At Top Echelon, we believe in the value that industry events like conferences and conventions offer.

We also believe in the value that membership in state, regional, and national recruiting associations and organizations offers.

Those are just two of the reasons that we’re both sponsoring and attending a number of industry events and association conferences throughout all of 2012—and two of those events are this week!

One of them is the Illinois Search & Staffing Association (ISSA) Midwest Conference, and the other is the New England Association of Personnel Services (NEAPS) Annual Conference.

Below is information regarding both events . . .

Illinois Search & Staffing Association (ISSA) Midwest Conference

The ISSA Midwest Conference will be held on Thursday, May 3, at the CareerBuilder offices in Chicago, Illinois.  Top Echelon Internet Strategies Manager Todd Bossler will be in attendance at the event.

Among the speakers scheduled to present during the conference:

• Shally Steckerl of The Sourcing Institute
• Mary B. Lucas, B.D.
• Tom Erb, President of Tallann Resources
• Aaron Green, ASA and founder of Professional Staffing Group

From 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, there will be a networking reception that includes the sponsors of the conference.  Top Echelon is a Gold Sponsor for this event, so be sure to seek out Todd and say hello.

We’re all about networking . . . and that’s especially true of Todd.

Click here for more information about this conference.

New England Association of Personnel Services (NEAPS) Annual Conference

Yours truly will be in attendance at this event, which will be held from Thursday, May 3, through Saturday, May 5.  The location is the Sheraton Harborside Hotel in Portsmouth, N.H.

The theme of this year’s NEAPS Conference is “Betting on Success in 2012.”  On Friday, there will be a special “Dinner and Casino Night,” which includes a delicious multi-station buffet dinner that features several New England favorites.

In addition, there will be a silent auction with a number of attractive items.  Among them are Boston Red Sox tickets, New England Patriots tickets, a weekend in the White Mountains, and training sessions by industry favorite Barb Bruno.

This year’s charitable contributions for the silent auction are earmarked for the Richie McFarland Children’s Center.

If you’re attending the NEAPS Conference this week, I look forward to seeing you there and speaking with you in person about your Network Membership, recruiting in general, and other topics you’d like to discuss.

Click here for more information about this conference.

These are just two of the events that we’ll be attending in 2012.  Rest assured that we’ll let you know of other conferences we plan to attend in the future.

As I said, we believe in industry events and we believe in these associations and organizations.  We also believe that you can gain a tremendous amount of value by attending . . . and that’s why we’ll be there.

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330.455.1433, Ext. 172
MDemaree@TopEchelon.com
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Well, maybe “mania” is a bit strong of a word to use.  Maybe.

But as Mark Demaree announced earlier, the site and the dates for the 2013 National Convention have been set.  Not only that, Drea Codispoti announced the site and dates for the 2012 Fall Conference earlier this month.

Sure, there are plenty of details to release, loose ends to tie up, etc., etc.  However, I’d like to focus on an important aspect of these two upcoming events:

The official hashtags for each.

As you may remember (or perhaps you don’t), the official hashtag for the 2012 National Convention was #TENAT12.

Many recruiters used that hashtag while tweeting at the National Convention in Nashville.  Consequently, we now have hashtags for the 2012 Fall Conference and 2013 National Convention.  Because fair is fair.

As you might imagine, the hashtag for this year’s Fall Conference is as follows:

#TEFALL12

That would mean the hashtag for the next year’s National Convention is this:

#TENAT13

As I’ve mentioned previously, all you have to do is include this hashtag with every one of your tweets regarding the Fall Conference and/or National Convention.  Here’s an example:

So far, this is the best Top Echelon Network event I have attended . . . this year . . . in Chicago. #TEFALL12

You don’t have to physically be at either of these events to tweet about them, either.  You can use the hashtag even if you’re just tweeting your thoughts from the comfort of your own home . . . in your pajamas . . . while you watch an episode of Glee.

The power is in your hands.

— — —

330.455.1433, x125
MDeutsch@TopEchelon.com
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I have great news: the dates AND the location for the 2012 Top Echelon Network Fall Conference have been set!

Those dates are Thursday, October 11, and Friday, October 12.

The location, of course, is Chicago.  More specifically, though, the location is the Sheraton Gateway Suites.  We’ve held the Fall Conference at the Suites countless times in the past, but last year we deviated from that routine and the site of the conference was the Embassy Suites.

However, we’re excited to be back at the Sheraton, and we’re excited to invite you to join us in Chicago for another great event.  There was a healthy turnout recently at the National Convention in Nashville, and we anticipate that attendance at the Fall Conference could be even higher.

Below are some things you should look for in the weeks and months ahead:

• The cost of the convention—We’ll be releasing “Early Bird Registration” soon.

• The room rate for the hotel—We’re in the process of negotiating that, and we’ll announce that, as well.

