The 2016 Fall Conference may be over. And the 2017 National Convention is yet to come. But you can still engage in face-to-face recruiter networking with your trading partners. In fact, there will be a whole slew of Regional Core Group meetings in the coming months, and the first one is this month in Ohio!

I’m talking about the annual Ohio Regional Core Group meeting. This event takes place every fall in the beautiful city of Columbus. While the city location hasn’t changed, we are moving the meeting to another venue within the city.

Below is the logistical information for this year:

OHIO REGIONAL CORE GROUP MEETING
Wednesday, November 16
Hilton Easton
3900 Chagrin Drive, Columbus, Ohio 43219
9:45 a.m. to 2 p.m.
$65 per person

Ohio: the heart of it all

This regional core group has been one of the most successful core groups in the history of Top Echelon Network. It has been in operation for several years, as far back as when I started as the Director of Network Operations. (Although at the time, I was called the “Membership Coordinator.”)

If you’d like to attend this core group meeting, simply send an email to drea@topechelon.com and say, “Please register myself and/or (associate’s name) and charge my credit card on file for $(registration fee).”

Remember, there are four main types of core groups in Top Echelon’s recruiting network:

1. Traditional Core Groups

These are the ones you form yourself by building relationships with other Network recruiters. They typically involve recruiters that work in the same industry and niche that you do.

2. Non-Traditional Core Groups

These are also ones that you form yourself by building relationships with other Network recruiters. However, they’re not necessarily comprised of recruiters that work the same areas that you do. Instead, they’re usually more related to the business side of recruiting or other general recruiting-related topics.

3. Regional Core Groups

These are the ones that involve recruiters meeting face-to-face based upon geographic location (like the Ohio meeting).

4. Virtual Core Groups

During these meetings, Network recruiters share hot job orders and candidates during teleconference calls. They also share information about the activity they’re seeing and ideas for increased production.

If you have questions about any of these groups, please give me a call at 330.455.1433, x156.

The 2016 Top Echelon Fall Conference may be over . . . but the memories will last a lifetime! (And as always, we have a photo album to prove it.)

The Fall Conference occurred earlier this month at the Sheraton O’Hare Suites Hotel in Chicago. Here are just some of the highlights of the event:

• Veteran industry trainer and speaker Scott Love presented three timely, hard-hitting sessions about topics that attendees could implement on their desks immediately.
• Network members shared experiences, expertise, and ideas with one another during the formal networking sessions like our “Business-Building Discussion Groups.”
• Network members shared hot job orders and candidates with other recruiters who work in their same industry and/or niche.
• Attendees had the opportunity to spend time with their trading partners on a face-to-face basis.
• Attendees also had the opportunity to meet new members and build new trading partner relationships.
• Network members sang the night away during our infamous “Network Reception.” Beverages were consumed, fun was had, and photos were taken.

Photo album fun

Speaking of that final point, we have plenty of karaoke shots in our “2016 Top Echelon Fall Conference Photo Album.” That album happens to be on Facebook. So, if you haven’t “liked” Top Echelon, do it now by navigating here.

Once that is out of the way, I invite you to do two things:

1. Browse through our photo album.
2. If you attended the Fall Conference, submit photos to us that we can add to the album. Some of the best photos are invariably submitted by Network members who attended the event. I’m sure this year’s Fall Conference will be no exception.

See photos from the 2016 Fall Conference!

Wait, I fibbed. I want you to do one more thing: save the date for the 2017 National Convention. As we announced last week, next year’s convention will be held in Orlando on Tuesday, April 24, and Wednesday, April 25.

Save those dates! Plan to join us in Florida for another great training and recruiter networking event.

At Top Echelon, we want to help you make more placements. That’s our mission statement, and it’s what drives everything we do for our customers—especially members of the Top Echelon recruiter network.

We hope you enjoy our photo albums, and we also hope you join us in Orlando. More fun, more friends, more placements.

