The newsletters the past few weeks have been a little thin, so I thought I would take this opportunity to remind all of you of our mutual commitment to share job leads, even those in which we are an active participants.

Yes, I know it is counter-intuitive to share leads in which you are an active participant, but it is one of our many PROVEN techniques for improving your very own “deal flow.” Inviting competition from your fellow members is one of our core values, only because it works.

Like the lottery, getting people you know into consideration for a job doesn’t increase or decrease your odds of getting the job, as counter intuitive as it may seem. The reason is that ALL of the candidates being considered are most likely technically competent to do the job. The winner will be the one who hits it off on a personal level with the client, and you can’t control that.

Your goal is to flood the candidate slate with people who are just like you. If the other candidates are younger, don’t you want a few other “been there, done that” types being interviewed?

The story goes that back in the days when we discussed job leads at our meetings, we were going around the table and after we were half way around, someone announced a particular job lead. All of a sudden, someone who had already presumably discussed all the ones he knew about blurted out that he was a candidate for the job too. (Why didn’t he tell us?) Trust me, lots of folks already know about every job lead. You just can’t keep a secret today.

When you have friends participating in a particular search, you have resources that you wouldn’t ordinarily have available to you. You can double team the hiring company in various ways to make sure that one of you gets it. If you are going it alone, you have no such opportunity.

I know that some job leads are hard to post in the newsletter, but they should never be hard to share with those from your “inner circle of friends.” If you have been out and about networking in The FENG, I hope you have identified all of those folks who are just like you in some way. And, I hope you will take the time to call them or have the courage of your convictions to recommend them to the search firm which has contacted you. There is no more powerful statement of your confidence in your own credentials than to suggest others who should also be considered.

We count on fresh leads to make our little world go around. The world works on Internet time. If you wait until you are no longer being considered, I can assure you that the job is a good as dead and there is no purpose in sending it in.

It is of utmost importance for all of us to be continually “selling” The FENG to our friends in the search community. Many of them have heard of us and tried us, but they may have had a bad experience because they posted a job without telling us the salary range and city location and got an over response. (I don’t know what they were expecting.) Please encourage them to give us another chance, and this time get them to do it the right way. If they haven’t registered with us, send them to our website and get them to do so. We have a very nice welcoming letter that will get them headed off in the right direction and that will ensure they have a good “FENG” experience.

The job leads in our newsletter don’t appear just because Matt Bud has waved his magic wand. The volume of leads each night in large part depends on each of you doing your part.

I hope you will do so.

Regards, Matt