Why New Entrepreneurs Should Listen To Recruiters

can you hear me?, a photo by pj_vanf on Flickr.

If you’ve decided to ditch your cubicle for your own startup, congratulations. No doubt you intend to stay connected to some of your former colleagues, your bosses or your former clients to insure your success—because all of them can help you build your business.

Add an additional remnant of your corporate past to be a catalyst for your entrepreneurial success: recruiters who have come to know you over the years.

Before you diss the recruiters who pitch you new job opportunities while you’re exiting your old one, consider the benefits of continuing your relationship with them:

Recruiters in your field are experts at monitoring the business landscape.  The obvious shift in your relationship is that you no longer rely on your recruiter for resume tips or job leads. But consider that a good recruiter spends hours a day talking to business leaders, conversing daily with  movers and shakers in your industry, negotiating compensation and networking constantly. You won’t ever be able to grow your business in a vacuum. Staying in touch with someone who’s got his ear to the ground for their own livelihood is a person you definitely want in your corner.

Recruiters own the skills you need for your own success.  A new business owner taps into the expertise they’ve developed as an employee and leverages it by selling it in the marketplace. Whether you’re a Subject Matter Expert in healthcare consulting, human resources outsourcing, technology or another line of business, you will have to sell your services quickly in order to launch. You can learn a lot about how to network, set business goals and close deals from a trusted recruiter—simply because their livelihood depends on it as much as yours.

If your startup doesn’t get off the ground, you need to stay current.  Simply put—a lot of startups build slowly or fail. Whether you need to seed your business by working temporarily for another company or you decide to return to work in a traditional role, don’t burn your bridges, Keep in touch with a trusted recruiter that can help you.

Business relationships are like any other; you need to give as well as take. Offer something to the recruiters you stay in close touch with. Share some market news or refer a contact that might consider a job change. Engage in a discussion with them about an industry trend. Keep the dialogue going in both directions and the relationship will last.

What Signals Do You Send In The Workplace?

An Interesting Train - The Fat Controller, a photo by oddsock on Flickr.

We slog through our morning commute on automatic pilot. And some of us stay on cruise control throughout the workday, focusing on and worrying about meeting deadlines or the creation of more PowerPoint decks, but not thinking too hard about what others are thinking about us.

Make no mistake about it—whether we intend to focus on the team dynamic or not, we can’t help emitting signals about how we manage ourselves at work and how we feel about our team. We all wear our personal agenda on our sleeve.

These signals have an impact on our ability to get promoted, and they also impact our ability to keep our jobs during reorganizations or budget-slashing measures. Some days we’ll feel like playing nice in the sandbox with our coworkers; other days we aren’t as pleasant and we shrink back. But bosses and teammates are watching and listening—so it’s important to pay attention to the signals you are emitting.

I’m not a fan of putting people in boxes. But for the purpose of this post I’d like to identify three categories of productive workers that might give you an indication of how you’re being perceived:

The Lone Ranger. This member of the team doesn't place much importance on what others think about how he or she performs the job; they march to their own drummer. The Lone Ranger survives mainly because they are very good at what they do, and so their bosses put up with their aloof behavior or their histrionics. Don’t expect any warm and fuzzy signals from this coworker in terms of project collaboration, or commiseration when you feel like bitching about a difficult client. And if you share your Great Idea with a Lone Ranger, don’t be surprised if they announce some iteration of that same idea at the next team meeting, calling it their own.

The Fixer.  This worker enjoys fixing tough dilemmas on the team—including problems that aren’t necessarily theirs. Still high from the adrenaline rush of conquering the latest insurmountable problem, they look for new ones to fix, including projects that might belong to others. While Fixers generally mean well, they don’t recognize their own boundaries and won’t be happy until they insinuate their personal solutions on everyone else’s projects.

The Collaborator. This member of the team finesses what they were hired to do and executes it within the boundaries of their job description. And while they’re successfully completing their tasks, they consider the bigger picture and offer their assistance to others on the team (but they don’t foist it). They work respectfully on shared projects and believe that the power of many voices is greater than theirs alone. They thrive on the synergy of multiple ideas and the power of teamwork.

Which kind of employee would you want to work with? More important, which kind of employee do you want to be?