most people will forward that introduction when approached professionally. Granted, the degree of assistance increases with the proximity to the person we are helping. Of course for expediency, you should simply try calling your intended candidate. People are also more willing to help if you are offering value to their cooperation. Whether that is an offer to help a friend, an offer to help them in the future, a monetary offer, or sometimes a simple thank you. Remember not to be demanding or too persistent. I prefer the term, gently persistent while trying to achieve a goal. Six Degrees: What is your next career goal? What do you need to do to get there? Larry: Ideally I would like to secure an opportunity as a staffing director/manager. The best position I have ever had was managing and mentoring a staffing organization. I like being responsible for the overall talent acquisition process. There is a great deal of satisfaction growing your own company. That is the one element missing from project based staffing. I need to find a start-up or small company willing to give me the opportunity to run their staffing organization. Either that or a regional staffing management position for a large international corporation. Recommendations For Larry “Larry is an excellent and very professional recruiter. He is very dedicated, hard working, committed, and driven to results. I’ve had the chance to work with him at Palm as a technical recruiter for my system electrical engineering design team. He was very thorough in his search for potential candidates and has successfully provided quality candidates. He is excellent in identifying good candidates and recognizing their talents and the fit in my team. He is very proactive and follows up with the candidate regarding interview schedule, information about the position, feedback, and negotiating offers. He also is very good in communicating with me regarding progress and updates. He is definitely a pleasure to work with and an asset to a company!” November 11, 2008 Bernadette Lozano, Hardware Development Manager, Palm “I worked with Larry in two different ways. First of all, he was instrumental in getting me hired to my current position at Palm. Larry was in Palm's HR/staffing department but it almost seemed like he was my own recruiter. He always kept his promises, followed up on time, and worked hard to meet or exceed my requests. Even after I accepted the offer, Larry followed up with me and wanted to know if there was anything he could do. This has definitely been my best recruiting experience so far. Secondly, Larry also helped me find candidates for an open position at Palm. I have been very pleased in his abilities to provide me with candidates that matched the job description.” August 25, 2008 Thorsten W. Hertel, Sr. Antenna Design Engineer, Palm “I am appreciative to Larry's consistent and thorough search for candidates during this critical time for our project to find qualified candidates. Larry did an excellent job following up with the candidates to arrange for interviews, giving feedback and negotiating offers. Worked closely with us and he is proactive in returning e-mails and phone calls.” July 13, 2007. Top qualities: Expert, On Time, High Integrity Sameer Haddad, Sr Staffing Consultant, Spansion “I had the opportunity of working with Larry at Spansion, a leading supplier in flash memory. Larry is a seasoned recruiting professional who brought leadership and stability to Spansion’s recruiting team. As a senior technical recruiter Larry’s focus was in the device space, which is a very difficult area to recruit for in the semiconductor industry. Larry established solid relationships with hiring managers, was a valued business partner and was able to consistently met expectations. Larry was definitely a team player and a pleasure to work with.” October 30, 2007 Wayne Widdig, HR Manager, Spansion “Larry supported our Connected home and mobile device business at Motorola. In a short period of time, Larry was instrumental in making several critical hires on a high profile project. I found Larry to be a strong E2E staffing professional. Moreover, the clients (hiring managers) found him to be a valuable asset, identifying highly qualified candidates for hire.” October 23, 2007. Top qualities: Great Results, Expert, On Time Nick Mailey, Staffing Manager, Motorola “Motorola hired Larry through his company i-Hire to do some recruiting for us in the N. CA and S. CA areas. I found Larry to be very professional, have good technical knowledge and deliver great customer service in a timely manner. I would work with Larry anytime.” July 22, 2007. Top qualities: Personable, Expert, High Integrity Lynda Harris “Larry is excellent to work with and is results oriented. He is very responsive and professional and knows his business.” July 13, 2007. Top qualities: Personable, Expert, Creative Leo Barnes, Staffing/Business Development Manager. RemX IT “Larry and I worked together to staff one of my projects. I found him to be a joy to work with under demanding deadlines in a high pressure environment.” December 28, 2006. Top qualities: Great Results, Expert, High Integrity Scott Wright - hired Larry more than once “Larry is a professional in the true sense of the word. He has an uncanny ability to communicate and understand conceputal issues at all levels. Larry gives 110% to ensure the project you are assigned is satisfactory. It has been a pleasure working with Larry and I will be glad to do so in the future.” August 2, 2006 Manoj Goyal, Independent Consultant, Squar Milner Reehl Williamson, LLP “I relied on Larry to staff two critical roles in my company's Marketing organization. Through Larry's diligent search capabilities, his attention to my specific criteria, and his follow-up throughout the negotiation process, I recruited two "anchor" members of our current team. They significantly deepened my team's bench, and both exhibit the capability to advance to higher leadership roles.” January 9, 2006 Kristin Jordahl Hansen “I have had the pleasure of working with Larry over the past year. He is not only well polished but also has a high level of integrity. Larry has proven to be a very effective recruiter and account manager and thus is within the top 2% of producers at our company.” April 13, 2005 Chris Stewart, Account Manager, RemX IT Staffing “I was first introduced to Larry when his company brought a recruiting plan to my organization to help us source hard-to-find technical jobs and fill positions that had been vacated due to the dot-com frenzy. Larry led the effort as project manager and offered workable solutions that allowed us to surpass our hiring goals. Larry gets results because he is a professional recruiter who knows technology and offers exceptional customer service.” October 2, 2007. Top qualities: Great Results, Expert, Good Value Brenda K. Brown, MS “As a manager and leader, Larry is someone who is committed to developing your skills and knowledge. He's the type of leader that likes and wants to help you out as much as he can. He's a great listener and is very empathic. I know that he has grown a lot of valuable relationships because of these characteristics. As a Sr. Level recruiter, Larry is the best I know. He's a great networker, aggressive, and is very creative in finding the right candidates.” October 1, 2007 Racquel Cariaso, CIR, Recruiter, eJobs “Larry is always focused on the task, ready to do whatever it takes to get the job done. He's an exceptional leader, as well as a committed team player.” June 22, 2007 Garry King, several, Ejobs…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 11:31pm on August 9, 2009

