I was watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this weekend with my kids — I love that movie and not just because I have a crush on Johnny Depp! It is a fun movie — just lighthearted enough to keep the kids interested with just enough “life lessons” to allow my kids to watch it over and over again.

One of the parts I love about this movie is the scene where the squirrels can identify a good nut from a bad one. I was struck by how nice it would be if we, as HR professionals, could simply knock someone on the head and, depending on what we hear, know whether they were a good fit or not.

But alas, we don’t have that luxury; we have to ascertain whether a candidate is a good fit based on the information we have at the time. And, as most decisions go, the result is only as good as the data leading up to it.

Herein lies the foundation for the upcoming pre-conference workshop for the ERE Expo in San Diego. Recruiting Beyond the Job Description is a pre-conference workshop designed to help you take the data you have about a job, combined with the commitment you have as professionals, and build a recruitment and selection process that greatly increases the chances for a good organization and job fit.

So many of us have become complacent when it comes to recruiting and filling our vacancies. Employee “churn” has become a part of our lives and we think nothing of it when a new employee leaves before the honeymoon period is over! I have even heard some recruiters claim this churn is “job security” for them! Egads!

Recruiting Beyond the Job Description will help you understand that you don’t have to be limited by the inherent flaws of traditional job descriptions. During this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to extract “hidden data” about a job to identify what competencies you should be searching for and testing against to ensure the selected candidate is a great match.

I will walk you through a practical and effective job analysis process to identify both technical and behavioral competencies needed for success in the job. You are free to bring job descriptions you are currently working from or you can use the ones I provide. Either way, you will leave the workshop armed with knowledge and motivation to Recruit Beyond the Job Description and increase you chances of making a selection that will stick! It is certainly not as cute as trained squirrels, but I promise you the process is just as magical.

Most methods of hiring, retaining, developing, and managing recruiting and talent acquisition professionals are ineffective, non-strategic, and mostly outdated.

In my upcoming workshop at the spring ERE Expo, we’ll be discussing many of the common issues that are faced by those who manage and hire recruiters, and will share some of the most groundbreaking research in this arena.

For now, let’s discuss one issue in the hiring of recruiters, and one issue in the performance of recruiters and talent acquisition professionals.

Hiring Recruiters

It is safe to assume that most professionals enter the recruiting industry into highly transactional positions where performance is mostly measured by how much they “do.”

For example, how many calls they make per day, how many e-mails they can send, how many interviews they can set-up, and how many people they can get hired are core methods of measurement. This is especially prevalent in entry-level agency recruiting environments where most recruiters are brought into the industry.

Of course, recruiting is not the only profession where this is the accepted method of hiring new talent, but it is the most essential, simply because recruiting is not, in its core, about transactional items. The argument that is used to justify giving new recruiter incentives to engage in more “doing” or transactional activity is that activity is correlated with results. But the truth is that activity does not guarantee good results.

This matters because to many recruiting professionals, recruiting is about the process of recruiting and not the larger picture of acquiring talent. In entry-level and junior-level positions, this is not an issue of contention. But when recruiters become managers and directors they are unable to provide the strategic value that top organizations need.

For example, high-volume recruiters sometimes fail to understand the relative quality of talent needed by internal corporate recruiting professionals, because they have not been developed and trained into thinking about the long-term goals of the business. They may see a job description as all the necessary requirements on which to hire someone for, but focus less on soft items that are increasingly important as that candidate moves up in the organization.

I believe that this is because of how they were trained and developed — to focus more on prioritizing fast hires over quality hires (within reason of course). This is not a criticism of agency or “fast” recruiters. This is a criticism of how their managers and leaders develop them.

