All for one and one for all…. when you hear that phrase it may make you think of The Three Musketeers, an old war movie (In Harms Way, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Dirty Dozen) or an Our Gang/ Little Rascals episode (Alfalfa, Spanky and Buckwheat – coming together on a secret mission).   Either way, the phrase is alive and well in the start-up community.

As we get to know more and more start-ups, one thing becomes very clear, we are all working hard to deliver on our passion to build a meaningful and prosperous business.   As a result, we try to leverage all of our contacts for support and create opportunities in order to do so.  In my earlier post, I talked about how we have been able to meet some really smart and passionate people to help us with our mission.   Ironically (or — not really), we have met these folks via other start-ups.  There exists in this community a strong desire for all of us to do well even if that means sharing resources.

How does this make sense?  Well, learning from other start-ups helps you advance and build your business quicker.  Being able to help other start-ups builds community and loyalty  – and, you never know where that will take you down the road.  In addition, we have discovered that just by meeting new people, start-ups or otherwise, every meeting leads to something good – whether its finding resources for your business or meeting another person who is well connected to a community you can leverage to do business.

We have met many great people through our start-up network and learned a lot about developing an online product in an efficient and timely way – on the flipside, we made a lot of mistakes (learning opportunities) along the way as well. Building relationships with the start-up community has made us smarter and more efficient than we have been in the past.

But the benefits don’t stop there:

1. Instant Camaraderie – Start-ups do appreciate the stress and difficulty of building a business – especially in this economy (we often joke that we couldn’t have picked a worse time to launch a new start-up!).  Having ‘lived through’ the pain creates a strong bond, even with people you have just met.
2. Start-ups Want Everyone to Succeed – The people we have met in the start up community will go out of their way to help you if they can, for they have learned that helping other start-ups will benefit them greatly in the long run.   At the very least, it provides an opportunity to engage with a new audience about your product to help spread the word and build awareness.
3. Securing Efficient Resources – As discussed in my earlier post, most of the resources we have secured that have really worked out for us have come from start-up contact referrals.
4. Learning from Others Mistakes – Just by meeting with start-ups you can learn so much about what NOT to do as well as what TO DO.   And, it feels great when you can offer solid advice and support back.
5. Building that Ever Important Network – Yes we all know how very important this is for most of the time it’s not what you know but who you know.  Having a network that is well tied-in to VCs, other entrepreneurs and resources has proven invaluable for us and the other start-ups we have met. It’s amazing how fast your network grows as a result of meetings you have.  Two degrees of separation really hits home — everyone knows someone that may be able to help evangelize your mission or product.

Getting involved in a start up and the start up community has been an extremely valuable experience – both personally and professionally.  Of course there are many ups and downs, but the learning experience and the connections you build along make the hard times more than tolerable.   No matter what your end goal, having the opportunity to participate in the start up community gives you the opportunity to gain exposure to well-connected, smart and powerful individuals.  In some respects – please excuse the cliché — it restores your faith in humanity as well as business – for there are people out there who will give you the shirt of their back in order to help build a business that is meaningful and helps the economy overall.

No, I am not talking about community service, although it’s always good to give back to your community when you can.  I am talking about helping companies out – for FREE.  Yep, you heard it, for FREE.

For the last few years working on a start up, I  have begun to notice some trends taking shape.  The one I would like to address in this article is the notion that passionate workers often like to continue building their skill sets outside of their current work environment.  Something I hadn’t seen in my days in Corporate America but a dynamic that seems to be getting more popular  – especially in the past 6 months.

Being a scrappy start up, we need to be creative about how we find resources to help us and, even more importantly, how we ‘pay’ them.   Having the ability to leverage passionate executives has helped us tremendously over the past several months.  To our benefit, we have managed to find a small group of people who are willing to help us in exchange for our highly leveraged networks and their ability to learn about things they can’t in their current positions (think social media, web applications and the like).

It’s a win/win for both sides – we get the benefit of a highly experienced and passionate individual who is genuinely interested in what we are doing, they get the benefit of building their skill sets and network outside of the workplace.

But really, you ask, why would anyone want to do it?  Well for some folks it a constructive way to channel their passion, for others it’s a way to help out a friend in need (Karma, always a good thing) and for others it’s a way to develop a solid network outside of their current work environment.  Sometimes, it’s all three.

