Regional Core Groups have cooled down in Top Echelon Network during the past couple of years, which is understandable, considering everything that’s happened in the economy and within the recruiting industry.

However, this is a new year, and there’s plenty of reason to believe that Regional Core Groups are going to heat back up in 2012.

In years past, there were as many as six or seven Regional Core Groups operating within Top Echelon Network, from Ohio to Tennessee to California.  As of right now, there aren’t that many groups gearing up for activity yet this year, but the potential certainly exists.

In this blog post, I want to address two specific Regional Core Groups, namely because they’re holding meetings in the near future.  These are groups that have a rich history within the Network and whose existence has been responsible for numerous split placements between Preferred Member recruiters.

Fort Wayne Regional Core Group

This group and the Baltimore Regional Core Group have been arguably the most successful groups in Top Echelon Network, and the Fort Wayne contingent will be meeting for the first time in quite a while next week.

Network recruiters are invited to join the Fort Wayne Regional Core Group at Ziano’s Italian Eatery at 11:45 a.m. on Wednesday, January 18.  This isn’t just a meeting, but an “after-holiday party.”  Ziano’s Italian Eatery is located at 702 E. Dupont Road in Fort Wayne.

If you’re interested in attending this meeting/party or if you want more information about it, contact Preferred Member recruiter Rhonda Dove of KB Search Team, LLC.
Kansas City Regional Core Group

After a hiatus, this Regional Core Group is getting back together, as well.  Its meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 15, at Leawood South Country Club between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.

As part of the meeting, Preferred Member recruiter Bob Wylan of R.A. Wylan & Co., Inc. will give a Power Point presentation, and there will be other speakers, as well.  There’s a $5 per person charge for a beverage table during the meeting, and those in attendance will also share a $50 room set-up fee.  Leawood South Country Club is located at 12700 Overbrook Road in Leawood.

If you’re interested in attending this meeting or if you want more information about it, contact Wylan.

We want to “light the fuse” on Regional Core Groups in Top Echelon Network in 2012, and that starts with you!  If you’d like to be part of one of these Core Groups, part of another Core Group, or if you’d like to start your own, please contact me so that we can discuss it.

Recruiters who attend Regional Core Group meetings give themselves more of an opportunity to make split placements . . . and that’s exactly what we want you to do in 2012: make more split placements!

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Drea@TopEchelon.com
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Do you want to enjoy your best year ever as a Preferred Member recruiter in Top Echelon Network in 2012?  Do you want to make more split placements than you’ve ever made and increase the revenue on your recruiting desk or in your recruiting firm?

Then one of the things you should absolutely do is participate in the Network’s Virtual Core Groups meetings.

Virtual Core Group meetings are regularly scheduled conference calls for Preferred Member recruiters who work in the same industry or niche.  During these calls, the recruiters share information about the activity that they’re seeing and bounce ideas off each other.

The best part about the conference calls—the “meat and potatoes,” so to speak—is the fact that these recruiters share hot job orders and candidates.  Why is this so great?  The sharing of such information is what leads most directly to recruiters making split placements together.

With that in mind, below is the current Virtual Core Group conference call schedule for the month of January:

You’ll notice that the first two Thursdays of the month are filled with conference calls and that the third and fourth Thursdays are wide open.  That doesn’t mean I want those days to remain wide open.  Quite the contrary—what I really want is to fill those two dates with even more Virtual Core Group conference calls.

If you don’t see your industry or niche represented in the chart above, please remember that I’m always open to starting a new group.  If you think you’d like to start one, contact me as soon as you can.  We’ll discuss what’s involved and get your group up and running in time for the New Year.

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Drea@TopEchelon.com
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‘Tis the season to be jolly . . . and merry . . . and meeting the other members of your Regional Core Group face-to-face!

That’s exactly what the members of the Central Ohio Regional Core Group are doing.  Their in-person meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, December 7, at the Catering by Design Center in Columbus.  If you’re a Preferred Member recruiter in Ohio, and you haven’t signed up to attend this meeting, I encourage you to do so!

Some of the Top Producers in the Network will be on hand to not only present training sessions for those in attendance, but also to trade hot job orders and candidates.  The cost of attending this Regional Core Group meeting is $16 per person, and that price includes a buffet lunch.  That lunch will consist of turkey croissants and wraps, southwest chicken wraps, Italian subs, ham/roast beef croissants, chicken salad, vegetarian wraps, pasta salad, fresh fruit platter, dessert and drinks (iced tea, sodas, coffee).