In an organization that has a strategic plan to move overseas, for example, it will fall upon the strategic recruiter to ask the question (for each position): “Will this person possibly go overseas when we expand there? And if so, where?” to which she/he may receive a response: “That’s a great question John/Jane. Yes, they may have to go overseas to China in about two years when we move our operations there.” To which the strategic recruiter may respond: “Excellent. I’ll try to recruit someone, based on our conversation and the job description who may also have some experience handling Chinese businesses or something related.”

The transactional recruiter, because she/he has not been developed to think strategically over the years would likely not gear his/her questions in such a way. They’d would focus more on questions that would allow her to make the most efficient hire possible. Although both recruiters will get the job done, one will bring long-term value that cannot be measured, and which she is not being assessed on.

Hiring recruiters in the right way is an issue of early training and development. Recruiting leaders and managers are entirely responsible for this phase.

We will discuss how to develop your recruiting staff (in the early phase of employment as well) to suit your overall needs, as well as when process execution is more important than strategic thinking.

Performance Management

Typically, recruiters are measured, assessed, and evaluated based on hard data (which for some organizations is still a step forward) in some of the best organizations. This is an excellent start, and any performance management system should include process-oriented data as part of an overall performance appraisal.

However, where the industry falls short is in developing enough career development as well as leadership opportunities to augment that appraisal. In fact, only a minority of recruiting professionals actually receive an opportunity to expand their academic, professional, or social knowledge either on or off the job, which in turn, never allows recruiting leaders to develop career paths, professional specialties, succession management, or leadership development opportunities for their employees.

To add, the best most organizations will do is send a small number of their internal talent staff to external training programs, without any thought or planning on how that new knowledge could be disseminated and integrated into leadership development opportunities. In short, even this potentially expensive training is done in a very tactical way and is not sustainable.

The importance of getting this right is paramount: Performance management is one of the main reasons that CEOs of major organizations throughout the entire world rarely (if ever) come from a talent acquisition background.

In addition, there is new and groundbreaking research that top performers in recruiting environments are not necessarily the most independent individual contributors, but individuals who manage internal relationships and social connections with stakeholders.

In fact, social dynamics are better predictors (statistically) of recruiter’s performance than human capital metrics and measurements.

We’ll talk about all these challenges in detail in my workshop at the spring ERE Expo.

I’ve often chatted with talent acquisition professionals about the global aspects of their business — an increasingly important focus. What I hear a lot of is that people have travelled to another country a few times, or have a friend or colleague there, and assume that they’re prepared to successfully recruit from their North American office or integrate into local culture if relocated. While unintentionally, many of us in North America make these assumptions about what recruiting and staffing are like based on our own experience.

Over 20 years I’ve learned that these assumptions in a global context rarely pay off. I often hear people say things like “Singapore is similar to Hong Kong because they are both in Asia”; or “Italy is similar to France because they are close to each other and in Europe.” Well, that is sort of like thinking the United States of America is similar to Mexico because they’re both part of the Americas. I think many of us in North America would shake our heads at this comparison, but it is not uncommon to develop plans based on what we know, and then take a few assumptions about the target location expecting to excel. Wrong! What works in our own space doesn’t necessarily translate when you cross a border, ocean, or even a region. At times, it can feel like you’ve brought your baseball bat to a cricket game — yes, the function seems the same, but without understanding the game, the home run is much more difficult to achieve.

This is why I’ve called on two of my esteemed peers, Danielle Monaghan and Roel Lambrichts, to join me at the upcoming ERE Expo Spring 2012 in San Diego for an open dialogue about creating and sustaining talent acquisition success on a global scale. Essentially, we’re inviting everyone to have coffee with us and join the discussion. I chose this type of session and dynamic presenter group because of the diverse backgrounds and global companies that have benefited from our expertise. Danielle is the HR director North Asia – Greater China, Japan, & Korea at Cisco Systems, based out of Beijing. Roel is the head of talent acquisition Europe for Coca-Cola Enterprises based out of Brussels.

