In last week’s issue of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog, we talked about how Karen Akbal-Sturgeon of KLA Industries is taking her entire office of recruiters to the 2012 Top Echelon Network Fall Conference in Chicago this October.

This week, we’re highlighting Jim Petitpren and Pam Petitpren of The PRA Group, Inc., who are also planning to attend the Fall Conference.  However, their story is a bit different, and this is why:

• They joined Top Echelon Network as Preferred Member recruiters in February of this year.

• They immediately registered for the National Convention, which was held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tenn.

• So far, Jim has already made two split placements.  He made those splits with Eric Berg of JN Adams & Associates, Inc. and Judy Kaplan of Prof’l Recruiting Consultants.

• When online registration for the Fall Conference went live, Jim and Pam were among the first Preferred Members to sign up.

Recently, we asked them why they were so anxious to attend another Top Echelon Network event, and this is what Pam had to say:

“Top Echelon Recruiters are the best of the best.  We met so many great new Trading Partners and began so many great new relationships, the [National Convention] was an event that gave us energy and a new perspective on how we do our recruiting, in and out of Top Echelon Network.

“The content of the recruiter discussions was extremely valuable and the speaker was great.

“Besides, it’s nice to get out of the office and get fresh ideas and perspectives from other recruiters whose business models are similar to ours.  There’s so much to talk about and learn from one another.”

The Fall Conference is scheduled for Thursday, October 11, and Friday, October 12, at the Sheraton Chicago O’Hare.  Early Bird Registration for the conference is currently underway. The price of Early Bird is just $210 per person.

However, this price won’t be around forever.  Sign up now and plan to join us in Chicago for a great training and networking event!

View the preliminary agenda.
See who’s already signed up.
Register for the Fall Conference.

We talk all the time about how Preferred Member recruiters should attend events like the Top Echelon Network Fall Conference.  However, this week we’re going to let other recruiters do the talking.

In this case, that recruiter is Karen Akbal-Sturgeon of KLA Industries, who’s bringing ALL of the recruiters in her office to the 2012 Top Echelon Network Fall Conference.  Below are her thoughts about the upcoming conference and why she’s attending:

“The Big Biller training is really helpful for the rookies.  So much slips through the cracks, and I always learn something new from the upgrades that come up.  My senior recruiters also need updated on the changes and the added features.

“The Icebreaker [Reception] is good for team building and networking within the industry and helps recruiters to run ideas past other recruiters and build relationships with future split partners in their area.

“This year’s training by Shally [Steckerl] is huge for developing recruiting search skills that I can never keep up on, and [our recruiters] need to know it!  This type of recruiter training was what tipped the scale in bringing everyone.

“I like the Lightening Rounds, so the rookies can learn from the veterans other than myself about the topics important to the industry.  I want them to build relationships with recruiters in our niche so they can find candidates quicker and make more placements!

“I want [our recruiters] to see and hear how much money certain recruiters are making and see themselves doing that.

“The whole experience: driving up, eating together, and going out with the gang, is great for team building and morale and building loyalty.”

The Fall Conference is scheduled for Thursday, October 11, and Friday, October 12, at the Sheraton Chicago O’Hare.  Early Bird Registration for the conference is currently underway. The price of Early Bird is just $210 per person.

However, this price won’t be around forever.  Sign up now and plan to join us in Chicago for a great training and networking event!

View the preliminary agenda.
See who’s already signed up.
Register for the Fall Conference.

Are you in a “sourcing slump?”  Can you just not seem to find the candidates you need to find for your clients’ job orders?  Do company officials keep asking you for another candidate, over and over again, until you wonder what the point of it all is?

Well, then you’re in luck!

That’s because industry trainer Shally Steckerl is the main speaker for the 2012 Top Echelon Network Fall Conference, and the title of one of his sessions is “The Top Four Cures for Your Sourcing Slump.”

Below is the official description of that session:

Break through your LinkedIn barriers, speed up your sourcing with search shortcuts, and get social without wasting time!