If you’re planning to attend, please RSVP to me at Drea@TopEchelon.com.  You can pay your $16 at the door, either with cash or with a check made out to Top Echelon Network.  The Catering by Design Center is located at 6465 Busch Boulevard in Columbus, and the phone number is (614) 436-1234.

There is currently a thread on the Discussion Forum in the Members’ Area regarding the upcoming Central Ohio Regional Core Group meeting.  As of today, there are close to 30 recruiters who have already indicated that they’ll be attending, but we want to drive attendance up even more.

We also want YOU to participate in a Regional Core Group meeting, wherever you are in the country.  We’ve had these types of meetings in places like Indiana, Tennessee, Maryland, and Florida.  If you’d like to be part of a Regional Core Group meeting in your area—and especially if you’d like to lead or facilitate one—contact me immediately so that we can discuss specifics.

Make this a very merry holiday season . . . and network as much as you can!

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Drea@TopEchelon.com
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Okay, we’ve just announced that we’re heading to Nashville, Tenn., for the 2012 National Convention.  And since you might be wondering whether or not you should attend, we thought we’d clear that up for you.

Yes, you should attend—and the following case study will illustrate exactly why you should.

If there was a Top Echelon Network “Hall of Fame,” Sean Napoles of Career Brokers, Inc. would be voted into it on the first ballot.  Why is that?

• 11 years as a Preferred Member recruiter
• 156 Network placements
• $1.3 million cashed in during his Network career
• Has won more Top Echelon Network awards and hardware than would fit in your car

Napoles is a split placement machine.  He’s seen it all and done it all, including attending Top Echelon events like the National Convention and the Fall Conference.

On the other hand, Kaleb Dumot of the Emerald Resource Group is about as new a Preferred Member as you can be.  Although the Emerald Resource Group has been a Preferred Member firm for nearly 14 years, Dumot wasn’t added as a recruiter until September 12 of this year . . . a little over two months ago.

With Napoles and Dumot, you couldn’t have two recruiters who are more at opposite ends of the Preferred Member spectrum in terms of experience within the Network.

And yet . . . the two of them recently made a split placement together.  And why did they make a split?

Because they BOTH attended the 2011 Top Echelon Network Fall Conference.

“But for me attending the conference, I never would have met Kaleb,” said Napoles, who is currently the number-two recruiter in the Network in terms of production during the past 12 months.  “He gave me a job order [for a C# Developer] at the conference, and I just filled it.”

If it sounds that simple, that’s because it is.  Dumot gave Napoles a job order at the conference . . . Napoles filled it with a great candidate that Dumot’s client liked . . . and now the two will split the placement fee.  Not only that, but the two of them are also more likely to work together in the future and more likely to split more fees.

So . . . it doesn’t matter who you are.  You could be a tenured recruiter with over a decade in the Network and countless placements.  You could be a recruiter who’s new to the Network and how everything within it works.

You can make split placements by attending Top Echelon Network events.

Make plans to join us at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in March.  Bring your hot job orders and candidates.  And be ready to make some money.

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MDeutsch@TopEchelon.com
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At Top Echelon Network, we’re all about networking . . . and that includes social networking (and by extension, social media).

This is why the Network—and many of its employees—have a LinkedIn account, a Twitter account, a Facebook page, etc.

That being said, you’ll notice that there’s a bar of images located directly below the title of this blog post (and all other posts in any of our blogs).  The bar contains the options for sharing this blog post via social media.  Those options are as follows:

Facebook “Like”—Not only can you “like” the blog post, but you can also comment on it and share it with your Facebook friends at the same time.

Email Article—Pretty much self-explanatory, this allows you to email the blog post to a friend or co-worker more easily.

Tweet—You can tweet the post to your followers (after you login to Twitter) with one click of your mouse.

Google+1—For those of you with Google+ accounts, all it takes is one click to “+1” the blog post (once again, if you’re already logged in).

LinkedIn Share—Last but not least, you can share the post with your professional contacts through LinkedIn.

I encourage you to share as much of the “social media love” in the Network as you can.  We’ve discovered that recruiters especially like to share news of placements that they’ve made, regardless of whether they’re split placements or full-fee placements.

If you’re one of those recruiters who have made split placements within the Network, and we highlight your placement in The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog, feel free to share your accomplishments via social media.  We want to celebrate your placements, so we definitely invite you to do the same.

Not only that, but you’ll notice that at the bottom of each blog post, there are additional social media options.  For example, at the bottom of this blog post, you can connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on Twitter.  Similar options are available for the authors of other blog posts.

