Hello and good day!

My colleague, Brian Kevin Johnston (Inbound Recruiter) sent me an advanced copy of his book “Headhunter and Headhunted, How to Get Your Product or Service Sold Online”, and it launched yesterday.

You can review the book launch/link here: http://www.johnstonsearch.com/blog/bid/71322/Amazon-Book-Launch-Headhunter-and-Headhunted-Johnston-Search

The really cool thing about this launch is that he is giving all the profits until January, 31st to charity.

First glance at the book… I an inclined to say that it is a “GAME CHANGER” for our industry. Once I have completed the book, I will post a subjective review.

Sincerely,
Dave

In this VLOG, Brian, your Inbound Recruiter shares a story that likely cost him 20k in recruiting fees…. Happy Birthday my friend! Brian Johnston is one terrific guy!

If their comments represent the end result of the exponential increase in education spending with yet ever lowering test results to show for it … we are doomed?

By Dave Mendoza
Originally Posted in 2009

* In Response to “Job Hunting Case Study: Kevin Watson – Supersizing your LinkedIn Network” by Dave Perry

Dave is renown at a level all his own, having been written about in the Wall Street Journal and authored several books, one of which I was honored to contribute too on behalf of his Guerrilla Job Seeker book series.

With that background understood, I can say honestly every two or every third conference I attend, I am pleasantly surprised to see Dave Perry and even more fortunate if he joins our circle of fellow travelers for dinner. Last week and the days since, Dave has been on my mind because he surprised me with the focus of a recent article post. Essentially, Dave Perry featured a job seeker and his own personal success story utilizing the networking resources of “Six Degrees from Dave” – The Networking Engine.

I can state with all due candor, that never has anyone so clearly articulated the ethos of our efforts, nor the personal effects at sch a sincere and heartwarming degree as my friend Dave Perry. And to add emphasis, I had no forewarning, .. no expectation that one man’s career journey took the highway of SixDegreesfromDave the group would be told and done so eloquently. I was in all earnest, moved. It was a poignant reminder of community and how the power of many can help the one.

“….Dave Mendoza’s mission is to help others connect to people he thinks they would want to connect with if only they knew they could – like the world’s leading headhunters, top thought leaders and corporate recruiters around the world. For Kevin Watson, Dave’s personal rolodex is a who’s who of the people he needs to connect to for his job hunt. Mendoza does all of this for free. FREE – when he could easily be charging and getting a lot of money. For job hunters this is THE place to start building a powerful network. All the instructions for downloading, importing and inviting 100s of people at a time each with huge networks of their own are right here on his site. First Kevin downloaded Dave’s mega list and then he followed Dave’s “HOW TO SEND MASS NETWORKING INVITES: STEP BY STEP” word document. So simple any non-techie can do it. What follows is the good part. ….”

In this economic climate, the veteran’s of the last recession tell tales of their plight and lessons learned, for those without perspective since … we huddle together and we tell them there is a path and it is an emotional one as much as one of Reason. John Sumser calls such tribulations “Opportunities.” It’s true, to a large degree, economic strife reawakens the ‘back to basics’ approach to rediscovering why we are in this business.

I have told good friends that in times, both good and bad, I overcome the temptation of hubris by recalling actual instances years past and months after 9/11 when I experienced the effect of giving an offer to a candidate. Upon confirming an offer, in at least two occasions within as many weeks of each other, I could hear the successful candidate lower the handset and start to weep. Still clearly audible, I heard an announcement to their respective families, “We’re gonna make it – I got the job, honey.” Little did they know I was thinking the same emotion silently knowing this placement just bought me and mine – more time.

We are ultimately all job seekers at some point, and the endurance factor is where we are best suited to be labeled, survivors. It is in such moments that we ultimately come face to face with understanding the power of “Why.”

“Why did we choose this path? Is my vocation an honorable one?”

It is in those days, when the lights are out at night and we succumb to our grievances and allow financial concerns to haunt the darkness as we feign slumber as our spouses are unaware – that we hopefully understand. An ‘honorable’ career is one of the more valuable attainments of how we perceive our personal success.