You may have experienced the kinds of things we’re talking about here. If not, it’s likely you will in the future as companies continue to globalize. While “global recruiting” is a currently a buzzword in our profession, there is more to it than making some overseas calls and sifting through resumes. I know I made a lot of assumptions when I first started to recruit outside my own home region (more than 20 years ago); we all do.

I’ll never forget the “aha” moment when I realized the one-size-fits-all-model was not going to work.

I was the head of a large American organization expanding into Europe. I had to make a “quick” roundtrip flight from California to London — and this trip, I’d end up with my tail between my legs. I was going to admit failure and all I kept asking myself was, “How did I let things get this far?”

It all started because the division had needed a new head of human resources. For several months prior to my trip, despite the UK division’s pleas to follow some of the local recruiting protocol, I, as head of talent acquisition sitting in Los Angeles, insisted they do things our way. I thought I knew better. Without an in-house recruiting department, the UK managers recommended we rely on an outside, third-party agency. Nonsense, I responded. We have more than capable recruiters in the U.S.; let’s handle it for you our way. Let’s at least pay an outside agency to place an ad to generate CVs, they suggested. Why would I do that, I replied, when we can identify potential candidates and just call them directly ourselves?

They were appalled. You can’t do that, the local British team explained. “We don’t call people and directly recruit or source from other companies.” It was a territory battle and I didn’t even have the courtesy to set up conference calls on their time (Eight hours makes a big difference if there is no flexibility!).

As you may be guessing, I was not successful when I tried to do things my way and operate from the common American perspective that the world revolves around us.

It was an important lesson for me though — not only humbling, but eye-opening. I don’t think my mistakes were uncommon. Even the best talent acquisition professional falls into several traps. Think about if you have ever assumed that…

• Other places are just like where you live and regions are alike. Like my example above, we know Vancouver is not the same as Montreal, just as California is different from New York — it’s true on a global scale.
• Everyone speaks English. Think about your last vacation off the resort in Sao Paolo. Your choices were likely Portuguese or Spanish, not English.
• The same recruiting activity will work regardless of where you are. Think Internet reliability in the outskirts of Russia.
• The Internet is available to all people – think China (did you know LinkedIn is blocked there?).

And these mistakes are often innocently overlooked or not even considered. There are discussions in boardrooms all over the world about how to address global talent needs. Local recruiting and staffing processes are not consistent around the world, and there are significant differences from region to region as to how talent acquisition processes are executed.

I learned that all of the strategizing, planning, and developing programs to handle recruiting around the world often miss one important mark: although business is global, effective recruiting must always be local. You can do this in many ways and we’ll delve into several at the session. You may hear things like:

Creating a culture/country plan understanding what makes the recruiting culture unique in each country or region that you work, as well as how it might be customized.

Creating a candidate pool with awareness of how various countries use the web and technology to craft messages for candidate pools and help get the word to them.

Getting tech savvy, or more simplistic, to help you unearth specific gathering places. Some include typical social networking and media networks, but others include other unique applications.

Making people feel comfortable is a foundational activity for recruiters because it enables relationships to form. Think about how frustrated you get, sitting at home in Toronto or Chicago and calling to get an electronic gadget fixed, and you find yourself speaking to someone in India. The accent isn’t what you’re used to, and the speed, intonation, and even pronunciation is all foreign to you. Now make that feeling professional — you will likely feel skeptical, not trusting, and perhaps weary because for whatever reason there are no local representatives of the company available to speak with you.

So whether you’re working in Pan-European recruiting including the Middle East and Africa regions and you’re thinking about:

• Brand recognition outside the parent region and how you will develop your pipeline if direct applicants are low.
• Contractual obligations and work councils — for example, has your organization established the right work conditions for the French Works Council in France?
• If interview feedback is required and hiring managers are prepared; for example, in the UK, interview feedback is expected.
• Cultural gender norms carrying into the office; for example, women in Saudi Arabia cannot drive on their own, how you balance this with your desire to hire valuable female candidates.
• Language — can you support all 18 official languages in Europe? Is a multilingual recruiter enough to overcome stigma over a flawed accent?
• In the UK, age discrimination is a very sensitive issue. How will you cross-train and set standards when your recruiters in Argentina are looking at marital status, number of children, and looking at pictures on resumes, and your team here cannot learn anything personal about the candidate without being very cautious?

