It's like all my little girl dreams coming true at once

Today I get to live one of my recruiting fantasies. Only it's totally real. And it's totally my day off.

One of the huge challenges in recruiting is getting the information you need to build a prospect profile. Back in the day, when I was a line recruiter, I remember the frustration of getting specs from the hiring manager. Oh, the multitude of manners in which my managers would torment me; wanting a "mini-me" (well, a mini-them), wanting me to recruit off of a profile one sentence long, having a "perfect candidate" in mind (one that has rarely been seen in the wild), ignoring my requests for specs.

Fast forward to today and my team recruits for all of marketing in Microsoft US; not specific hiring managers or individual positions, but the entire "pipe" (that's what we call it). You thought building a hiring profile was hard when you were working with a hiring manager 1:1; try doing it without really working with a hiring manager at all. Yeah, it can be a bit of a challenge and you can't help but feel that sometimes you are being punked (or "Punk'd" if you actually think that Ashton Kutcher is funny). Why can't all of you people get together in a room and agree on what you are looking for so I can have my team go out and find it. Seriously, I am asking.

 Well, today, this is what is happening, at least for one of our job families. I'm meeting with the Discipline Leadership Team for product planning to help develop a hiring profile for Product Planners across the company. And the best part is that it was their idea! Whee! Product Planner is one of the more challenging profiles because it sits somewhere between engineering and marketing. Responsibilities vary, titles vary; but we are taking a shot at finding those core common skill sets that work well across organizations at Microsoft.

So while I would never be a big proponent of attending meetings when one has scheduled a vacation day, I'm thrilled to go to this meeting today. Sounds a little sick, right?