The Recruiting Inferno

“Hello, this is Jerry…”

Yes, Rayanne is way hotter in person… Andy Gregory far taller, the Glamour Queen far glitzier, Ryan Leary more of a guru, and it is far easier to make Chris Havrilla snort. Marie Journey is far sassier and Maha Akiki’s husband could easily earn more money as a recruiter than whatever he’s doing now (just a hunch). To add to these personalities, Rich DeMatteo regaled us with the story about how CornOnTheJob came to be as well as variations of its name…there is no way I’m offering a link to explain this.

Most of all, TruUSA offered more keys to doors of insightfulness than had been expected.

The unconference concept requires you to leave your expectations at the door – you won’t hear about how a “world class employer” with a well-established, well-respected brand and a large recruiting budget develops its talent pipelines (to these people, try working at the places I enjoy – ones with a minimal or negative brand and a very small recruiting budget).

It also requires that you leave your ego behind; at an unconference, you’re rubbing elbows with very successful and confident recruiters, sourcers, and vendors, so much so that it forces even gurus to question their methods and listen to how others solve recruiting issues. If you allow yourself to proportionally use your two ears and one mouth, magic will happen.

Perspectives are the big take homes; perspectives about how social media creates firestorms, how GenY’s and Boomers have considerably more in common, how universities and colleges need to questions how they teach careership. Large group discussions are taken to animated small groups to one-on-ones. The beauty of the unstructured format is that more people interact; if you like the term crowdsourcing, then all participants are equally Queens and Drones functioning to build and grow the community.

Personally, the best part of the smaller unconference is meeting people in person, many of whom I’ve known only from their 3/4” X 3/4“ picture. Give me live-and-in-person over 140 any day of the week. I will reach out to everyone who attended TruUSA – and I’ll use the phone – and I’m certain that not only will I be a better recruiter for it, but I’ll also be a far better person too.

Simply put, I can’t thank the participants – you’ll all receive calls from me, sponsors (BizWerks, Pinstripe, ShakeYourJob, GetAClue, redmos, broadbean, JSTN), and TruChampions, Bill, Geoff, and Maha enough.

Finally, I know I told Kevin Grossman but did I tell you about the backup singers and dancers??