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Topic: Meet Julia Margherita-McInerny, Adobe Alum - Enjoying The Hunt As A Fearless Sourcer & Her Starbucks: infrey Show Fan of the following: Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger and Starbucks Coffee Company Admire of : Shally Steckerl and JobMachine Cheatsheets Quote: " .. You can find us walking the dogs downtown Willow Glen stopping at Starbucks to refuel" Community Volunteering: Human Society, ASPCA, PugPros, Local Hospital, Reading for elementary school students through a Junior Achievement program" • Email Julia: juliamargherita@sbcglobal.net • Phone 408-504-4061 ** Currently Seeking New Opportunities** Q & A with Julia Margherita-McInerny Julia Margherita-McInerny is a Corporate Sourcer based in San Jose, California. Her staffing areas of expertise are in Advanced Internet Research identifying passive candidates, full-cycle recruitment, cold calling, and networking. She has worked at prominent Silicon Valley companies such as Intuit, The Gap, and most recently, as a Talent Scout at Adobe where she worked for the last three years until this past February. Julia has experience targeting varied job req disciplines, i.e., Marketing, Product Management, Human Resources, Legal, Corporate Communications, Internal Communications, Real Estate, Corporate Architecture & Construction, Visual Merchandising, E-commerce, User Experience Designers, Visual Designers, Technical, Engineering, Finance, Internal Consulting, and Customer Support. Life is an adventure, and Julia has a team effort supporting her latest chapter. Aside from her recent job search efforts, Julia has experienced the more satisfying life transitions that come with a recent marriage this past October with her husband Tim McInerny and building a nest with their two dogs, Carson the Mastiff and Lola the Pug. Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world. Julia: My husband Tim and I were married this past October. We had a beautiful wedding in Los Gatos, CA with 150 of our closet family and friends. We are settling into married life quite nicely along with our two dogs Carson the Mastiff and Lola the Pug. We are working on adding to our family! Since we both waited to marry a little later in life, we feel very lucky to have found each other. I’ve always said that finding your soul mate is like searching and finding the perfect candidate -- sometimes you have to search high and low and wait for the right one! We enjoy eating out and trying new restaurants. We also love entertaining and having friends and family over. On the weekends, you can find us walking the dogs downtown Willow Glen stopping at Starbucks to refuel or going to the dog park. Anyone who knows me knows I am an extreme animal lover. If I could adopt all of the stray and rescued dogs and cats out there, I would! I am a strong supporter of the Human Society, ASPCA and try to help PugPros, a local pug rescue group when I can. When I was growing up, I really wanted to become a veterinarian but I think it would be too hard for me to see animals hurt and in pain day in and day out. I can’t even make it through commercials about abused animals without shedding a few tears and forget any movies where the family pet passes away in the end!!! I also enjoy reading in my spare time. I’m always game for anything Oprah recommends! I also never get tired of a few of the classics including "Catcher In the Rye", "The Great Gatsby", "To Kill A Mockingbird", etc. For kicks, a good laugh and to keep in touch with the girly side of me, I’ve also ready the "Confessions of a Shopaholic" series! I have done some volunteer work in the past at a local hospital as well as reading for elementary school students through the Junior Achievement program. I’ve always found volunteering very rewarding and hope to donate more of my time soon. I try to stay active and make it to the gym a few times a week. I’ve dabbled in yoga and core training classes. I also love playing tennis and have played golf a few times but get frustrated easily! Six Degrees: How many years have you been in the staffing industry? Julia: I started recruiting in an agency in San Francisco in 1997. I placed paralegals and case clerks in some of the top law firms in SF. Prior to settling in staffing, I was a paralegal right out of college and worked for a large SF law firm mostly working on environmental and insurance defense cases. After 7 years working for lawyers, I decided it was not the right career for me -- I wanted to interact with people not documents day in and day out! I had always had an interest in human resources and recruiting so I decided to make a go of it. It was an easy and welcomed transition for me and I never looked back! After working for the agency for a few years, I desired corporate experience and really wanted to work for an internal staffing organization so I landed at Gap Inc. as a Sourcer and stayed for 5 years. I had the pleasure of working on all of the fun, creative jobs in the company including Advertising and Visual Merchandising. My hiring managers were the brains and talent behind all the Gap commercials and photo shoots -- I thought I was the “coolest” sourcer in town!! At that point in my career, I wanted to get exposure to the high tech and software industry and landed a contract gig at Intuit where I was hired to support Marketing and Product Management. Intuit was a wonderful experience and the free tax software was an extra bonus!! I joined Adobe Systems in 2006 as a Talent Scout and was brought on to source for the G&A functions including Marketing, Finance, Legal and Human Resources. I was also fortunate to get exposure to many other business functions within the company including User Experience Design, Professional Consulting, Customer Care and Inside Sales. I challenged myself every day with hunting for User Experience Designers/Architects and Computer Scientists!! Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your sourcing/recruiting career? Julia: It’s hard for me to narrow it down to just one event that has most impacted my sourcing career. Every company I’ve worked for has been unique from the other. Working for Gap in 1999 was really exciting -- we had prospective candidates beating down our doors wanting to work for the hip khaki retailer! Then the dotcom boom burst on the scene and we were fighting to save recent hires from going to start ups! It’s been such an experience watching the cycles of the economy and how it’s affected sourcing over the last 10 years. By the time I joined Adobe, I realized just how much I had learned about sourcing and what it takes to truly find and attract the ultimate passive candidate. One project that does come to mind was at Adobe and I was asked to become part of a team of recruiters and sourcers to staff a customer care center located in Canada. We were given the task of sourcing and filling over 100 positions within a very short period of time. The open positions were very technical and skill specific. The screening process for each candidate was very lengthy and detail-oriented. Sourcing for 100+ positions in a small market with a limited talent pool proved to be very challenging. I was not really familiar with the market in Canada let alone the complexity of the regions but I had to learn very quickly! Along with sourcing the candidates, I was also managing full cycle recruiting on this project. Through excellent team work and exceptional hiring managers, we were able to meet our goal and complete the project. This was very rewarding and will always have an impact on my career. Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on recruitment, capabilities, and/or model your career after? Julia: I have been fortunate to have had many different mentors to whom I have looked up to throughout my career. I have had some wonderful managers who have been truly devoted to guiding and developing my skills as a Sourcer. I would have to give kudos to one of my managers at Gap when I started as a Sourcer who told me “you have to be fearless”. I remember being scared to death to make my first cold call! But I jumped in feet first and guess what happened!? The person on the other end of the phone was rude and hung up on me! I didn’t let that stop me - the more calls I made, the easier it became! I haven’t tried to model my career after anyone specific. I’ve really tried to make it my own and play upon my strengths. I have learned and gained best practices from all of the wonderful and talented Sourcers I have worked with throughout my career. I do, however, admire industry leaders such as Shally Steckerl and Dave Mendoza. Six Degrees: Tell us about your most recent gig as a talent consultant at Adobe, Julia. Julia: During my time at Adobe, there were three Talent Scouts (Sourcers) including myself, each supporting multiple recruiters. I had the opportunity to learn about many functional areas of the company but the most recent group I supported was the Technical Recruiters. This team of recruiters supported the business functions including Creative Solutions, Knowledge Worker, Advanced Technology Lab, Platform and Adobe’s User Experience Design organization. My main job was to source and build pipelines of candidates -- both active and passive. To find the “best of the best” and find out where they live, both physically and virtually! I conducted a lot of research of professional organizations, conferences and dove deep into social networking sites. Six Degrees: (A) What other companies' recruiting operations do you admire or have heard are best-practice examples? Julia: Definitely Microsoft for its complexity and best practices through word of mouth. They are always such a fun company to watch and have no trouble attracting prospective candidates. It’s exciting to see how their brand evolves and how they change their recruitment marketing. I try to educate myself and follow the trends by reading different recruiting blogs and news stories. Six Degrees: What recent general news story or industry trend do you feel will have an impact on your work in the future? Why? Julia: I think all the general hype around social networking sites are and will have an impact on the role of a Sourcer now and in the future. Most or all of the Sourcers I know spend at least 90% of their time networking and searching sites such as Linked In and Facebook. I really feel they will eventually take over completely. Perhaps even take the place of job boards -- at least for a means of sourcing candidates. Six Degrees: Have you been involved in broader industry events as of yet? Julia: No speaking events or awards to mention -- yet!! Six Degrees: What is your next career goal? What do you need to do to get there? Julia: I really feel I am in a good place right now. I am content in the role of a Sourcer. I enjoy the “hunt” and like the research aspect of the job. It is a thrill to source and develop a candidate that results in a hire. I am looking to be a part of a cutting-edge recruiting organization that isn’t afraid to push the limits. I thrive in a team environment where I can learn from my colleagues and feel my ideas are being heard and contributed. As long as I’m feeling good about what I am doing on a daily basis and my work is rewarding, that is all that matters to me. “HOW DOES THEY DOES JULIA DO IT?” Six Degrees: How many applicants at your present employer do you estimate are hired from your corporate website as compared to how many are hired through referrals? Julia: In my experience, the companies I have worked for have focused on continually increasing the number of hires through employee referrals. In general, the number of hires from referrals fluctuates between 30-40%. It seems companies are constantly trying to improve their employee referral programs to make the rewards more enticing for employees to refer great people but truth is, in this economy, it is more challenging. In general, I think about 10% of hires come from a corporation’s website or posting. A strong number of my hires have come from Linked In. I think in this economy, people are more open to networking and referring colleagues/friends for open jobs. In these tough times, people are more apt to help one another. Six Degrees: What is the source of the "Most Hires" collected from at your present employer? (In terms of Quantity #) Julia: In my experience, it really depends on the positions you are recruiting for. If I’m looking for a Computer Scientist or a specific type of Engineer, most of these hires seem to come from recruitment research done either internally or externally. Typically, these guys won’t have their resumes posted on job boards so a passive pipeline must be identified. There are some positions that are filled by job board resumes however, the types of positions I have worked on, require much more digging! Six Degrees: What is the source of your "LOWEST COST OF HIRES" - (least amount of invested resources for the easiest hires, regardless of quality) at your present employer? Julia: In my experience, a low cost hire is someone who has applied or submitted their resume in response to a posting or a resume posted on a job board. Also, prospective candidates who are already in our resume database are a good source. There could be someone who applied for one job but may be right for another. I usually go after the “low hanging fruit” first and I’m not implying they may be less qualified in any way -- the right candidate could be there right under your nose!! Another way to keep the cost of hires low is to leverage your own network. Reach out to current and former colleagues to see who they may know. Linked In has a great feature where you can send out job descriptions to your network to help with your sourcing efforts. No matter where I go or who I meet, I try to network -- you never know who you could meet! Six Degrees: What talent niche groups do you target and are these particular talent areas specialized under your review? Julia: I have had the opportunity to research and target numerous niche groups for the areas I have supported. Most of the positions I work on require digging and finding conference attendee lists, white papers and other publications, user groups, etc. For example, I have worked on a lot of User Experience Designer positions and this talent pool does not post their resumes on general job boards. The good talent is usually already working and in high demand AND receiving lots of calls from recruiters! There are a handful of niche designer websites/job boards I have to target to get their attention and potentially look at their portfolio. Six Degrees: What types of training in sourcing/recruitment are available to you and have you taken advantage of? Julia: In the past I have taken a few of Shally Steckerl’s seminars as well as attended AIRS training classes. I still use JobMachine’s cheat sheets! I recently participated in one of Craig Silverman’s webinars. I also subscribe to the recruiting/sourcing blogs and keep abreast of the news that way. I really like reading the daily blogs for tips from other sourcers or recruiters. Six Degrees: What recruitment software tools do you use in your day to day recruitment activities & do they translate effectively within all of the different countries where you recruit? Julia: Google and Yahoo search engines for Boolean searches of course! I have also been exposed to Virtual Edge, Filefinder and other ATS. Most of the jobs I have worked on have been based in the U.S. or Canada but it is important that any tool we utilize can be used globally as well. Six Degrees: What tools (technology or old school file folder, for example) did you first encounter early in your recruitment career? Julia: When I worked for the agency, we were still using hard copies of job orders and Excel spreadsheets to track candidates! I also used something similar to ResumeMix. Six Degrees: How did your expectations of being a recruiter compare to the actual, first time you got on the phone or in the cubicle? In your opinion, how do people's assumptions about our vocation differ from reality? Julia: When I worked for the agency, it was easy because all the candidates I called or interviewed came to us to register so there was no fear of the “unknown response!” I remember the day I made my first cold call -- sweaty palms and all! Of course the person on the other end of the call was rude and eventually told me never to call them at work again! What a way to start! But I kept going and it got easier as time went by. It’s easy to sell the company you are working for but it’s another story when you don’t know ANYTHING about what the person does that you are targeting!! I find it easier to let them talk about what they do. It helps me really learn the technology. Six Degrees: Worst mistake, biggest goof, lousiest practice you thought would fly but didn’t…and how that was a learning experience? Julia: Well, everyone makes mistakes now and then! I think the most important thing I’ve learned is to gather all of the pertinent information from the candidate the hiring manager is looking for -- leave no stone unturned. You really need to know their compensation expectations, relocation requirements (if needed), visa needs and any other expectations in the beginning of the process to avoid any obstacles down the road. Six Degrees: How do you personally expect to facilitate change within our industry, and/or at your place of work? If you started that process, outline the problem, your solutions, and the vision. Julia: I don’t know that I can change our industry but I can certainly work on changing and improving on my skills. If I can contribute creative ideas to an organization, I will feel good about what I am doing every day. I have good days and bad days -- there are some days when I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels with no results but that is what happens in the staffing world! Six Degrees: What are some of the frustrating aspects/obstacles to your day to day as a staffing professional and in general? Julia: There are some days when I feel I haven’t accomplished much…..no matter how much research or digging I do, I still haven’t produced a viable candidate! I will complain and be frustrated one day and the next I will find three great candidates -- it’s very cyclical. Six Degrees: What are the most common themes of strategic and/or tactical mishaps involving past or present HR/Staffing org? Julia: I think staffing organizations sometimes get a bad rap. There are some individuals out there that think recruiters are paper pushers who sit back and wait for resumes to come in and offer no value to an organization. When in fact the reality is, there is a lot of strategic work that goes on behind the scenes. There is a perception out there that most staffing organizations out there are more reactive than proactive. This is simply not the case. Six Degrees: Considering all of the frustrations you have experienced in your career as a recruiter, -- what inspires you as you continue in your career? I try to remember all of the hires and successes I’ve had. It is so satisfying identifying and developing a candidate who gets hired and eventually comes on board and is so ultimately happy where they are. Also, working with a supportive team keeps me going. If my colleagues are happy and are having fun with what they are doing, it is very refreshing! Six Degrees: What one thing do you ideally hope to accomplish in 2009? Julia: I really want to double or even triple my current networks! Six Degrees: Anything you want to plug? Julia: I am currently looking for my next sourcing opportunity - please contact me if you are interested in reviewing my resume!…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 11:31pm on April 5, 2009