Additionally, being in the recruiting space, I can tell you it will have a positive impact on how recruiters and hiring managers evaluate you as a candidate –  heck, I’d even go so far as to say it might become an experience requirement for companies over time.  Here’s why:

1. Passion Statement – Showing passion for what you do is critical in any job.  In fact, it’s one of the hardest things to screen for AND I would say one of the most important characteristics a person can have.  Taking your passion outside of your work environment while still being a top performer will get recruiters and hiring managers to stand up and take notice.
2. Street Cred – Having the ability to say you’ve helped a start up or another company build a product or drive revenue gets immediate attention from recruiters and hiring managers.
3. Competitive Edge - Just by having volunteer work on your resume for legitimate companies who are doing great things will give you an edge against candidates who do not.
4. Build Your Network – By helping out you are able to show potentially well-connected executives your work product and build your network in a constructive and valuable way.
5. Gain Exposure to New Areas – You can ‘test drive’ different industries or functions to see if its something you might want to do on a more full time basis in the future.
6. Pay it Forward – As we all know, Karma is a good thing.  When you help someone without agenda it will pay back over time in spades.

So there you have it, if your passionate about what you do — YOU have the opportunity to help someone else be successful.  Take advantage of it and go make it happen.

I am an old Clint Eastwood fan. I love his movies (well, except Unforgiven – except for the ending when he kills everyone). There is a line in the movie “Magnum Force” where Dirty Harry (Clint) says, “Man’s got to know his limitations”. Great line. As an executive recruiter, I often think about this quote – especially when I am chatting with a candidate who absolutely feels that he/she is qualified to be a “General Manager” or CEO or other Big Kahuna.

I think most exec recruiters will agree that many (many) exec candidates have a very self-inflated view of skills, experiences and capabilities. (OK – - many exec recruiters probably feel the same way about themselves). When it comes to recruiting a General Manager or other role that has actual P&L responsibility, you will not be considered a candidate unless……wait for it……you are currently running one. What I mean here is that YOU….right now….running an actual P&L. Just to be clear. This means that right now you have actual bottom-line management experience…managing both the “P” and the “L”. If this aint you…..you are NOT qualified to run one. (sorry to be blunt)

Obviously, this statement is qualified depending on the size of the company (or business unit) and the scale and the scope of the business.

Example – If Microsoft is looking for a new person to run all of MSN – meaning the entire business….the person who will ultimately report to SteveB and who will be the receiver of his wrath when he/she does not hit the numbers, the fact that you ran business development for some mid-size internet company does NOT make you qualified for the job. I know you think running a BD team of 10 managing some strategic alliances with a few top tech companies makes you qualified but the fact of the matter is that you are NOT

Now, if an early stage startup is looking for a CEO who has extensive contacts within the media sector and they really need to be able to leverage those contacts…..and the priority for the company is to raise capital or forge strategic alliances…..and the company is only 4 or 5 people……YES, the BD guy with decent credentials may get the call (possible…..but not likely). Even in this case the BD/CEO guy will soon be replaced by a real GM as soon as the company starts to scale.

So, I know what you are thinking. How do you become a GM? That my friends is an entirely different subject that I will pontificate on in a future posting.

New Hiring Wave

I know it is common place to bemoan how badly the executive employment market is.  Everyday we hear about companies laying off hundreds if not thousands of people.  There is anecdotal evidence, however, that at least in the technology and media space, some companies are about to start hiring people again.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been contacted by 4 different search firms concerning 4 different senior level Talent Acquisition or Executive Recruiting positions they’ve recently been hired to fill.  All 4 of these positions are with large, industry leading companies.  Considering the level, scale and scope of these positions it is clear to me that some companies realize the current economic environment does not eliminate the demographic fact that our population is getting older and that there will soon be more jobs then there are people to fill them.  According to RHR, America’s largest 500 companies will lose 50% of their senior managers in the next 5 years.

Come to BusinessElite and we will help you get your resumes ready.  A new wave of hiring is coming…..sooner than you think!

How big should my LinkedIn network be?  How many Facebook friends do I need? How will I leverage all of this effort building my on-line presence into a new job opportunity or career when the time comes?  We all know its possible,  no one is “secure,” given the economy.  The above are all reasonable questions, but all directionally wrong.  As employers have come to grips with the next generations’ love affair with personal brand, employees, in particular executives, need to embrace the bullet-proof career plan.  How good is your network?  It’s only as good as the 2-3 key calls, emails or “Tweets” necessary to get you into the slipstream of great job opportunities.

How many of us have measured the value of our networks beyond their robustness?  How many of us have sifted through the myriad of people we have accepted “net” links from and identified the critical few that can do something for us when the time comes?