I made my peace years ago. To be a recruiter is to serve one’s fellow man. We ideally hire the best person for the right position – but when it happens to be in the knick of time whose outcome means food on a family;s table or a roof over their head, it’s one more reminder we make an impact if we do our jobs right and for all the right reasons.

Thank you Dave Perry. You are a Recruiter’s recruiter. You told the story of “Why” to the vehicle of community that inspires SixDegreesfromDave better than I ever could.

All in all, Dave Perry inspired my new catch phrase, “”One Need Not Be the Loneliest Number.”

We truly are in this together and we must foster our own tide to lift all ships.

Friends, be resourceful for others as you would for your own. Bask in the Power of Good. Be The Power of “Why.”

PS: Congratulations Kevin Watson on your new job.

Dave Mendoza
SixDegreesfromDave.com

In this Video/Blog guest post, Brian your Inbound Recruiter provides a glowing book testimonial for “Nothing to Lose Everything to Gain” http://www.nothingtolose.com/ by Ryan Blair.

Key Takeaways:
• “Compensation Drives Behavior” (I agree with this in Recruitment)
• “Focus On Chemistry” (External or Internal Recruiters need to understand this concept)

Additional Takeaways:
• “Honor Your Deals” (Integrity, Character and Honestly are key traits of Top Recruiters)
• “First Things First” (There is so much to do in recruitment, focus on your ROI)
• “Risk and Sacrifice” (How far are you willing to go/stretch to achieve greatness?”)
• “Pros and Cons of Home-Based Business” (For you solo recruiters, this chapter hits “home”)
• “Growing, Hiring, and Firing” (Essential subjects for leaders in recruitment industry)

DO YOU THINK COMPENSATION DRIVES BEHAVIOR?

Until we connect online/offline, enjoy your day, after all…. “IT’S ALL ABOUT RECRUITING!!!”

Best, Brian-

There’s no sense in denying it, these are difficult times economically. Unemployment is stubbornly high, our fractious government can’t seem to agree on how to address our economic troubles, the global economy is in peril, and every day brings more dispiriting news. Some argue that large companies, sitting on huge stockpiles of cash, will be the answer once consumer demand rebounds but how will it rebound with so many people unemployed and with wages for the employed stagnant or receding? The answer is in the application of our entrepreneurial spirit. The environment is ripe for it, but it will require a push.

• It’s time to build. The time has come for political ideologues to set aside their pitchforks for a moment and take steps to create a National Infrastructure Bank. From our schools to our roadways to our mass transit systems to our energy and communication grids we are falling into dangerous disrepair and perhaps worse, lagging behind other developed countries. Such a bank would require relatively little government investment, as private investment would surely follow, and would build a scalable model of employment growth. Not only would it create an untold number of new jobs in the near term, but it would create an avenue for experienced but currently unemployed or underemployed craftsmen to open their own businesses. The resulting economic stimulus borne of an invigorated infrastructure is incalculable. Money remains an inexpensive commodity in this country – why not help put our skilled labor to work under its own flag of ownership?

• Remove the fear. The Affordable Care Act has inspired much debate, but if not repealed or diluted it offers an extraordinary opportunity. The rising cost of health care is a concern for all of us and likely has a deterring effect on people starting their own business. A RAND study published last fall found that 4 percent of all men earning wages or salaries start a business. Within that group, however, men whose health insurance came through a spouse started businesses at twice the frequency of those with their own employer coverage. The same study indicated that there was a surge of business starts in the month that men turn 65 and are eligible for Medicare; the phenomenon did not occur in any other month between ages 55 and 65. It seems clear that the promise of guaranteed affordable health care spurs small business starts.

• Make unemployment pay. Extending unemployment benefits in times such as these is a necessity, but there should be strings attached. It’s not enough that benefits are tied to efforts to find a job. Create robust re-training programs and offer entrepreneurial education and resources as a mandatory component of the unemployment support programs. Relative to potential reward, the investment is minimal.

• Vote for the little guy. Push lawmakers to address Small Business concerns as a top-tier priority. Washington has the clout to influence the business environment. Any conversation about business regulation or taxation has to start with making it easier and more potentially profitable to start a new business. Big business has a 20-year track record of failing to create jobs in numbers that impact our economy – it’s time to let the little guy have a try.

