You simply can't imagine what an experience it is to live in the greater Detroit area.

Oh, man, cue the circus music!  It's our annual "Let's FBI'nd Hoffa!" festival.  This year it's being held at a farm field in the neighboring Oakland county.  The Feds were sneaky once again and it wasn't until some of our brightest scholars in the area noticed the huge piece of earth moving equipment and all these people walking around in blue shirts labeled "FBI" in 10 inch letters!  

When you upgrade your phone here, you get charged 10 bucks to transfer your contacts BUT (and beggers can't be choosers) you get FREE contact numbers to all of the local news outlets AND, as a added feature JUST THIS WEEK, mandatory Presidential alerts.  

So someone out there speed-dialed hoping for a few dolla's from the news ("uh, no, ah ah" = sorry bud) and there were cameras, trucks with satellite images, good looking (for Detroit that is) media personalities, AND a minimum of 50 or so watchers to give us blow by blow on the new (shhh) leaked whereabouts of the legendary Jimmy Hoffa.

The rumor mill is cooking.  Supposedly, the boys turned on Hoffa sometime after eating at (the now defunct) Machus Red Fox.  They WHACKED him with a shovel but he didn't die.  His barely clinging to life body was transported to a farm field where he was buried....or encapsulated in cement...or covered in pig ***t....oh, who cares.  Anyway, they buried him ALIVE.  Then, they were supposed to dig him up later and take him up north to bury him again.  Whew.  Quite a story.

Everyone's been looking for Hoffa for 40 years.  Why?  BECAUSE IT'S EXCITING!  

I have a quasi-client whose been looking for a Metallurgist for 9 months.  And to be honest I'm kind of bored with it.  Imagine this, filling this position would be a humungous fee and I bet the team that finds Hoffa will go down in the record books too.  

After 11 years of this, I yawn at impossible searches.  I'd rather spend five days straight with the excitement of finding new clients than look for Jimmy Hoffa's body in every open field, driveway, or bar basement cement.  I know a lot of recruiters (and I'm being general so they can't guess who they are...just kidding) who chase these things around for months on end.  At my office, these types of searches will get you a patented eye-roll if you really want it.

On days 19 and 20 which was, for most people, a weekend, I did a bunch of organizing to prep for some very surgical calls on Monday.  I also conducted a bunch of updates on various office computers.  All of this mess burned up time worse than watching old episodes of "Moonshiners" (which is what I did resume hunting a while back).  

On Day 21, Monday, I started executing the plan from the weekend and, quite frankly, it was a joke.  I had grossly miscalculated some roll-up lists and was coming up with nothing.  I charged the rest of the office with the command to start contacting clients for status on our collective job orders and this was actually proving fruitful.  Let me explain...

We work the automotive industry and I've been doing unscientific surveys with other recruiters, peers, and HR personnel.  We've got our own Bird Flu here.  Symptoms include counter-offers, multiple offers, and unsuspected fall-offs.  Not whining, just observing.  Don't shoot the messenger.  

To remedy this, we've implemented (and going forward) we're all going to prioritize our *hottest* three to five job orders of the day.  This way, everyone in the office will know who's got what going.  We'll be splitting our days into two to three hour chunked to micro-focus on one particular job order at a time.

Monday and Tuesday also yielded 20 interview requests from my clients for this and next week.  I'm still coordinating that and we all know how much time and effort goes into that.  

Lastly, we're being extra sensitive with interview prep.  I won't go into major detail here but our normal mode is to attempt to create excitement about the new opportunity.  (I'm hearing a lot of DUH's out there.)  Yes.  I know.  We are stepping it up.  That's all I'm saying on that.

Wait.  My phone just barked out an alert from the Detroit Free Press.  Hoffa found?  No.  Just an alert that Detroit is apparently bankrupt.  

Don't look for Hoffa people.  It's really NOT that exciting.

Peace out.

- Steve