valien.net

Wow. Hard to believe it’s Friday already. This week has been a blur (as normal). Had some family in town visiting so it made things go by a lot faster.

Read a pretty cool article on Dave Mendoza’s Blog about Pat Cronin, one of the Senior VP’s with Volt. Talks about his background as a recruiter and the industry, etc. Good read for the most part. Make sure you read both part 1 and part 2. It’s encouraging to me as a new person to this industry that I can succeed and do well in this business. Just think, back when he started there was no ‘net and online sourcing sources like LinkedIn. Must have been really rough back then!

I’ve had a pretty decent week. Made a few client visits and am really trying to grow that part of my work week. I’m struggling to get potential clients to confirm a meeting. Really people, I’m nice! I won’t bite your head off! I just want to say hello…in person. Been trying to get better on calls as well and followups.

Had a few candidates do some telephone and personal interviews. Some were good and things are moving forward. Slow process at times though cause you are working around the candidates schedule, the clients schedules, etc. It’s a balancing act.

Got some new searches going as well! That’s always exciting cause that’s the bread and butter of our business! No searches = no work = no job! So if any of you are talented Hyperion, Java, C#/ASP.Net, or Web Design gurus let me know! I have work for you!

Enjoy the Olympics over the next couple of weeks. Even though it’s 08/08/08 for us it’s already 8/09 in China. So why are the Olympics on our time schedule? Not like the US started it…

Subject says it all. Things have been crazy last few weeks. My blogging has slowed down and even my twitter feeds have slowed down. Just not enough time during the day to do stuff. That’s good though. I’m not complaining.

Some weeks are good, some are OK, some are bad. For example, about 2 weeks ago I lost a contract job with a local software development company. It was for a position that they definitely needed but they decided to pull it in house (even after they admitted it was beyond their own resources). Frustrating for sure and hopefully they’ll come back to us down the road and utilize our services again. The bad thing is that we had 3 great candidates ready to interview. My recruiter had to go back and let them know that it was closed.

Then today I found out that a candidate for a great position that I was also working on was offered a job after 1 telephone interview with another company! This is after he’s interviewed (telephone) with the company that I’ve been working with. Argh! But that’s life. My client was dragging their feet some and didn’t grab the guy fast enough. The other company obviously saw the value of this guy and snatched him quickly before someone else (us) could nab him.

Note to HR and Hiring Managers: If someone is talented and has a great background, they will not last long in the open market. Gotta be quick or you lose.

Part of my job is to find contract-to-hire, or contract positions. The funny thing is that all I’ve been able to find so far is direct-hire positions. I’m not complaining cause if we fill those positions I still get paid, but it’s the contract work I want. Those are the jobs that will help keep my mortgage paid on time. 

On a great note though, my co-worker Mary, just placed her 1st direct hire today. Go Mary! Time to honk the horn!

Something I’ve noticed as I’m using social networks to grow my own professional network: there are some really cool and crazy networks out there.

How do I pick the one to use? One could spend all day literally in multiple networks linking up, posting micro-blogs, etc. It’s crazy. Most of it is useless IMO.

What I’ve found to be quite valuable are the following (in no particular order):

Facebook.com - Mostly for a personal/family/HS and College network. I check in about once a week to catch up or do research. Don’t play any games or anything. As it is, it’s getting crazy with all the 3rd party applications.

LinkedIn.com - I <3 this site. I’ve used it to network with college classmates, HS classmates, and all kinds of business people here in the Upstate and across the US. Great resource. I’ve used it to meet people and it’s opened up warm leads for me. If it ever goes pure pay I’ll probably pay to keep it.

Twitter.com - I’m still experimenting with this site. In fact, I’ve found it easier to micro-blog using Twitter than to blog here. Probably cause I can jot out a 140 character message a lot faster than coming up with a couple of paragraphs of other stuff. It’s been a decent resource so far in networking and communicating with other professionals.

Brightkite.com - Just signed on in the Beta. No idea how this might help, but it’s beta and free so why not.

Plaxo.com - I probably should use this site a little more. Has some great potential but with my limited time I tend to gravitate towards LinkedIn instead.

Hmm, I think that’s about it for now. Who knows I might fry out on the whole social mash-up thing and go retro and offline in a few months. hehe.

Have a great weekend everyone! Remember, if you know any great Java, PHP, or Clinical Analysts then send them my way. I can put you to work tomorrow (well, almost that fast.)

Our wonderful Marketing Coordinator (Emily) sent in some recent press releases with my info and one of our other recruiters info as well.

You can see all the info here -

GSATC Press Release

or on the SwampFox.ws website too sans picture.

Guess that means I’m really really official now.