[Animal] > Five years in the Recruitosphere and this is what I have settle for as a friend.

I was rolling on the floor laughing. Classic animal.

I love being part of the recruiting world and listening to the great ideas people have. You see the efforts of people providing leadership, making all aspects of recruiting better. Examples include Michael Marlett on the mobile front, Joel Cheesmen on the SEO front, etc.

Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler then over time can measure in their annual report what changes in recruiting deliver the results.

Steve lots of good stuff in there, but one can’t speak of professional development without the notion of ego gratification. Thats like taking the profit motive away from the free market system; people move forward for all kinds of reasons, but ego is not a small one.

If you could identify the significant changes in the industry over the life of the equine and determine who the players were and are who thought of those changes first or who developed the tools that enabled the changes to become an intergal part of the industy and who took them to the next plateau.

Instead of trying to determine who can eat the most oysters on the half shell maybe who was the first guy to eat an oyster on the half shell and just how hungry he had to be to eat the first one and how did he convince other people that an oyster on the half shell was really edible.

Was it thought leadership or desperation or curiousity that led to a significant change or just an exhibisitionist personality with a need to be noticed? In any of the above states of being if it sparked an enterprise wide change that would be an influencer. Sort of like the guy who invented cocktail sauce so other people would eat oysters on the half shell and call them wonderful

Now that I’ve thought about it, there really is a strong tie between the voyeurism associated with pornography and the voyeurism of self-professed thought leaders (their bios claim thought leadership status so it must be true). Thought leadership has become to many a score – the number of points here on RBC, the number of hits in a Google search, the number of conferences one speaks at, the number of emails you send out each day to your “list”…

A thought leader is someone who makes you think so you can then act – often in a direction that was not part of the initial plan of attack. There are a handful of people in this business whom I respect and whose thoughts and opinions I value; they’re the ones I call on the phone, often just to say “hello” – we speak without an agenda because inspiration can occur fleetingly like an Andy Rooney “ever wonder why?” moment that can only occur when two or more people are free to toss out thoughts and ideas without the spectre of judgment. True thought leaders do not prosletyze – they enable, they collaboratively cajole, they take back what they give. Thought leadership is not at all a one-way street…

Now that I’ve thought about it more, the people who influence me are the ones whom I hug or almost hug when we meet. Real influencers cannot be placed on pedestals or lists – they must be valued as very close relationships. They are welcome at my house, at my table, to meet my family. I care about them and their lives, their professional conquests and their personal issues. Can you say this about the people whom you initially placed on your list???

BTW, Dave is someone who has demonstrated his ascension to thought leadership status but has, because he is one of the most modest people I have ever know, never done anything to promote this – other than results. His views and actions on work, networking, recruiting, and leadership warrant his inclusion on every list. If you’ve only been recruiting for 10 years or less, do a little research on him. When Dave speaks, I listen (and you know how I like to talk).