Or in Asia/Pacific recruiting, and you’re looking at;

• The competitive economy in the world’s second-largest economy and fifth-largest consumer market: China.
• Internet access and speed across the region and accessibility.
• The rapidly changing government policies and regulations that make China a new country every six months.
• Respect-based cultural norms and how to address people — like last/family name, followed by an “honorific” pronoun in places like Japan or Korea.

Or like many of us in one of the many diverse regions across the Americas:

• Competition is high, but many candidates may not be actively looking, and how will you find passive talent.
• Working within legal requirements, like not asking “Are you a U.S. citizen?” and instead asking, “Are you legally eligible to work in this country?”
• Compliance (like the alphabet soup of U.S. employment laws) and even the stigma of working in a neighboring county (there’s much more of a stigma with, say, an American working in Canada, then a French national working in Belgium, or a Thai national to be recruited to work in Malaysia).
• Dramatic climate changes: how can a near-Arctic organization attract those from warmer climates, and retain them?

It is likely that you will face some of the challenges we have seen. Join the conversation about the challenges and obstacles of cross-border recruiting, and the unique idiosyncrasies of cultural and legal differences within regions.

Danielle, Roel, and I are putting ourselves on the hot seat to talk about everything under the sun,  no matter what time zone you’re operating in. Let us come together as a local team in San Diego and talk about the global needs for recruiting that are inevitably local.

Feel free to leave us questions right up until March 19, 2012, and we will try to answer as many questions during our ERE Expo session.

See you in San Diego in 2012! Happy Holidays to everyone!

This March at the ERE Expo attendees (and those watching the live video stream) will be treated to something new. For the first time in the Expo’s history three of the longest-running ERE authors (Kevin Wheeler, Lou Adler, and myself) will come together for a live crossfire to respond to your questions and top issues. For nearly 14 years the three of us have shared our perspective on strategic issues, current trends, and emerging issues, sometimes agreeing, sometimes not.

In recent weeks the three of us have tackled a number of topics including the growing influence of social media, the future of recruitment process outsourcing, and improving functional efficiency and effectiveness. While these topics are likely to emerge during the crossfire so too are many others. The top-20-plus subjects on my mind heading into the crossfire include: 

1. The return of employer branding — employer branding and building talent communities are the only long-term strategies in recruiting. Real branding has been ignored throughout the downturn, but years of bad press and the increasing use of social media is forcing organizations to once again take branding seriously. We will see more organizations add roles dedicated to employer brand management and spending on employer branding will nearly double this year.
2. Growing recognition of employee referrals — referrals were downplayed by many organizations during the downturn, but as hiring has slowly picked up, so too has the recognition of ERPs as the dominant source of hire (both volume and quality). As organizations better learn to leverage social media to support employee referrals, the critical role of ERPs will continue to evolve. The average rate of external hires attributed to ERPs will exceed 40% within the next two years.
3. Increasing value of social media — there is little disagreement here on its continued growth and importance. We are still learning on a “trial-and-error” basis how to use social media in recruiting, and our metrics are horrible. However, this channel will continue to excel at prospect relationship building rather than as a job posting channel. Overall, finding candidates will become increasingly easy, so resources and the focus will shift toward building relationships and “selling” top prospects and candidates.
4. The mobile platform dominates – Kevin Wheeler and I have both outlined the tremendous value of the mobile platform for recruiting. This platform excels because prospects and candidates are willing to read and even respond at almost any time of day. The mobile phone will become the most powerful communications channel in recruiting and employer branding. Unfortunately, most recruiting managers have not required that their corporate career sites and all of their recruiting and branding related messaging be made “mobile-phone” friendly.
5. Key recruiting success measures are implemented — there is little disagreement between Kevin, Lou, and I regarding the fact that recruiting must become more businesslike and refine quality of hire measurements. You simply can’t improve your hiring process without knowing the on-the-job performance and retention rates of your new hires. Recruiting managers will also have to improve their metrics for employer branding (both positive and negative), the candidate experience, hiring manager satisfaction, and the source of hire (i.e. the “actual” sources or channels that result in hires). The most important high-impact metric area that will become prominent is placing a dollar value on key recruiting outcomes (i.e. the cost of a bad hire, a slow hire, the value of a superstar in a mission-critical position, etc.).
6. Retention issues grow dramatically — we have all written about the upcoming surge in employee turnover. Unfortunately, most organizations rarely focus on retention and are unaware of the 20 different retention strategies. Rather than continuing to use “peanut butter” strategies, the most effective organizations tailor retention efforts to high-value individuals and employees in critical jobs.
7. Prioritization becomes essential — business units always prioritize customers, products, and suppliers. Recruiting managers need to learn that same valuable lesson by prioritizing and focusing the best recruiters in the most resources on revenue-producing and mission-critical openings.
8. Contingent workers provide agility — if you forecast an “up-and-down” economy like we have suffered through during the last decade, you will quickly appreciate the value of contingent workers. I am predicting that as much as half of the work done for major corporations will be done by some type of contingent or outsourced workers. Unfortunately the current contingent model where management is split between HR and procurement must be blown up and replaced with one that puts contingent workers on a par with regular employees when it comes to onboarding, reference checking, information access, and training.
9. The return of the war for talent — Kevin Wheeler has mentioned that we need to plan for its return. I agree but in a global economy, the war for top talent in key high-demand positions never really diminishes. When the hiring boom does return, most corporate functions will be no better prepared to handle it than they were last time. The key weakness in winning this “war” will be the lack of a “boundaryless” integrated approach, where all talent related processes work closely together.
10. The candidate experience must improve — currently the metrics demonstrate that the candidate experience is universally miserable. Mobile phones and social networks now make it amazingly easy for unhappy candidates to almost instantly widely spread a message about their negative application and hiring experiences. As a result, recruiting managers will have no choice besides measuring and dramatically improving the candidate experience.
11. Remote and global work grows dramatically — the growth of hiring manager acceptance and improvement of remote work tools will make recruiting significantly easier at firms that are willing to offer remote work options for hard to fill jobs. If you expect to effectively attract and use global talent, offering remote work is an absolute requirement.
12. A shift toward being proactive — recruiting has historically been 100% reactive in that it only acts when a requisition is opened. In a fast-changing world, that results in many missed opportunities because the best candidates are not looking at the same time that you have an opening. We are already seeing a gradual shift toward a proactive “pre-need” model where talent is continually recruited and recruiters alert managers about current talent “opportunities” even when no requisition is open.
