I have been caught in real riptides. I have encountered them swimming, diving and boating. It is terrifying the first time you experience it. But when you learn more about the forces at work, you realize that you can go more places than everyone else if you can navigate them. For us, it means you can get access to candidates and clients that might not otherwise be open to talking with us.

This is a year of extremes, we hear it in every conversation we have. People are either in a stealthy hiring mode or on the edge of shutting their business down and will soon be looking for work. Ironically, all of them want to talk with us.

Unless they are in the waiting place. That is a whole different blog post though, so I will skip them for now.

In this economy, the recruiters who prepare themselves will find it a very interesting time. I personally, am enjoying it much like the last snowfall of the season which in Wisconsin is usually in May. You are so glad the snow is over, but you know that you will secretly long for it again once summer really sets in.

We are hitting the point where jobs are opening up and candidates are still willing to talk with us. In a year or two, we will miss these early days of the recovery.

For those of you who don't remember how this cycle works, soon it will be much harder to get candidates to respond to your desperate cries of having the perfect opportunity for them. The ever present debate over active and passive candidates will devolve into discussions about finding any candidates.

I like to call it riding the rip tide. Sounds dangerous, doesn't it? Not if you understand the powers at work and work with them, instead of
against them.

Use the force of the water to carry you around the sand bars that other people are getting caught on. Here maybe this will help you.

Learn to navigate the riptides and you will succeed. The tides will change soon and it will all change again.