If you have any questions about social networking, social media, and Top Echelon Network, feel free to contact me.  In the meantime, “share the love” . . .

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MDeutsch@TopEchelon.com
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.
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Top Echelon Network offers a number of different tools to its Preferred Member recruiters, all of which are designed to help them make more split placements.

One of these tools is the Virtual Core Group meeting.

Virtual Core Group meetings are regularly scheduled conference calls for recruiters who work in the same industry or niche.  During these calls, the recruiters share information about the activity that they’re seeing, bounce ideas off one another, and share hot job orders and candidates.

The real value in these calls is the presenting and sharing of hot job orders and hot candidates.  That’s because these are the things that lead most directly to recruiters making split placements together.

If you’re not part of a VCG, then you need to be part of one!  Preferred Member recruiters who participate in Virtual Core Group meetings give themselves more of a chance to make split placements than those who don’t.

Below is the VCG schedule for the remainder of October and also for the month of November.

Yours truly will conduct each of these conference calls.  If you’d like to attend any of these VCG meetings, call or email me and I’ll send you the appropriate conference call information.

If you don’t see your industry or niche represented in the chart above, I’m always open to starting a new group.  If you think you’d like to start one, I encourage you to contact me so we can discuss it.

Virtual Core Groups can help you make split placements.  Get in the game and get going.  I’ll talk with you soon.

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330.455.1433, x156
Drea@TopEchelon.com
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We’ve said this before . . . but we’ll say it again, because it bears repeating.

Recruiters who attend Top Echelon Network conferences and conventions are more likely to make split placements.

There’s evidence of this all the time, everywhere, after every event that we hold. No matter how many recruiters attend, split placements result from the meeting.  And why is this important?

Well, because the 2011 Top Echelon Network Fall Conference will be here before you know it.  In fact, the conference is scheduled for Thursday, October 20, and Friday, October 21, at the Embassy Suites in Chicago.  Even though that seems like it’s a long time away, it isn’t.  That’s why we’ll be releasing the preliminary agenda for the conference in the near future, maybe even as early as next week.

In the meantime, we’re going to highlight one of the many split placements that resulted from a recent Top Echelon Network event.  In this case, that event was the regional conference we held in Tampa, Fla., at the beginning of 2010.

Of the over 30 recruiters who attended the event, two of them were Amy Recker of Bridgeway Professionals, Inc. and Frank Gregg of Gregg & Associates.  Recker and Gregg met each other for the first time and discussed their business and their firms.  Those conversations eventually led to a split placement when Gregg saw a job order that Recker had posted in the Network’s Split Jobs Database and contacted her about one of his passive candidates.

Because Recker met Gregg at the regional conference in Tampa, she gave his candidate an extra bit of attention, and that investment of time paid off in the form of a split placement.

Recker and Gregg eventually placed a VP of Operations for a VERY substantial fee.  (While it’s our policy to not publish placement fees in The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog, since it’s on the World Wide Web, I recommend logging into the Members’ Area to view the details associated with this placement.)

“This is proof that it pays to post your most recent job orders on the TE site,” said Recker.  “Having met Frank at the regional meeting in Florida last year, I knew enough about his opinion of the candidate he shared.  The candidate gets a great new job, our client gets a sharp new VP, we get more job orders from this client, and Frank gets a free round of golf!”

The bottom line: if Recker and Gregg had not attended the regional conference in Tampa, they would not have made this split placement and earned a large fee in the process.  When it comes to Top Echelon Network conferences and conventions, sometimes you just have to find a way to get there . . . the rest seems to take care of itself.

That’s why we want you to find a way to get to the 2011 Fall Conference in Chicago.  Meeting one recruiter at one conference could be the first step to a new Trading Partner relationship and significant split placement revenue.

So, we’ve said it before . . . and there’s no doubt we’ll be saying it again.

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330.455.1433, Ext. 125
MDeutsch@TopEchelon.com
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Almost every week in The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog, we highlight recent split placements that Preferred Member recruiters in Top Echelon’s recruiter network have made together.  These split placements are the result of many things—mainly collaboration between Trading Partners—but the split placement highlighted in this blog post owes its genesis to something else, as well: attendance at a Top Echelon conference.

Why do I bring this up?  Well, because the 2011 Top Echelon Network Fall Conference is rapidly approaching, and we want you to do three things:

1. Attend the Fall Conference.
2. Meet other recruiters and build Trading Partner relationships.
3. Make split placements with these other recruiters.