13. Onboarding/off-boarding gains recognition — as more firms take the time to calculate the dollar impact of slow and weak onboarding, resources will be shifted toward dramatically improving it. Areas in which it must improve include stretching it out over time, metrics, getting new hire input, more online information, and continuing recruiter involvement. Once you quantify the impact of great onboarding, you will also likely increase your focus on the employee exit process because it stinks at most firms. Off-boarding is becoming more important because hiring, losing, and later rehiring top employees will become much more important as “long-term single firm” employment becomes a less-common goal among top performers, game changers, and innovators.
14. CRM use grows — customer relationship management approaches and tools have proven to be amazingly effective on the business side of the corporation. The same tools will continue to be adapted to in prospect and candidate management until they dominate.
15. Internal movement grows in importance — an area that has to be classified as among the most impactful but poorly managed processes is internal mobility. Kevin Wheeler has written extensively on how it must be improved. The best firms are beginning to use metrics to learn that current internal movement and promotion processes simply fail to identify and proactively move internal talent to areas where they would produce a higher ROI. Future processes at all major firms will use recruiters and technology to proactively move both individuals and teams.
16. The future of outsourcing — Kevin Wheeler recently wrote an article highlighting areas in which internal recruiting has stumbled and where outsourcing will grow. I am much more pessimistic, in that I have found little metric evidence that shows that RPOs routinely produce superior candidate quality or ROI. In addition, they generally choose a “vanilla” approach and seldom use advanced tools and strategies. In addition, they cannot build your brand or provide a competitive advantage if their services are also available to your talent competitors.
17. Interviews and assessment must improve — Lou Adler has frequently mentioned his preference for performance-based interviews (instead of behavioral interviews) for improving interviews and assessment. I also see that the traditional corporate practice needs dramatic improvement but without metrics that connect interview scores with on-the-job performance, progress will be slow. The use of live Internet video interviews will continue to grow until they become standard practice.
18. Technology permeates everything – we all are supportive of new technologies, but I warn against technology fads. I am cynical about adopting technologies until the underlying process is refined. Adding technologies to weak processes like performance appraisal, reference checking, skill assessment, onboarding and applicant tracking do not automatically produce a measurable improvement in process output quality. They do make administration easier, but HR needs to learn to stop selecting “solutions” simply because they make HR’s life easier. I agree with Kevin Wheeler that simulations and games will soon begin to play a large role in attracting and assessing candidates. At least for the near term, I would also be concerned about vendor reliability and consolidation when I made my technology-buying decisions.
19. Corporate webpages must evolve — there is no weaker source of “authentic” information about a firm than corporate career websites. Job seekers have learned to use social networks and secondary sources (i.e. Glassdoor, JobVent, Vault, etc.) to get unfiltered information about what it’s like to work at a company. Unless corporate websites include authentic employee blogs and videos that allow a prospect to “see and feel” their job, their importance and value will diminish dramatically.
20. The future of executive search — Lou Adler, undeniably a leading expert on executive search, has written about the potential value and how to bring executive search in-house. He notes and I agree that many have not done it effectively in the past. I see the future of executive search firms narrowing as social media makes finding and building relationships with executives much easier. If executive search firms continue to be slow to adopt technology, new strategies, performance metrics, and pay for performance, they are likely to see their role continue to diminish.
21. Large job boards will be challenged — large job boards are fine for active candidates that have updated resumes. However, if your focus is on getting top performers, game-changers, and innovators, you shouldn’t allow recruiters to even consider large job boards. Many niche boards will continue to add value.
22. Job descriptions must be rejuvenated — we all agree that most job descriptions are inadequate and actually hinder the accurate sourcing and the selling of prospects. A more scientific and marketing approach to job descriptions and job postings are needed.
23. The death of resumes — we have all at some point complained about the use of resumes as accurate assessment tools. Up to two thirds contain misstatements, and waiting for candidates to finalize their resume is a major impediment to reducing time to fill. The long predicted “death” of the resume may actually begin shortly as firms begin to accept professional profiles (i.e. LinkedIn profiles) at least initially in lieu of resumes. The public visibility of these profiles automatically makes them more accurate than resumes. They are also more likely to be current and readily available then a formal resume.

