ResearchGoddess

Thank you SO much to all of the attendees of LinkedCincinnatiLIVE! last night – you made it a fantastic event. People started rolling in around 15 minutes til 6 and we had a line waiting to register for nearly an hour! There were still people hanging around well after 9pm as well – the networking was that good! I saw lots of tweets following the event from people who really enjoyed themselves, and already people are asking when the next one will be. For the record, the person to ask that question of is Jennifer McClure, the lady without whom this event might never have happened, as she is the LinkedCincinnati group moderator. So – THANKS JENNIFER!

We have not tallied up the total number of attendees yet but I believe it was well over 200 people. The room we had reserved was fantastic – we had our auction tables lining the left side and a beautiful appetizer table in the middle of the room with a fountain! (I didn’t know we were going to have that!) Our cash bar was to the right of the entrance and the room was dotted with tall and short tables for mingling. Jennifer and I had many people come up to us over the course of the evening to compliment us on the event, the venue, and the cause for which we were raising money. When it was all said and done, we were able to raise just over $1000 for the trip to South Africa!

Which brings me to some exciting news: since not all of our auction items were bid on last night, we have the pleasure of opening up some fantastic opportunities to bid for those who could not attend, both local AND everywhere else! We are putting the remainder of our auction items on an online auction site. We are starting off with some time-sensitive items such as conference admission tickets, and will be added the others in the next week. Please visit the auction site here – all proceeds from these items will go to the South Africa trip fund-raising efforts.

Our first items up for bid (I feel like Bob Barker saying that!!) are three FANTASTIC recruiting event tickets: we have all-access passes for ERE’s Fall Expo in South Florida, RecruitFest! in Toronto, and SourceCon08 in Atlanta (which is NEXT WEEK so get it while it’s hot!)

LINKEDCINCINNATILIVE! AUCTION SITE

My friend Jeff’s oldest daughter was learning one day in kindergarten a lesson that I’m sure all of us learned – that you are not supposed to talk to strangers. Having been taught something different, she raised her hand during this lesson and said, “Teacher, my daddy says that’s not right!” Confused, and a little alarmed by this, the teacher asked her to explain. She continued to say, “My daddy says that if you never talk to strangers, you won’t make any new friends. He says it’s OK to say hello to strangers, but you’re not supposed to go anywhere with them or take anything from them.” The teacher was impressed with this thought process and thus changed the lesson of the day in the class.

If you think about it, this lesson is so deeply ingrained in most of us that we tend to not acknowledge or go out of our way to say hello to or meet new people. Is it any wonder why as adults we tend to have fears in going up to a perfect stranger and introducing ourselves? Since we’ve been taught all our lives that strangers are bad and aren’t to be communicated with, as adults that lesson has been written deeply into our brains, and thus we miss out on so many opportunities to meet new people, make new friends, create new business relationships, etc.

From a recruitment, and sourcing, standpoint, this is the dumbest and most crippling lesson we could have learned. Being unwilling or scared to reach out to prospective candidates, you might as well find a different career.

And guess what? LinkedIn’s new user agreement basically telling us not to talk to strangers. Not only that, communicating with strangers on LinkedIn can potentially get you slapped on the wrist and kicked off. Thanks a lot, LinkedIn. You’re that good-intentioned kindergarten teacher who scared us into not communicating with other people.

So – those of you with small children, learn from your mistakes and don’t handicap them for life by teaching them bad lessons. Equip them with appropriate levels of caution toward people they don’t know, but don’t cripple them socially, and potentially professionally down the road, by scaring them away from making new friends.

In the spirit of the Beijing Olympics that have just concluded, I wanted to re-post my article from last June which compares researching to an Olympic relay team – with some added highlights from this year’s most incredible relay moments. Enjoy!

Learning about greatness in research by looking at the makings of an Olympic relay team:

• Swimming: while many people know how to swim, only a few have the discipline to make it to the Olympics, and just a small handful win Olympic medals.
• Just about anyone can call themselves a researcher, but only a small handful have the discipline and skill level to be considered exceptional. 

