KARLA PORTER

Paul Paris, Founder & CEO of Recruiterreqs.com Inc. is inter­ested in talk­ing about employ­ment issues fac­ing peo­ple in their every­day lives from the per­spec­tive of recruiters, can­di­dates and employ­ers. Just a few years ago it would have been dif­fi­cult and costly to get these con­ver­sa­tions in to the pub­lic light unless you had a friend in Media, PR, or Mar­ket­ing. For­tu­nately, today’s access to new media gives Paul a vehi­cle to con­duct, broad­cast glob­ally and record these dialogs for any­one inter­ested in the world of employ­ment. He’s start­ing a show on BlogTalkRa­dio.

At first thought the con­cept of hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with all the play­ers involved seems like a sim­ple no brainer. How­ever, gen­er­ally we’re so focused on our niche areas of exper­tise and pro­fes­sional intel­li­gence we tend to guard indus­try and insider infor­ma­tion closely and not think to invite oth­ers around the table for coffee.

But not Paul, that’s not his style. He plans to get can­di­dates involved and talk­ing about their job searches, recruiters about the indus­try and employ­ers about their expec­ta­tions. Chat­ting with him he said that one of his pro­fes­sional high­lights is mem­o­ries of when he was recruit­ing and would get a rush every time an appli­cant was made a job offer and accepted. He said it wasn’t just because he made money but because he had a hand in giv­ing some­one a fresh start in a posi­tion that they really wanted.

He has a lot of ques­tions to ask, kind of reminds me of Larry King’s style. Ask ques­tions, sit back, lis­ten and learn. Ques­tions like:

What has hap­pened to full life cycle recruit­ing (recruit­ing has become like a pro­duc­tion line)?
Why are can­di­dates the for­got­ten equa­tion in every­thing?
Why are peo­ple judged imme­di­ately because of what a social media pro­file says or what they look like?
Have Baby Boomers spoiled their Gen Y chil­dren to a point that most can’t find employ­ment after grad­u­a­tion because they don’t have any prior work expe­ri­ence?
Is the recruit­ing field over-saturated?
Should recruiters be cre­den­tialed (with some­thing other than SPHR or PHR) like used to have to be in NJ when it was manda­tory for recruiters to pass a state test?

Whoa… those are some heavy ques­tions for con­tem­pla­tion and dis­course. I’ve been invited to be a guest on Novem­ber 3rd to dis­cuss one of today’s hottest recruit­ing top­ics, social media v.s. pick­ing up the phone. Sounds intel­lec­tual, I like it.

When Paul started his new busi­ness he said that from day one the com­pany pledged to give a per­cent­age of earn­ings to char­i­ties help­ing peo­ple less for­tu­nate and unem­ployed. It’s posted on the recruiterreqs.com web­site that they are part of the Agents Pay­ing For­ward Net­work. Visit the site and on the related links tab you’ll find there are a num­ber of help­ful net­works for both recruiters and job seek­ers. I expect to see The Ex-Recruiter posted there very soon!

The Ex-Recruiter debuts live Octo­ber 20 at 12:00p.m. EST with a half hour intro­duc­tion. The weekly show moves to a 1 hour time slot on Octo­ber 27th from 12:00p.m. to 1:00p.m. Up and com­ing episodes fea­ture Can­di­date Uproar with guests  Jan­ice and Jeremy Wor­thing­ton, Job Search Coaches,   Gen Y advo­cate, J.T. O’Donnell and in case you didn’t catch it above, yours truly.

Good luck to Paul Paris on his new ven­ture and be sure to call in with your ques­tions and comments!