Friday, August 20, 2010

To Be or Not To Be… an Independent Recruiter

Well, I did it… finally made the decision to go independent. After much soul searching, debating and comparing scenarios it was abundantly clear to me that if I truly wanted to become an independent recruiter and be my own boss, the time is now!

One of the deciding factors was the fact that so many corporations are now outsourcing recruiting and HR. A friend of mine who works with a subsidiary of a major telecom carrier informed me that all of their recruiting will be outsourced within the next few months. Also it seems that more and more of my colleagues, senior recruiters with 15+ years in the business, are working through RPO companies on contract assignments.

I discovered that the demand for high producing recruiters, who are technically savvy, socially networked and can hit the ground running is at the pinnacle right now. In fact some of these RPO companies offer benefits and even pay a portion of the consultant’s insurance. What was I waiting for????

So I gathered my courage, dusted off and upgraded my home office, updated my resume and opened for business. Now it’s time to make the announcement to my social media network so here goes… posting it on my blog, Facebook and LinkedIn pages as well as tweeting the news!

And just to confirm this was the right decision… I have started a contract assignment with Capital One as of August 2nd and absolutely love it! Got the gig in less than a week from a Facebook buddy who I had never met in person. (See… social networking really does work;) Now calls and emails are coming in weekly with at least 3-5 requests for a senior recruiter, which I happily pass along to my network. The moral of this story is… do what you love; stay networked and help as many people as you can. It will change your life and probably someone else’s as well.