Do you remember the heady days of recruiting (circa 1997-2001), when
companies were relabeling their HR Recruitment division as a core
competency and lavishly spending thousand of dollars on their staff
for training and conferences and the best giveaways trinkets at job
fairs.

Those were the days my friend. I thought they'd never end. Oh, to
resurrect another Computerworld conference on recruiting. That was
the hot ticket then. Even an opportunity to talk to a lot of non-
recruiters at a SHRM conference was a blast as well.

Of all my trips down memory lane, the most resounding shocker was the
aftermath of all that knowledge that was bestowed to a recruiter
attending a conference or a specialized course on recruiting. If you
happened to see them again at their office, you would be proud to
find a copy of their conference manual or even their training course
book. Not a page was bent, it resided firmly in the bookcase for all
to see, and upon closer inspection one could discern a little bit of
dust.

Could they have digested that information overload? Were they
perceived as the new recruiting disciples of their company? Had their
salaries jumped several folds since that training a long time ago?

In 2003, while waiting for my connection back to the US, I was
hovering over a display monitor at Narita Airport in Japan. Out of
nowhere, someone reaches over my cubicle and lightly taps me on the
shoulder and says, "Are you Bret Hollander?"

At that moment, I was conjuring all the things I could have said, but
all that came out was "Yes."

It turns out that this individual had attended both a presentation I
made at the national Computerworld conference in 1999, and had also
attended one of my hands-on classes at the University of Virginia
campus in Falls Church, VA. She proceeded to lavish me with all sorts
of accolades and just the amazement to have run into me so far from
home.

As the conversation eventually circled back to how she was doing in
recruiting, what she had learned, and how she was applying her
knowledge, she halted for a moment and then secretly admitted that
she found most of the information too daunting to try, or had failed
after a few tries, and had resorted to just plying the fee-based
resume sites paid for by her company.

As I sat in my seat on the way home, I reflected on her admission.
Were most recruiters still doing their recruiting, as if nothing had
passed by their eyes or ears? Was all this information just cool to
talk about?

Of the thousands of recruiters I had personally taught, attended a
conference session that I gave, or were avid readers of this
newsletter, how many are truly at the forefront of their art today,
and applying those lessons learned five years later?

Please use the COMMENTS section on my new BLOG SITE to boast about
how far you have come with recruiting, and how you have applied the
knowledge. It will be a great sell for you as other recruiters learn
about you.

http://spaces.msn.com/members/sourcerersapprentice/