(Enter the shameless plug: BusinessElite was designed not to create yet another electronic rolodex, but rather invite the very best professional manager talent into our community, and, with that leverage, attract the real corporate “talent brokers” who are looking for a more efficient and effective way of sourcing talent that matches their client’s job specification.  We intend to provide our talent that very value by putting you in front of the best opportunities with the best recruiters creating a career network for talent that sustains and most importantly presents the opportunities relevant to your background and career trajectory.  Exit shameless plug)

What else can you do to bullet-proof your career?

-Hire the best people you can for your team (yes, BusinessElite will work for you as a Talent and Hiring Manager-last shameless plug)–the best teams are the most lay-off resistant, no one cans the executive, even if the business is going away, who built a high-performance team.  The company will make a role for you in the new world

-Never turn down a recruiter’s call or ping or (Contact email from BusinessElite–not a shameless plug, a fact)

-In the category of Duh!  Keep your resume’ up to date and build it with metrics that demonstrates your executive competence–lose the fluff, focus on the metrics; if you don’t have any…start creating some, your peers are!

-Be a leader first, functional expert second–there is a dearth of real leadership talent in corporate America, people who can motivate and mobilize a team toward a coherent strategy are the exception, become on of these value creators and you will never want for growth opportunities–did I mention dearth?

-Tangential to above–if your company wants to invest time in your leadership capability, take full advantage, if you are too busy to take the time off work to develop competence, then you soon won’t be too busy!

According to both recent market data and anecdotal data from my recruiting friends, the employment market may have bottomed out. It now seems likely that recruiting will start to pick up again within the coming months. I am of the opinion that this “Great Recession” has fundamentally changed the behavior in which companies recruit – and it does not bode well for either corporate or search firm recruiters.

Many people I know seem to think that as the economy gets better, companies will not only go back to recruiting as usual, but they will start a frantic pace of hiring to make up for the deep people cuts made during the past year. After all, here in the US we tend to have short-term memory loss. For example, remember last year when gas prices pushed $5 a gallon? The tiny Smart Car was flying out of auto showrooms. Now that gas is under $3 a gallon, Smart Cars are just sitting there. Some think that this historical behavior will translate to recruiting as Corporate America rekindles their recruiting programs. I am not so convinced.

I am guessing that in the coming months, the number of open positions in many companies will slowly start to climb. But will this increase in recruiter workload be balanced by a proportional increase in recruiting resources?  Probably not.

Whether we like it or not, “management” generally views the HR function as one giant cost center – now under constant scrutiny to be reduced, off-shored and downsized. Even the most progressive companies tend to look at HR as a necessary evil and as those of us in recruiting already know, recruiting is the bastard function within HR – overworked, underfunded and generally, underappreciated.

Search firm recruiters are likely to be just as impacted long term by the “Great Recession” as their corporate recruiting counterparts. Companies are likely to readjust how they think about hiring new external talent – thinking twice (perhaps 3 times) before they decide to replace a fired or departing executive. All corporate budgets are now under constant review and even the most confident hiring manager will think carefully before spending $150K on that retained executive search.

Some folks have already proved this to be the case. Recently, I chatted with one of my old recruiting buddies.  She is working for a top tech company and told me she is recruiting for over 30 executive positions.  Q4 2009 was her busiest recruiting quarter.  She went on to tell me, however, that their recruiting budgets have been severely cut and current workloads are crushing for her and all of her recruiting colleagues. When I was at Microsoft – granted 6 years ago – we had what seemed to be unlimited recruiting resources. It seems even the most profitable of companies are reluctant to unloosen already tightened budgets.

The Great Recession will hopefully soon be over. The affects of it, I’m afraid, may last a very long time. Companies will adjust how they go about acquiring the “best” possible talent and, recruiters will ultimately have to adjust as well.

The phrase “InPlay” is commonly used by executive recruiters to describe Talent, Clients or other pertinent issues of relevance.  Candidates who are “InPlay” are those who are active on a specific executive search engagement.  Clients who are “InPlay” are those who are actively looking for Talent.

For us at BusinessElite, InPlay is where we will post issues of relevance to executive Talent, Recruiters, Hiring Managers and others who are interested in all aspects of the Talent ecosystem.  We look forward to your comments and feedback.

BusinessElite is an exclusive social recruiting community that connects top talent with top companies.  Built by executive recruiting and social media executives, BusinessElite uses web technologies and proprietary matching algorithms to connect top talent to Manager, Director and VP-plus level positions at industry leading companies and venture-backed startups.

“Our vision is to create the elite online community for top company recruiters and accomplished industry talent – using technology to match the needs of one to the capabilities of the other.”