I want to draw a parallel and analogy that may confuse some people.  I have a total attitude today and I think I figured out why a lot of people have attitudes about Recruiters (headhunters). 

I hate it here (sometimes).  I live in the most dangerous city on Earth.  Exaggeration?  I think not.  Since I consider myself eternally out of shape, I fired up my jogging program a couple months ago.  I'm up to six miles a day now.  And I live in a city. 

When I chose this place, I didn't realize there's about 5000 households.  There are several main roads criss-crossing the city and tons of side roads all gridded neatly into squares and rectangles.  The people here are dangerous and there are hundreds of stop signs.  These are special stop signs because they are invisible.  I see them.  But apparently if you've lived here long enough, they disappear. 

This morning and I know you won't believe this, I was nearly hit, hurt, or killed three times.  See, in order to jog around our city you have have run across cross walks at intersections. 

I've figured out these people because I've studied my dog for six years.  If my dog thinks there's something, such as a little bunny, in HIS backyard, he will start putting out signals to be let out.  When you open the back door, he bolts out of the house at hundreds of miles per hour to destroy whatever fuzzy intruder he's sensed.  It could be pouring rain, icy, nasty, whatever, and he blows out of the back door at top speed.  So far, my little murderer has tagged two birds and one bunny....sorry to say.

This is the perfect example of an Allen Park'er.  (48101 if you want to look it up.)  They suddenly say to themselves, "gotta go to the store" or "go pick up kid NOW" or "drop off e-bay mailings" or anything else you think would motivate them to move.  They urgently exit their house on their crucial mission and head to their weapon of choice.  The rest of us call them cars and trucks.  To them, the accelerator pedal is only meant for one purpose, to stomp to the ground.  So they surround themselves with 3000 pounds of plastic and steel and go to slay their dragon. 

For them, upon approaching any intersection, it's extremely important to get through it as fast as possible.  And that's not hard to do with 160 foot-pounds of torque. 

For me, the idiot that trying to burn a few calories, survival means keeping a sharp eye for any of these monsters and their suits of turbo-charged armor.  So it's not surprising that at Park and Belmont this morning when some round-faced blob of a human behind the steering wheel approached and stopped, I thought I'd keep going and when I was precisely six feet and seven inches from her front bumper, she plowed her foot to the floor.  My body shut down in a frozen state of horror and thankfully she found her brake pedal and made a jerking stop, inches from me.  I moved out of the way screaming something like "WHAT THE (rhymes with "duck")" and as soon as I was clear, she once again took off like a Mento tossed into some Diet Coke.

It dawned on me later why many people despise recruiters.  So here's my parallel...

Schlepp recruiters act the same way.  They call into a company and suddenly get a new job requisition (job order = JO) to work on.  Often times when this happens, they are so eager to start working the JO that they don't listen to what's required and attempt to get OFF the phone with the client as fast as possible in order to start searching. 

So what happens is that the schlepp recruiter will find the wrong candidates and feed them in to the company with blind confidence.  Frustration will build and not only does the whole episode end as a non-placement, but the client thinks the recruiter is a joke and sometimes will come to the conclusion that ALL recruiters are a joke.

Take a deep breath, listen, and think about the position and the needs and desires from the hiring manager.  We don't want to be like my dog, the Allen Park'er on a mission, or the lobotomized schlepp recruiter.  

So this week I've got people interviewing.  Not as many as I'd like so in this case I take some extra time on the interview prep to get them ready and shined up.  I have one troublesome client that I fed many (too many to admit) candidates into for six different positions.  I say troublesome because I'm having difficulty getting a commitment to send-outs.  I have another client that stopped communicating which is bothering me.

I marketed today to more companies and am looking to get some more activity set up for next week.

So one last thought.  My favorite YouTube clip EVER is called "Leeroy Jenkins".  I love it.  It's a clip about a bunch of nerds playing a fantasy video game and they spend minutes discussing a very complicated strategy of how they're going to beat the orcs and goblins in the next room.  They spend large swaths of nerdy time planning timing and magic potions when suddenly....one of the team breaks off and runs through the door yelling "Leeroy Jenkins" and the rest of the team is left with no choice to follow in their own demise.  It's precious. 

Don't be Leeroy Jenkins. 

- Steve

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU