Lesson learned: no more Pink Slip Party events in the summertime. Let’s just go ahead and get that right out there in the open immediately. I mean, not that I couldn’t stand to lose a few pounds, but I’d rather it not just be purely water weight, y’know?
But all of that aside…wow.
What a ridiculously awesome event, and we cannot possibly begin to thank all of the recruiters, job seekers, and everyone else that showed up to make it such an amazing night.
Not that there weren’t a few hiccups along the way…
I believe I’ve already covered the fact that it was warm.
I think we’ll start planning to do Spring and Fall Pink Slip Party events from now on. Summer’s just…too much for any place to handle it, unless we can figure out how to do one at an ice arena or something…
Keep an eye out in the coming days for not one, not two, but three new Don’t Be That Guy entries that are based on events from last night. I do want to give a head nod to someone who actually had a clue and approached us the right way last night – Walt, the general sales manager at Matthews Hargreaves Chevrolet stopped in and found me at the registration table. He immediately said “Look, I know this isn’t for me, I know this isn’t a job fair, I know this isn’t something I’m going to come in and wander around and bug people at…but here’s my card, and if there’s any way we can get involved with your events, we’d really like to do that.” …and then left.
I was kind of stunned, especially since that happened about 15 minutes after one of those Don’t Be That Guy moments happened when Financial Analyst Guy (yes, I know what the acronym could be there…yes, I know I can’t do it) popped in and was adamant that he should be allowed to work the room and pitch his wares…and then copped an attitude with me about getting told “No.” I’m sure it’s of little surprise that my attitude trumped his and he left…but the situation with Walt might’ve gone differently if he hadn’t approached me the way he did since I was already on edge. So, kudos to you, Walt – now how about donating a car for us to give away or something? 🙂
I truly don’t understand why people don’t read what we put out there about who we are, what we do…
…and more importantly who we’re not, what we don’t do, and what we can’t stand or tolerate.
Like the 11 people (yes, I counted) who sent emails into us with their resumes attached…along with a note that read “I can’t make it to the event…”
Guess where those went?
The trash folder, that’s where.
We are not a resume forwarding service. I believe we’ve made ourselves abundantly clear on that, but some people just don’t get it.
So if you’re reading this, and that was you…sorry. Your resumes didn’t go out anywhere.
Which is kind of a shame, given how many recruiters were there last night.
Going by the badges we printed out and had picked up, plus the blank recruiter badges that we burned through, we wound up at roughly 90 recruiters there last night looking to hire everyone from entry level Help Desk staff to CTO level positions. Phenomenal.
And a lot of them were extremely cool (pardon the pun) people. Now that Brandy has moved on and is no longer a recruiter, and therefore not showing up in her HTML “I heart geeks” shirt any more, it was nice to see Matt from Nuspire show up in that shirt off to the right. He “gets” it, “gets” us, and “gets” our demographic and group. I mean, how many times do we have conversations in the LinkedIn group that inevitably turn towards Star Wars?
Solid.
But he wasn’t the only one. The folks from GE, Domino’s, Mercedes Benz Financial Services, and everyone else (if you think I’m going to take the time to name them all here, you’re insane) that made it…seriously, thank you. We had so many people stopping by on their way out, or catching us as we took a lap around the room, to thank us for having you there and what a wonderful opportunity it was for them to actually chat with you in a casual setting about what you have going on and how they might be able to be a part of it. I heard from many of you about how you met a number of great candidates and that interviews would be taking place with them as early as today.
Exactly what we hope for.
There was one though…and he’s another one of those Don’t Be That Guy moments…who showed up at 4:15, and apparently bailed at 4:30 because he was hot.
Which was just friggin’ ducky, because I didn’t know that he left, but I had taken the time to listen to what jobs he had open and was looking to fill…and sent people looking for him.
All night.
So that’s just…quaint.
And there were a few job seekers who bailed out because it was warm…and yeah, I get that…but, seriously? I mean, if I need a job, you could put 90 recruiters smack in the middle of the Gobi Desert and it would take a medical declaration that I’d had a heat stroke to get me out of there.
But that’s just me. You take your job search as seriously (or not) as you feel the need to do so.
Wrapping up…we do have some photos up from last night’s event, and you can find those here: http://www.ITinTheD.com/3802/photos-june-2012-pink-slip-party/
Recruiters, if there’s anything we can do to help you follow-up wise, just let us know. If you didn’t or weren’t receiving the resumes from the job seekers, please let us know and we’ll get them out to you ASAP.
Thanks folks. Hopefully we’ll see a lot of you at our upcoming events as well. Since that “Hey, go RSVP” thing worked out last night, I’ll mention it again – you can RSVP on the LinkedIn event listing here: http://linkd.in/Hiu5nN for our July 19th event at Clubhouse BFD.
And in closing, gotta send a very special thank you to Brad Mitchell, who showed up and bought drinks for everyone that was there at the time. Seriously a generous move, done by a guy who absolutely gets us, owns a company here (http://www.mojohost.com/), and wants to see things get better here in the area as much as we do. So thank you, Brad. Everyone there really appreciated it.