Hiring is at the heart of the recruiting profession. If companies aren’t hiring, then the profession suffers. When companies are bringing on people left and right, the hearts of recruiters all around the world soar like an eagle on a patriotic breeze.

So, the correlation is unmistakable. As companies’ willingness to hire goes, so goes recruiting . . . and your desk, for that matter.

With all of that in mind, we wanted to “take the temperature” of our recruiter network members as far as this topic is concerned. Our thermometer? A Members’ Area poll, of course. The question, please:

Has hiring slowed down since the beginning of the year?

Results:

The choice of answers that we provided is listed below, along with the percentage of Network recruiters that selected each one:

• Yes, quite a bit. — 17.6%
• Yes, a little bit.— 27.7%
• It’s stayed the same. — 34.5%
• No, it’s increased a little. — 15.1%
• No, it’s increased a lot. — 5.0%

Hiring (or firing) on all cylinders?

We are going to tackle the results of this poll the same way we tackled the results last week. That means the following:

• Disregarding the category of “stayed the same.” Obviously, this category ultimately contributes nothing to our analysis.
• Adding the two categories that indicate hiring has slowed since the beginning of the year.
• Adding the two categories that indicate it has increased since the beginning of the year.
• Contrasting the sum of the two categories.
• Stirring while bringing to a boil, allowing 10 minutes to cool before serving.

As before, let’s apply the strategy to the results of this poll:

• 17.6% of recruiters who say hiring has slowed “quite a bit” + 27.7% of recruiters who say hiring has slowed “a little bit” = 45.3%
• 15.1% of recruiters who say it has “increased a little” + 5.0% of recruiters who say hiring has “increased a lot” = 20.1%

When viewed in this manner, it’s obvious that more recruiters believe that hiring has slowed down than believe hiring has increased. In fact, the ratio is more than two-to-one (45.3% to 20.1%).

Once again, as we mentioned last week, it appears as though the economy and the employment marketplace have both gotten a little “soft around the edges” since the start of 2016. The upcoming Presidential Election might very well be a contributing factor.

However, the election will be over in a month’s time. Then the start of a new year will be there. And then we’ll find out for sure if this slowdown is just a blip on the radar . . . or the beginning of a long-term trend.

Nearly three-quarters of members in Top Echelon’s recruiting network also use the Big Biller recruiting software. This means that most of you can benefit from our next Big Biller Training Tuesday webinar session. After all, it’s about business development!

With only two months left in the year, this is the perfect time to analyze your desk and prepare for the rapidly approaching new year. In short, you want to do everything you did well this year even better next year. You want to make more placements, bill more, and work less.

Sounds great, right?

Well, if you use Big Biller, then this is the place to start. (If you don’t use Big Biller, click here for your FREE Big Biller 30-day trial.)

Business development bonanza

In the meantime, below is all of the critical information associated with our next Big Biller Training Tuesday webinar:

Big Biller Training Tuesday Webinar: “Business Development Best Practices in Big Biller”

Live Webinar Date: November 1, 2016

Description:

As a recruiter, it’s vitally important that you have a way to track your contacts and/or companies through your sales funnel. In the next Big Biller Training Tuesday webinar session, we’ll show you how to do just that within the database!

That’s because this session will focus on business development methods within Big Biller. Training & Education Manager Krista Ridgeway will review the following for attendees:

• Importing prospects
• Tagging records
• Managing the sales funnel through Hotlists
• Scheduling follow-ups
• Keeping track of all communication

We want to help build your recruiting business. That’s why you should join Krista on November 1 and learn “Business Development Best Practices in Big Biller”!

Webinar Length: Approximately 20-25 minutes

Watch this Big Biller Training Tuesday video!

If you have any questions about this Training Tuesday webinar or the Big Biller applicant tracking system for recruiters and recruiting CRM, send an email to support@topechelon.com. Remember, Top Echelon provides free training on the first, third, and fourth Tuesdays of every month. Plus, we have Recruit Webinars on the second Tuesday of each month.

You can’t get away from our free training!