Bearing Fruit Consulting

Letters From A Recruiting Leader Serving In Iraq

Today I wanted to introduce you to a very special and gifted talent acquisition leader who I am proud to know and now call friend.  His name is Fred Hockett and I wanted to share his story with readers of this blog as well as launch a new series of posts that are all about him.  Fred's story is, in my opinion, so important that I am creating his own category on this blog called Fred Hockett.  As I think you will agree after reading this, he deserves it. 

So who is Fred and why is he so special that he warrants his own series of posts, you ask?  Well, Fred is a recruiting leader who learned late in January that he was being called back to active duty and would be deploying to Iraq to serve his country.  Now if I know anything about Fred and the kind of citizen, soldier and leader he is then he will likely take issue with my comments about how special he is for serving us and his country.  You see, as a West Point graduate his sense of duty is inextricably linked to who he is.  General Douglas MacArthur, in address to the Corps of Cadets at West Point on May 12, 1962, stated this more poignantly then I ever could:

Duty-Honor-Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, and what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Fred and I became acquainted as I was working on a search for a client to identify a director of talent acquisition.  It turns out we shared some common interests, ideas and thoughts as it relates to talent acquisition, coaching and leadership.  It wasn't long until we figured out that our shared experience at West Point might have been a reason for how quickly our relationship developed and how well we identified with one another.  Fred was an excellent match for our client and the opportunity but in the midst of helping him with this career move he was called back to active duty.

Fred headed off to Fort Benning in late January to await orders and prepare for a possible deployment in Iraq and we continued to stay in touch.  I wanted to keep in touch with Fred for many reasons but most importantly to support him with friendship and communication as he likely faced deployment to a war zone.  He was sacrificing for me, for all of us, and the least I could do is offer to be a friend and another connection to "home".  It then dawned on me, what if I could somehow serve Fred by sharing his story?  Better yet, what if I could help him to communicate his experiences in the Army and in Iraq with the talent acquisition community at large?  I spoke with Fred about this, he cleared it with his superiors and here we are - sharing Fred Hockett's story with the talent acquisition community.

Going forward Fred will write to me about what he is experiencing, what he is seeing and what work he is doing (within reason and without jeopardizing his role and security of course) and I will pass that along to you right here.  I will try to do very little editing of his material so everyone can get a real sense of what he is experiencing.  If you have any specific questions for Fred just email them to me (link over there on the right) and I will attempt to get them answered for you. 

Thanks for your service Fred.  Thanks for answering the call to duty and for defending the freedom and liberty we all hold so dear.  Thanks for helping to make the world safer for our children and grandchildren.  Thanks, most importantly, for your personal sacrifice; for putting yourself in harms way so we do not have to.

That said, here is Fred's first email to me dated back on March 7, 2008.   

How to Hire Great Recruiters - Part 6

We are coming down the home stretch of our discussion on the eight behavioral competencies necessary to be a great recruiter.  You can check out our previous five posts in this series by clicking on any of these links - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 

We are receiving a good number of emails offline on this series and many of the emails are really interested in the data behind these competencies and understanding how we know they predict actual performance in the job.  Additionally, we have received a number of emails asking for the behavioral interview questions, scorecard and scoring methodology we use to hire great recruiting talent. 

Regarding the data, we will share some of the data in a concluding and summary post on this series so hang in there and you will get the information.  As far as the actual behavioral interview questions and scorecard we employ to hire great recruiters.  Well, I am afraid that is proprietary and only for use by our clients and those organizations who hire us to help them hire great recruiting talent.  If you are interested in learning about this tool just send me an email.  The link is over there to the right.

With housekeeping items out of the way, let's move on to competency number 6, Tolerance of Ambiguity.   

Homula To Present Free Webcast at Human Capital Institute

Next Wednesday March 26th I will be presenting a free webcast for the Human Capital Institute's Strategic Sourcing and Recruitment learning tract entitled You Have The Names Now What? Moving Beyond Name Generation and Sourcing to Active Recruiting.  Essentially I am going to share some insight and techniques around executing the recruiting call and converting names and sourcing intelligence into talent acquisition results. 

To learn a bit more about the session you can click on the link above.  If you trust me when I say that the session will be worth surrendering one hour of your time then click here to sign up directly. 

Actually, if you plan to spend that one hour actually making recruiting calls and generating real recruiting results then go ahead and miss this; though you are likely to pick up some techniques that will make you better.  But, if you are going to be engaging in some form of administrivia, job board searching, resume piling or attending yet another HR meeting rather than getting recruiting results then you need to attend this session.

Hope to see you, or should I say hear you, on the 26th!   

How To Hire Great Recruiters - Part 5

So now we come to part 5 in our series on How To Hire A Great Recruiter.  You can check  out the first 4 parts here. 

Before we move on I just wanted to thank those of you have commented publicly on this series.  Most have agreed with the concepts we have talked about and a few haven't.  I like when people disagree with me.  I am not under the delusion that I know everything about recruiting.  While I do think my past performance in both third party recruiting and leading corporate recruiting teams to distinguishable and well documented success puts me in a unique and blessed position to offer consulting expertise in most things talent acquisition and talent management related; I also know that I am always learning and evolving.  Good debate, a constructive and meaningful battle of ideas and respectful discourse on things all combine to drive our profession and industry forward.  So, if you haven't publicly commented because you disagree with me, please feel free to get engaged.  I also hope that those of you who do agree or just want to add a general comment will also get engaged.  I want to hear from you and I value what you think.

By the way, did you know that if you are a regular reader of this blog you are considered a Bleader?  Not a fun word really but apparently, not known to me until a recent blog post by one of my favorite wine critics and Senior Editor at Wine Spectator James Laube, this is what blog readers are coming to be called.  That was the fun tidbit of information for the day.  I know, I digress and it is time to move on.  Sorry.

Now, on to part 5 of How To Hire A Great Recruiter where we will talk about the 5th behavioral competency for success in recruiting, Creativity.

The Week In Review - I am Sorry Edition

Just a quick post to say I am sorry for going a whole week without posting.  I actually received email from some readers asking where I was and when I was posting again.  That is an awesome feeling as a blogger.  If you have ever written a blog you know the time commitment and energy that is involved and sometimes you are left asking the question that Pink Floyd asks in that amazing song from everyone's college days - Comfortably Numb.

Hello?  Is there anybody out there?  Just nod if you can hear me.  Is there anyone home?

Funny how, no matter when you went to college, that song and just about anything from Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin seems to creep its way into your musical memory bank of college. 

But thanks to those of you who emailed me, you know who you are, and here is why I didn't get any posts out last week.  We have been working with several clients on some really cool projects that involve implementing a new ATS, behavioral interview design, recruiter training and complete re-engineering of recruiting process.  It is exciting, fun, important and time consuming work.  That said, I shouldn't slow down on my posting here.  Please accept my apology. 

One quick final thought.  I am about to embark upon a very fun blog collaboration with Kris Dunn over at HR Capitalist.  You will be learning more about this in the very near future but I thought I would make you aware of it now.  This blog will not change and will be my highest priority but Kris has dreamed up a cool new blog concept and I will be writing there once a week or so.