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Monday, February 11, 2008

Are you always on?

And I don’t mean online. As a Recruiter, Sourcer, Hiring Manager, Executive, etc for your company, do you always have your recruiting radar on? Are you constantly looking and listening for that next great addition to the team or the company?

I ask this because I was just on vacation and while I did a pretty good job of disconnecting from checking my email, I could not help from ease dropping on conversations and inserting myself in those that I found of interest. And not just personal interests.

In one conversation I met a few Developers with one lone Program Manager in the group. I asked if he (the PM) was brought along to keep things on schedule. We had a laugh and then the networking began.

In another conversation that took place on the chair lift ride up, I met an IT Director who also turned out to be a great snowboarder. We actually hit a few runs together, following each other through the trees and talked a little shop on the ride up.

The above is what I mean by always being on. You never know when you are going to “bump” into that next great hire, by accident or on purpose. Be it on vacation, the train/bus to work, or on your bike. And we all know, you’re network can never be to big. I’ll be sending everyone an invite to Linkedin and a follow up mail with all of my contact info as soon as possible.

Will anyone of them turn into a hire? Only time will tell. That being said, I know that one of the Developers is working on his resume as he mentioned he was about to start looking for a new adventure. So there’s a start. But they are all the types of people you want know and have in your network.

Now this is not new to my fellow recruiters out there, but we all know it’s a continuous education process and series of follow up reminders to our client groups and everyone else in our company. It’s a reminder that it’s ok to seize a window of opportunity to insert yourself into a conversation, introduce yourself and even talk shop when the time is right.

Are you on? If so, let’s connect. Send me your linkedin invite to bryan.reichert@aquantive.com.

BR

By the way, the vacation was awesome. The snow was incredible at Whistler which made for some epic snowboarding.