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Over the weekend, inspired by a recent visit to a spa on vacation, I invested in several very expensive Hungarian goose down pillows.  We happily took the old pillows and crammed them into the garbage can and laid them to rest.

Speaking of rest, I slept great last night!  Wow!  Around 6:30AM, coffee pot was chugging and I looked outside at the trees and made note that it's getting darker.

Around 7AM, rain started falling.  Not gentle.  No.  We're talking the kind of rain that makes the grass bright green and washes the urban dust from the siding.

Then I thought, "this can't be."  Indeed, the weather report I looked at around 10:30PM the night before on my iPad clearly stated that there was a "chance of rain".  So I grabbed the iPad this morning and pulled up the radar for my area.  Sure enough, headed my way was a slow moving blob of rain and mischief about 140 miles in diameter.  And at 7AM, it was just the beginning. 

When I was a kid in the 1970's, we had three (or so) TV channels that played the news.  After all the news of murder and mayhem, the slick looking meteorologist (not my first choice of word; just politically correct 30 years later) would tell us what to expect for weather the next day.  My dad taught me there was another way.  We could look at the weather that was hitting Chicago and Milwaukee in our daily paper version of the newspaper and that would give us an indication of what our weather would probably be in rural southeast Michigan.  He was right.  It worked most of the time.

I wonder about the trades in my area today.  I wonder about the supervisors and managers of roofing companies or companies that pour driveways.  I wonder about the hundreds of golf courses that will idol tee times for the entire AM hours today.  I wonder about the golfer who may have burned a vacation day to play his or her favorite course.

And I wonder about the idiot who wrote the weather report last night. 

What does he or she care?  That person is probably sleeping all comfy in their bed being lulled into dreams by the constant sound of pitter-patter on their roof. 

I divert this topic now to those seasoned Recruiters and Headhunters that make serious numbers of placements.  I've debated some of these folks who insist that our industry stays alive because of the perfection in our hunt and our honed and keen ability to find the very best candidate for the job.

But there's a strong contingent of third-party agencies and internal recruiters and HR who don't need to hit the bulls-eye.  In many cases, my clients simply don't have the robust structure or infrastructure to hunt for new employees on their own.  Many of our placements here in our little office just outside Detroit are cause and affect of rabid phone calling at a feverish pitch.  In many cases, we have to "get close" with many of the skills and background our hiring Manager's dream about. 

I liken this as the "Meteorologist" search.  Finding the person who gets it right "a lot" of the time.

I don't encourage anyone to get into recruiting to attempt to survive on "close is enough" searches because MOST of our searches do involve a great deal of research, the right background, the perfect skills, ideal location, and the manager ultimately liking the candidate.  It's a tough, tough job.

Today is one of those days I'm glad to be self-employed.  There are no PTO or vacation days.  The Tigers' game I played hookey for was last Thursday (and we lost....not thrilled with Verlander right now) and NOT today. 

And yet I wonder what the financial cost on society was today because some jerk going back to some of the examples I listed above.  My guess is that last night's Meteorologist may soon be tomorrow's sports commentator.

- Steve

PS:  The photo is an actual screenshot of 7AM this morning.  The marker is my location.