Final Thoughts

I’m looking forward to the dialogue and being challenged by my colleagues and readers. If you have a question or topic for us to tackle, let us know by sending it to todd@ere.net.

The Fall ERE Expo is less than three months away (Oct 26-28 in Hollywood, FL to be precise). Maybe you’re thinking about coming, but you’re still firmly straddling that fence. Maybe you’ve already ruled it out. In either case, here are three reasons why you need to make this a priority.

Take Time to Think Strategically

Years ago when attending a week-long management development class in the foothills west of Denver, I had the chance to participate in an interesting exercise. We were told to “go outside, walk around, and think strategically.” For the next hour, I meandered around in a daze, and my brain started to hurt. Was I really thinking strategically? How did I know for sure? Was I confusing tactics for strategy? What would I report on to the class when the exercise was over? Would others laugh at me and say “THAT’S NOT STRATEGIC!” Well, you get the idea.

In the end, the point of this exercise was simply that if you don’t separate yourself from the day-to-day minutia of your job (and life), it’s really hard to take a step back and think strategically.

During my career, I’ve attended seven ERE Expos (side note … I should propose a “Frequent Attender” loyalty program: attend nine conferences, get the 10th free!). Anyway, each one gave me a great opportunity to step away from the day-to-day craziness of running a recruiting team and deeply reflect on what we were doing, and where we were going. From personal experience, I can tell you that sitting on a beautiful beach in South Florida is a great place to do this reflection.

Here are three suggestions to get you started on your beachside strategic thinking:

1. What is my vision for my team (or myself) for the next one to three years? Have I articulated it to others? Can I even articulate it?
2. What are the top three things we (I) need to focus on to make this vision a reality?
3. How will I know that we’ve (I’ve) achieved the vision? Write down specific outcomes (preferably measureable) that you are shooting for.

Give yourself the gift of a little time away to think strategically. The ocean waves are calling out your name.

Build Your Professional Network

One of the absolute best things about attending an ERE event — OK, the best thing about attending an ERE event — is the people you meet. ERE has allowed me to develop a deep professional network of people who I can call on for ideas, a quick sanity check, or just plain old commiserating (“hey, you’ll never believe this…” stories) to share a laugh. Plus, this is a great place to socialize your new-found vision that you formed on the beach (see point #1 above). “Hey, I was walking on the beach last night and was thinking about … what do you think?”

When you attend, set a goal — not just to collect business cards, but to make quality connections. If you make five or more quality connections in a three-day event, I would consider that a solid success.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to be proactive. If there are people you want to meet — maybe one or two of the ERE faculty, or someone from a company that you respect, or someone in your industry — reach out to them ahead of time and let them know that you would appreciate the chance to meet with them, and why. This can pave the way for a productive face-to-face greeting/meeting in Florida. (Based on my experience, I would suggest that offering to buy a coffee or an adult beverage will likely increase your probability of success!)

Lastly, please don’t repeat the mistake I made several years ago. I was so heads-down/focused on my day job, that when my position got eliminated I felt very vulnerable because I had let my network go; it was weak, to say the least. I had spent all my energy for the corporate-good but hadn’t devoted much of it to my own good. It doesn’t take a lot of time to keep this in better balance, and for a recruiter, ERE Expo is a great place to start this rebalancing process.

Which is a nice segue to my final point …

Be Intentional About Your Personal Development

Similar to #2, it is way too easy to focus on your job, your team, your boss and your organization — and not take time for you. Nearly everyone has faced major challenges the last two years with global economic struggles (smaller budgets, bigger workloads, etc.) that have inhibited the time and dollars dedicated to personal development.

Get a copy of the conference agenda and circle in red which sessions are likely to have the most benefit to you. No need to wait until you’re there. Plan it out ahead of time. If time and/or money are an issue, then write down a simple business case and present it to your leadership. Show them what you want to attend, and how it will benefit your organization. Most leaders will respond positively to a well-constructed case. And then book early to save dollars.

Once you’re at the conference, write down your key takeaways from each session and share them with others. When I send members of my team to a conference, I expect them to develop a PowerPoint presentation to teach others. This solidifies the learning and increases the commitment to personal improvement/change.

Be intentional about building a better you. Then pass it on.

If you have any questions or comments, please respond to this post, or feel free to email me at tony.blake@davita.com. My next post will be “Tony’s Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Conference Experience.” I hope to see you in Florida in about 12 weeks.