• The speaker for the convention and the preliminary agenda—We’ll release this information at the same time we release “Early Bird Registration.”

In the meantime, circle the dates for the Fall Conference on your calendar: Thursday, October 11, and Friday, October 12.  Make plans to join us in Chicago.

And remember . . . I’ll know if you’re not there.

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330.455.1433, x156
Drea@TopEchelon.com
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There are many recruiters who don’t want to take time out of the office to attend events like the 2012 Top Echelon Network National Convention. They believe that time out of the office will hamper them in their efforts to make placements.

Judging by what happened with the Preferred Member recruiters who attended the convention recently, that argument doesn’t hold much water.

That’s because a total of nine recruiters made placements while they were attending the convention in Nashville, Tenn.  These are recruiters with offices all around the country, working in different industries and with different business models.

Regardless of those differences, nine of them shared at least one thing in common: closing deals without physically being in the office.

The advent of technology is a major contributor, of course.  These days, all a recruiter needs is a Smartphone and access to the Internet to stay connected to their office:

• They can make phone calls to candidates.
• They can make phone calls to clients.
• They can make phone calls to other people in their office.
• If they use an online recruiting software program like Big Biller, they can access their database for important information.

In fact, in regards to that last point, Joanna Spaun of MJ Recruiters, LLC logged in to her Big Biller account to retrieve the phone number of a candidate.  Her retrieval of that information allowed her to call the candidate and close the deal.

Click here to see a photo of Spaun after she made her placement.

Nobody likes to spend time out of the office, especially when your pipeline is stuffed full of time-sensitive job orders.  After all, “time kills all deals.”

Attending events like the National Convention isn’t necessarily a deal-killer, though.  Recruiters can—and do—step out of training sessions to make calls and take calls . . . and sometimes, they have a smile on their face when they return.

And that’s because they just made a placement.

— — —

330.455.1433, x125
MDeutsch@TopEchelon.com
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.
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We’re back!  From the Top Echelon Network National Convention, that is!

I might be biased, but this convention was one of the better ones we’ve held in recent memory.  In fact, we had several recruiters who expressed those same sentiments to us when the convention ended.  (So if I’m suffering from a delusion, it’s a GROUP delusion.)

That’s the good news.  Here’s the even better news: we documented the whole thing!

We documented the convention in the form of photos and videos, of course.  Membership Development Coordinator Drea Codispoti and I handled the documentation duties, employing two cameras (plus my iPhone) to capture all of the action.  I even posted a series of photos through my Twitter account while I was at the convention, sort of a blow-by-blow timeline of events.

You can still view the photos in question by visiting my Twitter profile.  Remember, you don’t have to “follow” me to view these photos.  All you have to do is look through my “recent images,” which are located on the left-hand side of my profile, about halfway down the page.

Although, if you do have a Twitter account, I would encourage you to “follow” me.  That way, you don’t have to visit my profile all the time to see my latest tweets, not to mention the fact that it would be a huge ego boost for me.

Anyway, these Twitter photos are going to be posted to the Top Echelon Network Fan Page eventually.  Not right away, but eventually.  That’s because I’m going to post the photos that I didn’t tweet during the convention to Facebook first.

In fact, I’ve already posted some photos!  They’re in the “2012 Top Echelon Network National Convention Photo Album” on the Network Fan Page.

Click here to visit the “2012 Top Echelon Network National Convention Photo Album.”

Now here’s the fun part—I’ll be updating the Fan Page with photos every day, three or four or more, from now throughout the month of April.  I’ll also be adding photo descriptions and tagging recruiters in the process.  I whole-heartedly encourage you to visit the page as often as you can, “like” the photos, and comment to your heart’s content.

In the meantime, if you attended the convention, took some photos, and wouldn’t mind seeing them added to the photo album, send them to me at marketing@TopEchelon.com.

The convention has ended . . . but the fun doesn’t have to!

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330.455.1433, x125
MDeutsch@TopEchelon.com
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.
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At Top Echelon Network, we practice what we preach!  That’s why you’ll see us at a lot of recruiting industry events in 2012.

What we preach, of course, is networking.  How we’ll practice it is by attending a number of recruiting conferences and conventions around the country.

In fact, we’ll be in attendance at six industry events in 2012, and I wanted to take a moment to promote these six events in The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.  In the interest of brevity, though, three will be included in this blog post, and the other three will be included in next week’s issue of the newsletter.

