Are You a P90X Recruiter?

24 hours…until the TalentNet Live Social Recruiting Conference – and I’m stoked for 2 reasons:

1) I’m anxious to hug necks and reconnect with some unbelievably talented recruiters that I’ve not seen in way too long. And...

2) because I’m presenting at the 10am session titled:

The Hard Work of Recruiting:
“3 Strategies for Fighting Recruiting Mediocrity”

I fell in love with social media tools way back when, so I’m a self-admitted junkie and would be at this conference even if I wasn’t presenting. Excluding myself, there’s some seriously strong talent from across the U.S. that will be here to share their expertise – I’m just lucky to be along for the ride.

But since I will be there, I’ll give you an idea of where I’m headed with my session which should probably be titled, "Shortcuts to Recruiting Greatness.” Are you ready? Here we go….

THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS TO RECRUITING GREATNESS!

Ok, that wasn’t fair – I lured you in. But I just had to scream it out! Because even though this point will be hammered out by every person presenting tomorrow, there will still be recruiters whose primary objective (the day after the conference), will be to single-handedly conquer the recruiting world and their primary recruiting tool (and possibly only recruiting tool) will be…social media.

Hey, don’t get me wrong! I too want to conquer the world and I have no intention of burning the coolness of social media at the stake! But my intent is to provide a different perspective at the conference that will help those of us who need to re-center our focus and realize that we don’t achieve recruiting greatness overnight just because we start wielding the sword of social media. In fact, I’d argue that we become amazing recruiters because we first endure the pain of hard work, practice, and the formal training associated with the fundamentals of recruiting.

Like most recruiters, I want to focus on “big things!” The spotlight (or video camera) doesn’t scare me – I want to reach for the biggest, baddest problem facing the team and be the hero that solves the problem and saves the day. But the fact of the matter is this – my life and my career will require me to invest a lot of time and energy in things that aren’t big and that don’t seem to make much of an impact (which is why the “smallest things” are often the hardest thing of all).

I just want to make sure that we don’t mistake our social media savviness with automatic recruiting success. Because in the long run, if you want to be a P90X Recruiter but aren’t willing to put in the time and hard work necessary to learn the disciplines of recruiting, then you’ll be just another Recruiter with great intentions and a hijacked copy of dusty exercise videos sitting on your desk.

Hope I get to meet you at the conference tomorrow – if you’re there, we’ll talk about three strategies for fighting recruiting mediocrity.

Until then -

Do Hard Things,

Dennis

Dennis