Blog Post: What is the Commercial Use Limit on LinkedIn Search?: It is early January so you may not yet have noticed any change to LinkedIn, but in the background there have been several key changes implemented for 2015. Two of these changes are very…; Added by Chris South at 3:22am on January 12, 2015

Topic: Meet Jim Fowler, CEO of Jigsaw: "Cloud-Based, Database Automation As A Service": I was sick and tired of the expensive and crappy lists the marketing team would buy for my sales teams ... Twelve years in sales left me frustrated with the time-consuming practice of finding contact details. I said, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’” We live in an economy now where people make a living with their brains as much as with their hands. I spend a lot of time creating and working with people" “We are on a path to go public. We have the chops to become a billion-dollar company” • Jim Fowler • CEO, Jigsaw "The Crowd-Sourced Business Directory" • San Mateo, CA • RecruitingBlogs Profile • Linkedin • Twitter • Jigsaw Tweets • Facebook • Corporate Website • Join Jigsaw and earn 20 free passive contacts Over the last several years, I have had the pleasure of getting to know Jim Fowler at the various staffing industry conferences. He will spontaneously offer to find a bench to catch up, and is one of those executives without any pretentiousness. In fact he is a rare breed among the approachables: he will speak to you and recollect from the mundane to the significant that you have shared with him, and in each response he is direct, substantive and charismatic. For a CEO, he is less about watching the clock than he is more about getting to know you and the topic at hand. He didn't build a business simply for a dollar's glance - he truly wants to contribute to what we consider Game Changing ideas in the art of commerce. Prognosticators will tell you Information is the most powerful weapon of the 21st century. It isn't simply about hardware and software - it's also about field entries. The market for Database information is a $50 Billion dollar business. Billions within it are likewise exceptionally relevant in how our staffing industry generates and collates that data to produce and introduce prospective passive and active candidates to employers of choice. What more relevant subject for today's feature than someone whose daily effort is to find knew ways to vett quality and quality utilizing the social aspect of community data sharing? For me personally, I cannot think of a more valuable way to verify my name generation leads and to contribute them to the broader concept of community. It's a pleasure to introduce you to my friend, Jim Fowler. As Chief Executive Officer of Jigsaw Corporation, Jim Fowler provides direction and leadership toward the achievement of goals and objectives at Jigsaw, a leading provider of business information and data services that uniquely leverages user-generated content contributed by its global business-to-business (B-to-B) community. A veteran sales executive, Jim has more than 12 years selling software for marketing and collaboration applications. Before starting Jigsaw, Jim served as VP of Sales at Digital Impact (DIGI), Paramark and TightLink. In these roles, he built sales departments from the ground up focusing on sales strategies and processes. He was able to leverage his experience as an outstanding sales manager at Personify and NetGravity. Prior to his career in software sales, Jim owned and operated Lookout Pass, a ski resort in Idaho. He also served in the US Navy as a Diving and Salvage Officer. Jim graduated from the University of Colorado. Q&A with Jim Fowler, CEO of Jigsaw Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world. Jim: I have been married Holly Wiebe for ten years. We met through my wife's best friend who was dating one of the ski instructors I knew and we were introduced to one another. We have a son named Six (who is eight years old) and a Labradoodle named Comet. Our family skis/snowboards all winter and camps all summer. Our favorite type of camping is canoe camping. You go to really beautiful and remote places and still carry enough stuff to eat and drink really well. There is nothing better than an after dinner cigar around a campfire beside a high Sierra lake! Six Degrees: Tell us about your Company, Jim JIM: I am the CEO and Co-Founder of Jigsaw.com. We have 120 employees. Most of our employees are software developers or sales people, but we do have a full time recruiter! Jigsaw is a Global Business Directory of company and contact information. Jigsaw was in Beta through summer of 2004 and officially launched in December 2004. We have over three million complete company records and 19 million complete contact records. Members get contacts they need to recruit, sell or market by adding, updating or graveyarding records. Jigsaw Pioneers Data-as-a-Service. The ability to quickly find people in a target organization and contact them directly is an essential means to gain an edge in a very competitive marketplace. Jigsaw provides very simple, but required data that every single recruiter needs to do their jobs – company and contact records. Jigsaw is essentially an open database, along the lines of Wikipedia. Salespeople looking for say, a buying manager in a given company, swap one of their contacts to access the lead they need or they can buy it for $1. Every one of its contact records is complete with email and phone number. (Note: 72% of Jigsaw records have a direct dial.) We make money by selling data and data hygiene services to corporations. Six Degrees: How was Your Company Founded? JIM: Jigsaw was founded by myself and Garth Mouton on Oct. 31,2003. We are venture backed and have raised $18M in venture funding. I came up with the idea for Jigsaw after 12 years in software sales left me frustrated with the time-consuming practice of finding correct contact details within a