All three of the events in this blog post will occur during the month of May.  Those three are as follows, and I’ve included the name of the event, the date, the location, the website address, and the names of the Top Echelon employee (or employees) attending the event:

Illinois Search & Staffing Association (ISSA) Midwest Conference

Date—Thursday, May 3
Location—CareerBuilder offices in Chicago, Illinois
Website—http://issaworks.com
Top Echelon employee in attendance—Internet Strategies Manager Todd Bossler

New England Association of Personnel Services (NEAPS) Annual Conference

Date—Thursday, May 3, through Saturday, May 5
Location—Sheraton Harborside Hotel in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Website—http://www.neaps.org
Top Echelon employee in attendance—President Mark Demaree (yes, that’s me)

Ohio Association of Executive Search Professionals (OAESP) Spring Workshop

Date—Monday, May 14
Location—Embassy Suites-Columbus Airport in Columbus, Ohio
Website—http://www.oaesp.org
Top Echelon employees in attendance—President Mark Demaree and Hiring Hook Salesman Mike McCrae

I wholeheartedly encourage you to check out the websites of the above associations, and if you’re already a member or live in the area, to attend these upcoming events.  We believe in the value that these events offer, including the networking opportunities they present, and that’s why we’re proud to sponsor them.

We also hope to see you there!

— — —

330.455.1433, Ext. 172
MDemaree@TopEchelon.com
Connect with Mark on LinkedIn.
Follow Mark on Twitter.

The 2012 Top Echelon Network National Convention is next week!  Specifically, it’s scheduled for Thursday, March 22, through Saturday, March 24, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tenn.

As you probably know, Top Echelon Network is represented well on the various social media websites, including Twitter.  As such, it’s common not only for us to tweet during special events like the upcoming National Convention, but it’s also common for the Preferred Member recruiters who attend such an event to tweet during it, too.

This makes sense, since we all want to share what we’re learning and experiencing.  However, to facilitate a more organized tweeting environment (if that’s even possible), I’d like to present the “Official Hashtag of the 2012 National Convention.”

First, that sounds more important than it actually is, which was by design.  And second, it’s easier to use than it sounds.

A hashtag is a tool within Twitter used to aggregate the conversation surrounding a topic, or in this case, an event.  You create a hashtag by combining the pound sign (#) with a word, acronym, or phrase.

As an example, this is the “Official Hashtag of the 2012 National Convention”:

#TENAT12

All you have to do is include this hashtag with every one of your tweets regarding the National Convention.  And you don’t have to actually be at the convention to do it.  You can use the hashtag even if you’re just tweeting your thoughts from the comfort of your own home . . . or while you’re at the office . . . or via your smartphone.

When I tweet this blog post, I’ll insert #TENAT12 at the end of my tweet.  Later, if you conduct a search in Twitter using #TENAT12, Twitter will find and present all the tweets that include that hashtag.  Once you do that, you can also view “Realtime” results for that hashtag.

So if you’re attending the convention, I look forward to seeing you there, and I encourage you to tweet heavily.  If you’re not attending the convention, shame on you, but I encourage you to tweet heavily, anyway.  (And as always, tweet responsibly.)

— — —

330.455.1433, x125
MDeutsch@TopEchelon.com
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.
Follow Matt on Twitter.

At Top Echelon Network, we are ALL about continuous education and training.  After all, we traditionally hold two conferences a year (the National Convention and the Fall Conference), and we’ve been offering FREE online recruiter training webinars this year.

So in addition to joining us for the upcoming National Convention at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tenn., we’d also like to invite you to attend the Fordyce Forum 2012, a conference for search and placement professionals from the publishers of The Fordyce Letter.  This year’s event is scheduled for Thursday, June 7, and Friday, June 8.

However, for the first time in five years, there’s a new venue for the Fordyce Forum.  In years past, it was held in Las Vegas.  This year, though, the site is the Hotel Palomar in Dallas, Texas.  Below is a description of the conference, taken from the Fordyce Forum website:

We know your time is valuable, and we strive to bring you the best information from top recruiters and leaders in the third-party recruiting space.  We also know that change is important for you to take your business from good to great, and we’re doing things a little differently this year to help you with this.  Fordyce Forum 2012 will truly be a “working conference,” at which recruiters and recruiting firm owners will participate in activities and workshops to develop skills and thought processes that you can bring back to work and immediately implement.  And you’ll be networking directly with your peers and colleagues during these workshops.

As usual, the Fordyce Forum will boast some of the most popular speakers in the recruiting and staffing industry, including Jon Bartos, Barb Bruno, Greg Doersching, Jeff Kaye, Bob Marshall, and Rob Mosley, to name just a few.

Click here to see the complete lineup of speakers.

Click here to see the agenda for the Fordyce Forum.

Click here to see the sponsors for the conference.

Click here for more information about the location.

Click here to register for Fordyce Forum 2012.

If you sign up before Friday, March 2, you’ll save $300 off the price of Regular Registration, so register today!

Big Biller, the leader in online recruiting software; Hiring Hook, recruiting websites for recruiters; and Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s contract staffing solution are all proud sponsors of this year’s Fordyce Forum.  So we hope that you’ll attend the event . . . and that we’ll see you there!