Most of us remember the first few weeks or months of our start in recruiting marked by the horrific memory of the first mistake we made or the first weird happening.  Although somewhat lost in the mists of time there are two that i will never forget.

I was preparing for my first cold call presentation of a candidate.  Went over my candidate's resume and interview notes for at least an hour.  Even wrote myself a script with the fellows name i was going to call.  Will never forget his name it was Charlie Cleek.  Finally ready, i picked up the phone, called and Charlie answered the phone on the first ring.  In my best "ready to sell voice" i said, "Good afternoon, this is Charlie Cleek with Blah, blah, i am representing a candidate......he started laughing, i choked as i realized what i had said.  The only thing i could think of to say was, "Well Charlie, you didn't know that you had changed jobs and become a recruiter, did you?, I am actually Sandra McCartt and as you can tell this is my first cold call."  By now he was laughing, hard.  So still trying to recover i said, "Would you like to hear about this candidate that you are trying to get you to interview?"  He managed to stifle a bit of his laughter and agreed that he would like to hear about his candidate.  He did interview and my candidate got hired but that little dance into the joys of cold calling shaped my attitude about two things.  Cold Calling and scripts.

The third week into the world of recruiting i managed to place a high powered executive assistant to a nationally known, corporate raider CEO of a well known Oil and Gas firm.  I was in fact the schiz, baby.  Two weeks later i called him to follow up to see how Miss Wonderful was doing as his right arm assistant.  He cleared his throat and said, "Well everything seemed to be fine until yesterday, she stood up in the middle of taking notes in a board meeting and screamed that she has leprosy."  I said something that sounded like "ugh, er arrrghgh".  He went on to say that they had called an ambulance and had taken her to the psych hospital where she had been readmitted.  READMITTED?  Seems this lovely lady had done the same thing with a major oil company before moving to the city but they certainly didn't want to tell me that when i checked her reference.  So much for the shiz.

I started a new recruiter about three weeks ago.  She is doing well, made her first placement last week and is on fire.  She is working some sales positions in the Dallas market.  Got a candidate on the phone who impressed her as being outgoing, lots of pizazz and had some  of ,what she felt, were good inside sales jobs and a lot of go getem'.  So she ran with her.  The second job on the resume, the candidate indicated that she had done inside , telemarketing sales of harnesses and leather goods for an international importer.  Now to those of us in the Texas panhandle what that means is harnesses for show horses, trotters, pacers and leather goods means, things like reins, bridles, saddles, etc.  My new recruiter got a phone screen set up with the internal recruiter.  Five minutes after the phone interview she got a call from the internal recruiter that went something like this.:

Internal:  Uh, i wasn't going to tell you about this but i like you and i don't think you want to send her to another client.  She is a definite no but here is why.  When i asked her about the leather company she had worked for she went into a great deal of detail about exactly what kind of harnesses she was selling and the type of leather goods.  Well girl, she was selling for a porn site and she gave me way too much detail about the products she sold and how they were used.

My New Recruiter:  Oh My God!!!, Oh my God!!!  All she told me was that she quit because she thought her boss was kind of sleazy.  Now i know what she meant but she didn't tell me it was or they were or...Oh my God!! Sandra is going to kill me or maybe i will kill myself.

The kidding around the office has reached a level that might be censored.  But suffice it to say that we have told our newbie that she may have created a whole new niche of specialization.  I suspect that she will do more indepth in the future as to exactly what kind of products someone has been selling before she assumes anything.

Do you remember your first "Oh My God", i wish i hadn't done that?  My newbie won't forget hers, we gave her a dressage whip for her office in a frame.