Small businesses account for a distressingly small percentage of employment in the United States. We in fact lag well behind most of the developed world in small business development. How can that be? We have the resources, we have the spirit – all we need is the push. Many small businesses will fail, but how many Googles or Facebooks, and all the ancillary businesses they spawn, does it take to impact our economy? The answer is very few.

We have never been in such dire need of innovation and creation. The situation is daunting, but we are a resilient breed. Unleash the entrepreneurs!

Doug Munro
Vice President
Interferometrics, Inc.
Connect with me on LinkedIn for Profile and Networking
On Twitter for Content and Openings

I live in Washington, DC so it’s easy to make things political. This town manages to do that with nearly everything. But this is not really about politics even though it may require politicians to truly have an impact. This is about jobs and the crisis that confronts us. A few points to consider:

• This might take a while. Typically in the past the US economy would return to a normal employment outlook six months after a recession, but the McKinsey Global Institute estimates it will take five years this time around. With unemployment stubbornly hovering around 9% consumer demand is down, making job creation even more difficult.

• Corporate America isn’t helping much. Michael Cembalest, chief investment officer at J.P. Morgan Chase, filed a report that indicates “US labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and GDP.” Since 2000, company profit margins have increased from under 11% to almost 13% and Cembalest writes that “reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement in margins.” American companies produced $1.68 trillion in profit in the last quarter of 2010, yet hiring remains pitiful and wages stagnant or declining. Companies have seen the global light and run with it; emerging-market nations are producing 70 million new middle class workers and consumers each year. There is a clear connection to higher unemployment and lower wages at home. Nobel laureate Michael Spence conducted a study on job creation over the last two decades and found that American companies doing business globally added virtually nothing to American job growth. The US-centric firms that did the heavy lifting in terms of job creation – health care companies, government agencies, retailers and hotels – are hiring mostly in lower skill and wage positions. We have outsourced millions of our skilled positions and it won’t be easy to get them back.

• We are not a mobile society. The rate at which workers move for jobs has been cut in half over the past twenty years. There may be many reasons for this: the crash of the housing market has left many people unable to sell their homes and get out from under their mortgages, unemployed workers in the recession have depleted their savings to the point of being trapped geographically, and the rise of two wage-earner families makes it difficult to coordinate simultaneous job changes. By some estimates there are more than 3 million job openings today, but as opined Rana Foroohar in Time Magazine, “unemployed auto-workers in Michigan can’t sell their underwater homes and retool as machinists in North Dakota, where homes are cheaper and the unemployment rate is under 5%.” We may yet have many of the jobs people need, but how do we get the workers to the jobs?

• We are losing our entrepreneurial foundations. The rate of new business creation has been dwindling for 30 years. The explosion of our economy’s financial sector has taken many innovators with it; there are less forward-thinkers trying to forge their own way at the risk of giving up well-paying corporate positions. Beyond that, credit remains exceptionally tight. How do you start a business without capital investment?

Okay, maybe this is political. My congressional neighbors in Washington, Democrats and Republicans alike, spend a good deal of time pointing up ideological differences and haggling over budget minutia. Surely we can all agree that jobs are central to our ability to thrive as a nation. We need to take steps to bring jobs back to the US, to create an environment that encourages investment and rewards innovation, to better educate our workforce for the types of jobs the global economy requires, to help increase the mobility of our citizens so they can go where the jobs are, and ensure that we are providing fair and growing wages to keep up with our ever-increasing cost of living. There are other countries, Germany in particular, that have faced similar circumstances to our own and are now thriving. Their blueprint may not be a perfect fit for the US, but surely there are valuable lessons to be learned. We’ve won world wars and put men on the moon – this should be well within our reach. It will take unprecedented cooperation between our political parties, as well as between our public and private sectors, but can there possibly be any more worthy goal at this point in our history?