company. Prospecting lists were costly and usually full of outdated information. Six Degrees: How did you get started in the industry? JIM: Jigsaw was founded out of pain. I was sick and tired of the expensive and crappy lists the marketing team would buy for my sales teams. (I was VP of Sales at an email marketing company called Digital Impact). I knew there had to be a better way and the idea of a crowdsourced business directory popped into my mind. The idea for Jigsaw was germinated in the summer of 2003. We raised our first round of funding (of three total) in December of 2003 and formally launched Jigsaw in December of 2004. When I was vice president of sales at online advertiser Netgravity (now part of Google’s DoubleClick), I asked a sales rep nicknamed Tark “to cold call into Sprint PCS until he got us a meeting. It took him two weeks. I said, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’” Six Degrees: What is the broader picture of how the data business operates Each year, corporations spend over $50 billion a year on B2B marketing data. Your usual data acquisition avenues – list rentals, online data services like Hoovers, OneSource, and that old technique cold calling – are hard and expensive and don’t provide automatic updates, maintenance or net new records. Six Degrees: How/ where did you develop investors? JIM: We are located in the Silicon Valley. This is the land of venture capitalists. Just follow the signs to Sand Hill Road! Six Degrees: What is Your Company’s Value Proposition? JIM: Our value proposition is that we are the best source of data for recruiters who do passive recruiting. Every one of our 19M records is complete with name, title, business phone and business email. Our service is free. You can exchange business cards you have for business cards you need. If you don’t want to exchange you can purchase our records. Our data is the best available because we have one million members who clean and maintain the database (for credits). We are similar to Wikipedia in that many people build and maintain our database. Six Degrees: How do you plan to make Jigsaw into a Game Changer? JIM:The goal is to do the same exact thing to the data layer that salesforce has done to the software layer. Ten years ago, when Salesforce first got started procuring and managing software, Today if you look every company that sells B-to-B, they're procuring and managing the records that populate their CRM solution. the lead records. contact records, the account and the lead records. What Jigsaw DataFusion provides is unlimited access to Jigsaw's community vetted database. Overall, Jigsaw has established a robust database of over 19 million records, and it grows daily by 25,000. The Database as a service is their Game changing premise. It used to be known simply as a cool social aspect of keeping data fresh to make sure it is kept up-to-date, but now the concept has expanded by volume, accuracy and automation: With DataFusion, What we do nightly is that we take that data and put it in the cloud and every night compare our client's data to Jigsaw's. Given Jigsaw doesn't allow partial data - the data is refreshed and complete, coming in everyday, flagging records, piping all those changes every night in an automated way; Matching, filling in all the fields, flagging their dupes, a process of 'stare and compare' of records. We pipe in new data that matches the client's administrative criteria. In an SaaS mode. It will no longer will be a one off, and will transform the data business. Data Fusion comes as a monthly subscription service but companies can reduce the usage costs by contributing back to the Jigsaw system. It connects with a CRM system and automatically matches and updates records daily, with a dashboard to monitor activity and changes and the option of accepting or rejecting any specific updates. Administrators can pick which fields in each record they want to synch daily. After Salesforce, Jigsaw expects to add other CRM systems and databases this year and next. It has published an open API and a Developer Toolkit so any CRM or database vendor can integrate Jigsaw. Data Fusion comes on a per-seat, per-month basis just like Salesforce and other SaaS providers. A full license like a big OEM just bought runs $500,000. With Data Fusion, if you have 25 seats of Salesforce, then you buy 25 seats of Jigsaw. Six Degrees: Are you importing contacts from sites like LinkedIn, Hoovers and others? JIM: No. Every contact in Jigsaw has been added by a member. We started with 20K contacts and now have over 1.7M (and growing by 10K new contacts per day). Even if we wanted to import contacts from other sites we couldn't because Jigsaw requires every contact to have complete information including phone, email, title, etc. Phone numbers and emails are hard to get and are usually not provided on other sites. Six Degrees: How does Jigsaw use social media networks and your blog to connect with customers and prospects? JIM: Like Wikipedia, Jigsaw links out to the best possible information. Every contact record has a link to Google and LinkedIn for automated research on the contact – such as looking at a biography. Because Jigsaw is a community of sales professionals our blog and message boards are critical for communicating closely with our community. We also have large followings on Twitter and Facebook. Six Degrees: How do you control members from sending out spam emails to contacts in Jigsaw? JIM: Jigsaw's model isn't a good fit for spammers. Too much work or money is required to get information off in the quantity needed by a spammer. Jigsaw’s members primarily do one-to-one marketing versus one-to-many marketing. If a member is caught doing anything unlawful or against Jigsaw's rules, the member will be banned from Jigsaw permanently. Six Degrees: What is the pricing structure for your services/products? JIM: Most of our million members use Jigsaw for free (the add, update or graveyard records in exchange for the data they need). We sell subscriptions and lists that fit every budget. Six Degrees: How has your Company adopted to the economic downturn? What is the long-term future for Your Company? JIM: We expect to double revenue this year. We want to get companies out of the business of procuring and managing company and contact records. We want the Jigsaw database to power every CRM solution by providing all the prospecting data a company could ever need, and keeping those records up to date in real time. We are in heavy duty hiring mode. We’ve just released this product in beta and hope to see it take the market by storm! Six Degrees: How has your company promoted its brand and aligned itself with Staffing Industry communities, both virtual and on-site ? JIM: Not as well as we need to. We are getting ready to hire a marketing person who’s full time job will be to address the recruiting industry. Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your overall staffing industry expertise? JIM: I am an expert in only one narrow (but important!) part of the staffing industry – information. The single event that had the most impact on my expertise was founding Jigsaw and the people who I have met throughout the journey. I’ve learned an incredible amount over the past six years of Jigsaw’s life and it keeps feeding our passion to innovate. Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on modeling your career after? JIM: I really admire Steve Jobs. Not his management style, but his vision. The guy is just an incredibly talented individual. 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. JIM: The single biggest has been to been as a “Featured Networker” listing with SixDegreesfromDave.com. We became more motivated to connect and reconnect with our following within the recruitment industry in a big way. The process gave us a more approachable introduction to both our users and those who have inquired about our utility as a passive talent database. We will continue driving home the message to the recruitment community and to our database of 19M business contacts to drive awareness of Jigsaw and to recruit passive candidates to organizations. 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? JIM: Use extreme caution when sending out a single message to your entire network. Networking is generally about one-to-one communications. Mass messaging is irritating within a social or business network. Six Degrees: Do you blog? JIM: No – my Co-Founder Garth Moulton writes our company blog. Six Degrees: Reading up on you, I understand you are a Triathlete, a big time Giant's fan, who loves playing hearts and "No Limit Hold Em", and, not surprisingly, you are not a big fan of puzzles. Tell me something others may not know about you JIM: I’m a complete history geek. I unwind by reading history. Curiously, I find studying history helps me in business. The decisions politicians and generals have had to make since the beginning of history are not unlike the decisions you have to make as a start-up CEO. There is usually less actual blood involved. • Join Jigsaw and earn 20 free passive contacts …; Added by Dave Mendoza at 4:40am on January 18, 2010

Topic: Meet Eric Raynard, Bay Area to Giverny: All Texture - Bringing Art's Abstract to Recruitment's Form: focus the limelight on those activist members who make RecruitingBlogs tick, it is a pleasure to introduce Eric Raynard. He has more than 20 years of experience in client - directed, project - managed search services. His practice focuses primarily on technical and operations positions with sports and recreation equipment companies. During the course of his career, Eric placed successfully with IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Wrigley, Applied Materials, and other world-class organizations from Boston, MA, to Portland, OR, and from Sarasota, FL, to San Diego, CA. He continues to improve and refine his skills. He was previously with the BridgeGate Group from September '89 - March '96 where his practice migrated from individual contributor to Director and Vice President level. Eric helped perfect the ten - step search process; wrote marketing materials; and conducted training classes in recruiting techniques. Named Team Leader in June '94, he built a four person Technical and Operations Group. Q & A with Eric Raynard Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world. Eric: I have been married to Susanne for 28 years -- which is almost half my life, We live in the Sunset District of San Francisco. We can see the Pacific Ocean from the second floor deck of our home. We have two sons. Max is 24 and Jack is 21. They both live in San Francisco. From our home, I can jog up into Golden Gate Park, out to the ocean and back to the house in a five mile loop. It’s a great way to start the day. Growing up in Chicago, I visited the Art Institute frequently. I was particularly drawn to the works of Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet. As a small boy, I made a pledge to myself that if the opportunity ever came my way, I would go to France to see where these masters created their works. Through a fortuitous set of circumstances, and the generosity of a dear friend, I have been able to visit France for two weeks in ’07 and two weeks in ’08. We spent time in the last three towns where Vincent lived and visited Monet’s estate at Giverny as well as the museums in Paris which display their works including the Musée d’Orsay, Musée de L’Orangerie and the Musée Marmottan. I read a number of books on the artists before and after the trips. There’s a very interesting contrast between the anti-social Van Gogh, who died at 37, and the gregarious Monet, who lived into his 80’s and donated major works to the nation of France. Needless to say, I have become quite a buff and can explain the differences between Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” (this painting is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was created from memory while he was housed at the asylum in St. Remy in 1889) and “Starry Night Over The Rhone” (done in ‘plein air’ in Arles in 1888 and houses in the d’Orsay). Okay, I see your eyes are glazing over. I’ll stop now [Laughs]. Six Degrees: How many years have you been in the staffing industry? Eric: I have been in recruiting for more than twenty years. Six Degrees: How did you get started as a recruiter? Eric: I started way back in ’88 at a firm called Sales World. It was a contingency firm filling sales positions which has subsequently gone out of business. It was, for the most part, a great way to get training in the field of recruitment. There were methods and metrics for everything. Each recruiter was assigned a “desk.” For a while, I worked “packaging” and came to know every purveyor of corrugated containers in the San Francisco Bay Area. In other words, they encouraged industry specialization. They also taught candidate and client control. The Sales World style might have been a bit old fashioned … maybe a bit “used care sales” in tone. But the concepts behind the style (like consistency of effort) were extremely valid. Then I was recruited to a much higher end firm, The BridgeGate Group, in ’89 when it was the largest privately owned search firm in the state of California. I worked in the San Francisco office. We had the entire 37th floor of the Transamerica Pyramid. It was a pretty posh location. It was interesting working in the Financial District, wearing wool suits and silk neck ties every day. I was in the office when the earth quake hit in ’89. At The BridgeGate Group, the focus was on providing real search services for client companies. My practice migrated from contingency to retained. There was a lot of cross training going on there. We taught each other how to finesse certain situations and how to “thought lead” the client companies to make a decision. The entire style was much more subtle and sophisticated than Sales World. About ’93 or so, I was promoted to Team Leader in charge of a small group in the functional area of Manufacturing and Operations. That played to my interest in how things are made. My group placed people with Applied Materials, Johnson & Johnson and Wrigley, among many others. Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your sourcing/recruiting career? Eric: In ’95, a colleague passed a lead to me. She was placing software people with IBM and they needed a Purchasing Manager for the Boulder, Colorado, facility. That was where they were doing software duplication, manual printing and kitting for internal and external consumption. Remember, this was before internet speeds made downloading software easy, cheap and quick. I went to meet the prospective client wearing a blue suit, white shirt and red power tie … the iconic IBM uniform of the time. The client was wearing a sport shirt and slacks. We hit it off. He selected me for the assignment. Then I initiated the search. I did significant telephone recruiting, went to the Boulder area, interviewed several candidates and went to the IBM facility to make a report. We found a terrific candidate at Coor’s Beer who was subsequently hired. After a while I realized that I had successfully placed with one of the “brass nameplate” companies and the people from that company never cared about the wool suit or the posh office or collegial rapport of the firm. It was my own ability to understand the position skills needed and the interpersonal chemistry desired -- plus the basic diligence to do the recruiting work and give them enough choices to make them happy. Shortly thereafter, I left the BridgeGate, where I was surrendering half my fees for the office space and training and award trips and hung out my own shingle. I’ve been operating independently since March of ’96. Six Degrees: Tell us about your compay, Jackson Maxwell Raynard Eric: I am a Vice President at Jackson Maxwell Raynard, a boutique recruitment firm headquartered in San Francisco. We specialize in technical and operations positions with companies making sports and recreation equipment. Most are “back of the house” positions. We work from individual contributor level up to Vice President and have placed with such identifiable brands as Samsonite, Victorinox, Precor, CamelBak, Yakima, JanSport, Spyder and Schwinn. Six Degrees: Can you detail how the recession has affected your particular industry niche? Eric: About four months ago, I got calls from four people who had been laid off - all before lunch! It got me thinking. I should provide information for candidates to help them with my client companies, such as interview preparation, including what kinds of questions to expect and how to answer those questions. That type of coaching could be of value to people who are between careers or looking to upgrade their positions. Simultaneously, I started blogging. There are simple, discreet lessons one learns in the recruiting field. Like how to answer the dreaded money question or how to research a company before going in for the interview. I am at the place where I want to share that knowledge, either in a one on one coaching session or in the broader context of a web posting. So today I have broadened my service offering to include all forms of career coaching. 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. Eric: I have about 12,000 records in my database. That probably represents more than 9.000 separate individuals. So that’s where my networking starts. Additionally, I am a frequent user of LinkedIn and belong 13 groups including Linked: HR, Outdoor Sporting Goods Connection and World Cycling Industry. 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? Eric: The written word is different than the spoken word. Without tone of voice, it’s very easy to misinterpret things. Be careful what you write because it can be interpreted in a number of different ways. Use language that’s family friendly. If you are expressing an opinion or point of view, I recommend you do so in a gentle fashion. It’s amazing to me, when you follow the strings of comments, that a simple question like “Are Human Resource professionals liberal or conservative?” can elicit such strong back and forth debate. Seems like some people have just too much time on their hands. Six Degrees: What is your next career goal? What do you need to do to get there? Eric: No question about it, this economy has reduced the amount of hiring and, therefore, the amount of ongoing retained search work available. Prospective clients have invited me to participate on a contingency basis and, at least for now, I’ve resisted the temptation because it feels like going backward. I have all this experience and talent to bring to an assignment … and I can provide a more comprehensive service if I conduct a comprehensive search. So my next career goal is to return to “those thrilling days of yesteryear “ -- when retained search was at least a strategic option for urgent, critical hires. In my heart of hearts, I believe there’s a lot of pent up demand for a quality service geared to hiring quality people in key contributing rolls and I think (and hope) the tide will turn before 2010. I guess that’s the stubbornly optimistic part of me. It’s important to communicate the value proposition of search. Even in a down economy. Because the economy won’t be down forever and the less expensive, less customer friendly options (like internet postings and contingency search) will diminish in usage because there is very little value added in those ways. …; Added by Dave Mendoza at 3:53am on September 28, 2009

Blog Post: International Staffing Perspectives: Brian Janecek, Brno, Czech Republic

By Dave Mendoza, Master Cybersleuth, JobMachine Inc.

Visit My Blog: http://www.sixdegreesfromdave.com

The war for talent has…

Added by Dave Mendoza at 10:32am on June 5, 2007

Blog Post: 11 KICK-A$$ Leadership Principles!!!: If you were accused of being a leader would there be enough evidence to convict you?

December 2, 1988

21 years ago...

A newly minted Marine…; Added by Brian Keith at 8:39pm on December 11, 2009