Now in 2010, Top Echelon Network did NOT hold a National Convention and a Fall Conference.  Instead, there were six mini-conferences held throughout the country.  The last of these events was in Columbus, Ohio, in November.  It was at this conference that Rose Langhals of Bridgeway Professionals, Inc. and Lloyd Shoemaker of Miami Professional Search, LLC met one another.

Shortly following the conference, Shoemaker received a job order from a client with which he hadn’t worked for a while.  The job order was for an Engineer, and it wasn’t long after Shoemaker submitted the order to the Network that Langhals found it in the Split Job Order Database.

“I connected with Rose at the Ohio [regional conference] in November, and she contacted me when she saw the opening,” said Shoemaker.

Eventually, Shoemaker and Langhals placed the candidate, and recently, they split the fee associated with the placement.  Of course, if they hadn’t met at the Columbus regional conference last year, they never would have made the split placement together.

And that’s the crucial aspect of this blog post—this was a placement they never would have made.  However, but for attending the conference, Langhal’s candidate was placed at Shoemaker’s company and the two shared a placement fee as a result.

This is why we’re whole-heartedly encouraging you to attend the Fall Conference at the Embassy Suites in Chicago on Thursday, October 20, and Friday, October 21.  Because Chicago is located roughly in the center of the country, our Fall Conference has always been a very popular and well-attended event, presenting an opportunity for Preferred Members to network with one another and share hot job orders and candidates.

Yes, we’re in the grip of a summer heat wave right now . . . but eventually, the air will cool and the leaves will fall.  Make plans to join us for the conference and position yourself and your firm for success during the rest of 2011 and into 2012.

We’ll be publishing the preliminary agenda for the Fall Conference in the near future, as well as offering Early Bird Registration for the event in the Members’ Area.  Be sure to check future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog and the news section of the Members’ Area for more information regarding the conference and how you can register.

We look forward to seeing you there!  (And of course, to seeing you make more split placements!)

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330.455.1433, Ext. 125
MDeutsch@TopEchelon.com
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.
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The bottom line is that you want to make split placements as a Preferred Member recruiter in the Top Echelon Network of job placement recruiters.  But what’s the bottom line on THAT?

Preferred Member recruiters who participate in Virtual Core Group meetings give themselves more of a chance to make split placements than if they weren’t part of a VCG.  And that’s why we hold these meetings—because they work and they result in split placements.

Virtual Core Group meetings are regularly scheduled conference calls for recruiters who work in the same industry or niche.  During these calls, the recruiters share information about the activity that they’re seeing, bounce ideas off one another, and share hot job orders and candidates.  It’s the presenting and sharing of hot jobs and hot candidates that can provide the real value, since this is what most often results in split placements between recruiters.

Below is the Virtual Core Group meeting schedule in Top Echelon Network for the month of July.  Yours truly will conduct each of these conference calls, and they’ll take place on the dates and times indicated.  If you’d like to attend any of the VCG meetings outlined below, call or email me and I’ll set you up with the appropriate conference call information.

Here are two things to keep in mind about the VCG meeting schedule for July:

1. There are NO VCG conference calls scheduled for the last two weeks in July.  The last day of conference calls for the month is Thursday, July 14, which also happens to be “Bastille Day.”  I have no idea what that has to do with Virtual Core Group meetings in Top Echelon Network, but I thought you’d like to know, nonetheless.
2. As you can see above, there’s an open space for a new Virtual Core Group.  Actually, there’s always an open space, because we’re always looking to form a new group for recruiters in a certain industry or niche.  If you think you’d like to start one, I encourage you to contact me so we can discuss it.

I hope that you can attend one of the VCG conference calls this month, and if you’d made a split placement because of a Virtual Core Group meeting, let me know.  We’ll profile you (and your placement) in a future post in The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.

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330.455.1433, Ext. 156
Drea@TopEchelon.com
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Only two weeks to go before the Ninth Annual Top Echelon Network Ohio Golf Outing!  This year, the event is scheduled for Thursday, July 14, at Windmill Lakes Golf Club in Ravenna, Ohio.

The Golf Outing has become one of the staples of Top Echelon Network as far as Regional Core Groups are concerned.  Every year, between 20 and 30 Preferred Member recruiters attend the event, and they enjoy a day filled with fun, camaraderie, food and drink, and of course, golf.  And that will be the case again this year.

Please remember that Preferred Member recruiters who attend the event can bring a guest with them.  Attendees are also encouraged to invite clients or candidates, as well.  These types of guests have attended in the past, with great results.

If you’d like to attend the golf outing, please contact Debra L. Stitt, CPC of Quality Source, Inc. of Ohio at Debra@QualitySourceInc.com.