Doug Munro
Vice President
Interferometrics, Inc.
Connect with me on LinkedIn for Profile and Networking
On Twitter for News and Openings

(**Guest Post: Brian Johnston/Inbound Recruiter**)

In this video, Brian your Inbound Recruiter discusses initial intuition on Google+ platform for an Inbound Recruiter!

Please send me email to brian@johnstonsearch.com and I will send you an invite!!!

GOOGLE+ Inbound Recruiter NOTES:

• Overall very impressive after 2 weeks, and overall 10M users. (Organically)
• Google+ Deserves your Inbound Recruiter attention.
• Why? Google is already #1 Search Engine, with #2 being You tube. (Google owns you tube)
• Create Circles (Categories of your list/contacts)

Overall, I expect GOOGLE+ to takeoff, and be widely adopted by small-large business’s, especially in the recruiting world for SEO/Organic search strategies, so stay tuned for more update on this new tool!
Until you send me email to request Google+ invite, or we connect, enJOY your day!
Best, Brian-

(**Guest Post: Brian Johnston/Inbound Recruiter**)

In this Video Blog, my friend and colleague from http://www.inboundrecruiter.com/ explains one of his tips on superior productivity, which was a “wake up call” for me this week!!!

What do you think?

Since December 2007 when the recession began, 7.2 million jobs have been lost, the Labor Department said. About 5.9 million Americans had been out of work for more than 27 weeks last month, representing 38.3 percent of the total unemployed. According to the government’s broadest measure of unemployment, the ‘Real’ Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to—the U-3 rate—which most recently showed unemployment at 10 percent. In addition, the average duration of unemployment touched a record 28.5 weeks.

On a personal note, 2 of my neighbors just received notice of a pending layoff at their jobs. A few days ago I visited one of them and reverse engineered a few methods I use to find passive candidate contact information in favor of identifying recruiters and corporate staffing executives to suit my friend’s job search needs. We initiated the effort with the development of a competitor listing as compared to his present employer. Once we identifying companies with local offices within the Denver Metro area, we then searched various social networks, and recruiting tools; specifically for recruiters and staffing managers, etc. Next we identified the primary office number of each contact and then reviewed common email constructs. Essentially, we consolidated what would have been week’s worth of unorganized, random employer information into less than an hour of work. I can sincerely state, my friend’s face was visibly relieved and he transformed into a far more positive and motivated job seeker. One the principal tools we used was my trusted Zoominfo account. Whereas other sites and tools have components of each of the steps I mentioned available to use, Zoominfo was capable of aggregating the data, provide web reference data and was even able to export selected contacts relevant to my friend’s job search.

It seems Santa was observing the process and spreading cheer and goodwill to humankind, because what I just described is now being made available to the masses thanks to the paying-it-forward efforts of Zoominfo’s corporate team and Dave Perry, the pied piper of Guerrilla Job Search Boot Camp. It is the one two punch, one-stop collaboration between one of the leading authorities and evangelists of effective job seeking and one of the largest lead generation tools in the industry.

ABOUT DAVE PERRY

David Perry, author of Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0, discusses the latest tool available for job hunters – ZoomInfo’s FreshContacts.

David Perry is renown as a respected thought leader, published author, and recruitment blogger. He speaks with the credibility of being a Big Biller, and as an evangelist for the methods and technologies we foresee as encompassing Recruitment 2.0 I have blog linked, emailed, and had the pleasure of meeting with Dave and breaking bread at industry events. Within each venue, he has made a lasting impression as a formidable industry leader. I am now glad to call him my friend. Dave has been a passionate advocate for job seekers, writing and speaking at countless venues to educate the unemployed and seeking career transition. Dave shares my belief, that what makes our industry noble is that we literally help put food on the table of those we serve. He has brought his savvy branding skill sets to this endeavor, recently asking Starbucks to get involved with job hunters by giving away a copy of his “Put America Back To Work: Guerrilla Job Search Secrets Revealed” 2 hour DVD to every unemployed person in America.

