Cold and Flu Season
Someone recently asked why I haven’t been writing daily Monday through Friday blogs like I had been in recent months. The answer is complex but I’ll attempt to share it here.
I spent four hours in a car with someone on January 1, 2010. This person was sneezing, coughing and frequently blowing their nose. You probably already know where I’m headed. You can pretty much assume that I was sick in one way or another for all of January.
To this day, I’m still coughing. The moral of this story is pretty simple. Don’t ride in a car with the windows closed when your passenger is sneezing, coughing and blowing their nose. This risk can be controlled to some extent.
Now For The Tough Part
The first part of my story is pretty easy to understand. Here is where the story gets more challenging.
I’ve spent a significant amount of time in the early part of 2010 doing collections for the first time in my career. I have a collections company in my Rolodex for the first time since starting my own business in 1994.
The daily thought process that comes from engaging in collections with unethical people is what I recall Zig Ziglar referring to as “Stinkin Thinkin”. It is a daily battle to focus on forward moving, positive business opportunities and to not get bogged down in “Stinkin Thinkin”. Some days I win this battle and some days I come up short.
Imagine if you’d delivered services to your employer and the employer randomly chose to not pay you for 1/3 of your year’s work. What would you do with such a situation? I'm working through it for the first time so you'll have to wait until I have more experience with such matters before I'll share advice.
For the first time in two decades of recruiting, we have multiple clients who have consumed our security recruiting services but are now not paying according to the mutually agreed upon contract they signed before consuming our services.
The truth is that it is difficult to come up with forward-thinking, positive and educational blog topics when getting bogged down in dealing with white collar criminals and the things they do.
You think I’m being too harsh? Think again. Just over a week ago I learned that one of the clients who owes us money has been indicted for multiple counts of wire fraud connected to his previous software company. He is in the security professional services business today.
In the AM hours of the day in which I read about the federal indictment, I told a recruiter friend that it seemed like I had been working with a number of white collar criminals who ought to be in prison. It puzzled me that they were providing security, risk and compliance services to other companies given the way they handle their business affairs.
An hour after our first conversation, this same recruiter friend called me back and asked if I had psychic skills. No, I certainly don’t but it sure seemed that way on that particular day. He pointed me to the article mentioning the indictment 45 minutes after I told him I thought my client should be in jail.
So, in case you’re wondering who these white collar criminals are, they’re Founders, Presidents and CEOs of security consulting firms and security product companies.
No, not all Founders, Presidents and CEOs of these types of companies are doing shady business but I find it ironic that someone can sell security, risk management and compliance services to another company but then not pay their own bills according to the contracts they sign. Something is wrong with that picture don’t you think?
I know an indictment is not a conviction but I was only surprised for a brief moment when I found out that one of my clients had been indicted. My gut and personal experience working with this person told me that he should have already been invited to prison.
Looking Forward!
In recent weeks, we’ve been fortunate to pick up new security job searches in both the information security and physical security domains. We’re working with brand name companies whose security departments are led by people whom I believe by way of both personal experience and reputation to be upstanding, honest and ethical people.
My Promise To Security Job Candidates
The shady Founders, Presidents and CEOs will continue to surface in our universe but my word to every candidate we serve:
- We’ll do everything in our power to only represent security job opportunities that are connected to law abiding, ethical and professional people.
- We’ll represent the positions we have on our desks in a way that is open, transparent and straight-forward.
- We'll call it like it is and won't candy coat anything.
- We’ll do our best to assist security professionals in making outstanding security career decisions, security training decisions, security education decisions and security certification decisions.
Your security professional peers have frequenlty commented on how we do business at SecurityRecruiter.com. Consider what others have to say about our business practices rather than taking my word for it. Security Recruiting Testimonials
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