Use tools such as Social CSE, Cloud Doc CSE, Wink, Pipl, peekyou, big-boards.com, and LinkedIn Hack to make the most of your social sourcing.

Quick and simple search shortcuts via numrange, intext, Gigablast, Blekko, DuckDuckGo, and filetype CSE allow you to be more efficient.

Want to know how to “pimp your profile”?  Keywords, meta tags, and adwords make the distinction.  Enhance your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and About.me profiles through differentiation.

Wondering how to break through those LinkedIn barriers?  Alumni search, skills beta, sperse, and Bing first name last intial, along with find members of ANY group will be sure to get you out of your sourcing slump!

The Fall Conference is scheduled for Thursday, October 11, and Friday, October 12, at the Sheraton Chicago O’Hare.  Early Bird Registration for the conference is currently underway. The price of Early Bird is just $210 per person.

However, this price won’t be around forever. Sign up now, save money, and plan to join us in Chicago for a great training and networking event!

View the preliminary agenda.
See who’s already signed up.
Register for the Fall Conference.

For Preferred Member recruiters who are awash in job orders right now, getting their hands on qualified candidates is a top priority . . . and they can do just that at the upcoming Top Echelon Network Fall Conference.

The Conference is scheduled for Thursday, October 11, and Friday, October 12, at the Sheraton Chicago O’Hare.  How are you going to find the candidates you need at the Fall Conference?

First and foremost, you’ll be meeting and greeting other Preferred Members, who will be bringing their hot job orders and candidates with them.  Second, the main speaker for the conference is Shally Steckrl, one of the recruiting industry’s leading sourcing specialist.

Below are the titles and descriptions of the three sessions that Steckerl will be presenting in Chicago:

‘Simple Search Shortcuts’

Quick and simple search shortcuts via numrange, intext, Gigablast, Blekko, DuckDuckGo, and filetype CSE allow you to be more efficient.

‘Break LinkedIn Barriers’

Wondering how to best break those LinkedIn barriers?  Alumni search, skills beta, sperse, bing first name last initial, along with find members of ANY group will be sure to get you out of your sourcing slump!

Enhance your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and About.me profiles by differentiation.

‘Sourcing Time Savers’

Learn how to use tools such as Social CSE, Cloud Doc CSE, Wink, Pipl, peekyou, big-boards.com, and LinkedIn hacks as time-saving methods to make the most of your social sourcing.

Early Bird Registration for the Fall Conference is currently underway.  The price of Early Bird is just $210 per person.  However, this price won’t be around forever.  Sign up now, save money, and plan to join us in Chicago for a great training and networking event!

And of course, find the candidates you need . . .

Register for the Fall Conference.
View the preliminary agenda.
See who’s already signed up.

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.

— — —

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

Top Echelon Network celebrated its 24th anniversary last month.  What does that mean?

That we’re currently in our 25th year of existence!

Well, it means more than that, too.  It also means that we’ll be celebrating our 25th anniversary next year!

Top Echelon Network was founded by Mike Kappel in 1988.  As a result, we plan to celebrate 25 years of helping recruiters make placements (and split placements) throughout the rest of this year—and next year, too!

The first step: announcing that we’re going back to the TradeWinds Hotel in St. Petersburg, Fla., for the 2013 National Convention.

The TradeWinds was the site of our very first convention, which was held in 1990.  (It took a couple of years for the Network to grow to the point where holding a convention was necessary.)

There are many other details that we’ll be releasing in the weeks and months ahead, so be on the lookout for those.  In the meantime, make plans RIGHT NOW to join us for the 2013 National Convention.

You have the dates . . . you have the location . . . and it’s our 25th anniversary.

We don’t hope to see you there.  We expect to.

— — —

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

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.

— — —

330.455.1433, x156
Drea@TopEchelon.com
Connect with Drea on LinkedIn.
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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!

— — —

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