Life's Milestones: Weddings and Births

This week started off with many "new beginnings". One of my best friends got married. She is one of my idols - the epitome of patience. She did things her way, never hurrying. She earned degrees from respected universities, holds a doctorate, bought her home, and lived life. She found the man with whom she wants to spend her life and married him. She always knew that life would give back what she put in. Even with others pushing and prodding her, she stood her ground and took her time. I think of her when I am impatient about growing this business. I am jumping from one thing to another trying to get a return on the investment of my time because I feel the urgency of "first to market" or "hitting while the iron is hot". I have to remind myself to be patient - put in the right work and the returns will come.

Right after the wedding I drove to DE to assist my cousin in delivering her first child. It is always a pleasure being able to help another woman give birth - and I so enjoy not being in the hot seat. My cousin is my hero. Her brow never broke a sweat and she delivered naturally - sans epidural. Welcome to the world Rebekah!

I have been thinking about these moments constantly. About how we all work hard for our achievements and how these two women have only hit a milestone, because in life there are no finite goals - just steps along the continuous paths.

We are working hard to make some major strides before 2008 finishes and it seems overwhelming at times. It would be great to hand off some of the worries and work, but I believe that we are poised to take our step soon. The key is to not scream (at least not too loudly - and not at the kids).

Test of Professional Friendships

OK. Here goes. I am just going to ask for help - let's see what happens.

We are trying to form partnerships with the big guys: Monster.com, The Ladders, Dice.com, etc. To do so, we have to show our value. Well, we know quite a few staffing professionals who post jobs on these sites. We are going to ask them to add this tag line to their job listings:

We appreciate candidates with Val-ID-ate profiles!

The goal is to prove the benefits to staffing professionals who have to sort through a million resumes and to obviously gain endorsement for our services.

Our Feedback Tour is proving to be quite effective in providing proof that YES recruiters would appreciate receiving proof of credentials at the start of the hiring process. ESPECIALLY with the increase in resume fraud (too many people on the market competing for the same jobs tend to make people embellish more - go figure).

My belief is that this should be straightforward (unless the staffing company has to pay per word for their job postings).

What could be the objections?...