• It takes time to become good enough to swim in the Olympics.
• It takes time to become a great researcher. Success does not happen overnight.

• Track: Training consists of running lap after lap after lap after lap…
• Training in research consists of practicing the basics over and over and over again.

• Members of the relay team all know how to swim, but each contributes to the team effort by swimming a leg of the race in their specialty stroke.
• Great researchers all know the basics of research but each has a niche market in which they specialize. 

• An Olympic-caliber swimmer always has a one or two select events in which they excel more than others.
• A great researcher has one, perhaps two (related), industries in which they excel; generalist researchers rarely become great at any of the industries in which they search.

• Olympic-caliber swimmers get better at their best stroke by spending a lot of time working on that stroke, refining and perfecting techniques.
• Great researchers become great within their niche market by spending a lot of time researching associations, networking with industry contacts, and learning everything they possibly can about the industry.

Hat-tips to two memorable USA relay moments of the 2008 games:

• Let your performance do the talking.  Talking smack before the event usually results in you getting your you-know-what handed to you. (hint hint, France!)
• In research, let your skills speak for you. Professing to be an expert will oftentimes get you into trouble! The experts are those who let their clients and successes do the talking for them…

• If you aren’t careful, you could muff the pass-off and ruin the whole race, not just for yourself but for the whole team. (2 US track relay teams drop the baton)
• In research, make sure there is clear communication as to where your duties end and the recruiters’ duties start. Otherwise, there will be confusion and time-to-fill will take longer than needed.

All of these research examples can also be applied to recruiting as well.

If you have not signed up for LinkedCincinnatiLIVE this coming Wednesday, August 27^th, you need to do so right away! We are reaching 200 attendees who have pre-registered, and we’ve got some seriously incredible items up for grabs in the silent auction.

For those in the local recruiting community, we have a FULL ADMISSION ticket to SourceCon 2008 in Atlanta in just one week for auction, a FULL ACCESS ticket to ERE’s Fall Expo in Hollywood Beach, FL at the end of October, AND a ticket to RecruitFest coming up in Toronto on Sept. 19^th. The RecruitFest ticket is worth $220, the SourceCon admission ticket at  $1,195 and the ERE Fall Expo ticket at over $2,000. You’ll want to make sure to come to LinkedCincinnatiLIVE and put your bid in for one of these can’t-miss events!

In addition to these event tickets, we have some really cool things that will be on the auction tables, including:

• Design/promotional/marketing consulting services
• Recruiting services
• SEO consulting services
• DBA services
• Skin consultation services
• A B&B weekend package in WV
• A guided upland hunting trip
• A week’s timeshare use
• Books written by some of our attendees
• A private flight tour from a local pilot
• …and much more!

The silent auction is optional participation, and money raised from these auctioned items will go to help fund an aid trip to South Africa being taken by two LinkedCincinnati members, Jennifer McClure and Amybeth Hale. The $5 door cover will go to offset the facility rental and refreshments. Cash bar will be available: soft drinks: $1.95, beer: $3.25-$3.75, wine: $5.00, cocktails: $5.50+.

Our auction items range in cost from around $10 all the way up to $3500 so there is something for everyone to check out. Business owners and managers, consider bidding on some of the consultative services for your company.

Don’t miss this opportunity to meet other local professionals in the Cincinnati area (and beyond – there are people from as far away as Florida attending!). Bring your business cards and get ready to mingle! Hope to see you there!

Being out of the loop a little this week while working from Chicago, I didn’t know that I was recently honored with being #16 in the top 25 of the Talent Management Blog Power Rankings, sponsored by Fistful of Talent and the HR Capitalist. Cool – I didn’t even know the Research Goddess blog was in consideration! So, many thanks for the votes and to all of you who read and comment as it is because of you that my blog was honored.

Check out the rest of the blog rankings here!