Dave was kind enough to share the scoop on his innovative collaboration with Zoominfo’s FreshContacts product, telling me “this is a tremendous Game Changer.” He elaborates:

“For most people the hardest part of finding a job is figuring out who to talk to. FreshContacts puts ZoomInfo’s database of 5 million companies and 45 million people at their disposal. In Detroit we took several job seekers in to new opportunities in 7 weeks – well ahead of the national average of 28.7 weeks. Part or our success was teaching them how to identify the right hiring manager. With FreshContacts in their hands we believe we can knock another week off the time it takes to find and close a deal. The game changer for job hunters is combining guerrilla job search tactics with access to information so they can hunt effectively in the “hidden job market.”

How it Works

Expanding the world’s most comprehensive source of intelligence on people and companies, ZoomInfo is broadening the way it collects data by offering business professionals an opportunity to contribute contacts in exchange for free access to the company’s growing database of 45M people and 5.5M companies. Using a free downloadable plug-in, job seekers can quickly and safely trade their contacts for two months of unlimited free ZoomInfo access. The FreshContacts Microsoft Outlook plug-in automatically uploads the user’s business contacts in a matter of minutes.

FreshContacts empowers job seekers to:

• Find and Research Potential Employers: Search for companies by geography, industry, size and up to 20 other criteria.
• Prepare for interviews: Access in-depth profiles on hiring managers to learn rapport-building details about their job history, professional affiliations, academic background and interests
• Expand their network: find former colleagues, classmates, and others who are in new and interesting jobs and careers.
• Get in touch: Access fresh contact details — phones, phone, email and mailing address — to make a connection and promote themselves.
• Get Creative: Identify top executives who work for their previous employer’s competition or colleagues who are now gainfully employed.

FreshContacts observes the following practices to ensure the integrity of its data and the anonymity of its users:

• Business contacts only — FreshContacts disregards any contacts that have a consumer email address such as gmail, hotmail, and Yahoo!
• Contributions are anonymous — the source of contact information that is used to add or improve information in Zoominfo’s database is kept anonymous.
• Opt-Out — All contributed contacts are scrubbed for CAN-Spam compliance. As always, everyone added to Zoominfo’s database is offered the opportunity to opt-out via email, web or toll-free number.

From a recruiting perspective the story gets more interesting. Fresh Contacts will enable ZoomInfo to evolve its data collection model to improve data quality and add contacts by enables business professionals to swap their business contacts in exchange for two full months of unlimited free access to all 45 Million of ZoomInfo’s contacts.

You may be wondering why ZoomInfo has agreed to give away a 2 month subscription for FREE. Well, it’s a simple win-win situation: you get the value of the ZoomInfo database of 45 million professionals at 5 million companies, and in exchange, you allow your contact records to improve the size and quality of the database, which in turn helps everyone else who is using it! This combined with a contributing community of over 900,000 people updating their own profiles daily will greatly expand the reach and accuracy of ZoomInfo’s intelligence on businesses and people, in short, adding a secret weapon to your passive candidate pipeline development. This Christmas season, however, they have opened up a comprehensive tool motivated by compassion for those who have been effected throughout this severe recession.

Yes my friends, the staffing industry and its patrons are indeed, still a noble profession.

About ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is the most comprehensive source of business information on people and companies in the world. ZoomInfo is used by sales and marketing professionals to find leads, recruiters to uncover talent and by business professionals to find detailed information on people and companies. ZoomInfo’s semantic search engine gathers publicly available information from the Business Web — millions of company websites, news feeds and other online sources — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, then automatically compiles it into easy-to-search and easy-to-read profiles. ZoomInfo currently has profiles on more than 45 million people and 5.5 million companies, and its search engine adds over 20,000 new profiles monthly.

More than 6 million people search www.zoominfo.com every month. And over 3,000 customers, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, Oracle, PepsiCo, and 20 percent of the Fortune 500, subscribe to ZoomInfo’s premium service products. ZoomInfo is privately held and based in Waltham, Mass.

ZoomInfo also hosts Follow The Lead, a B2B sales and marketing blog that delivers the latest insights on prospecting, sales intelligence, closing, recruitment, CRM and database management.

Please enter your email address so that we can send you your PowerSell account information. Email:   Please provide me with a free 2 month subscription to ZoomInfo PowerSell. In return, I allow my contacts to be included in the ZoomInfo database via the FreshContacts Swapper.