One of my buddies in the recruiting industry is Paul DeBettignies of Nerd Search. In addition to being a huge University of Minnesota Golden Gopher football fan, having a last name that is pronounced completely different from how it is spelled, he is also bright, funny, passionate, and the driving force behind the Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference.

The conferences were born out of a Chipotle lunch that Paul, Josh Kahn of Accenture/Best Buy, and I shared a couple of years ago. We wanted to find a way for Minnesota recruiting bloggers to get together and instead created a series of recruiting conferences where no one pays, no one sells, but everyone learns from each other. Josh has been critical in helping us get the wonderful facilities at Best Buy's world headquarters. Nicole Bodem later joined our merry little band as Paul's "wingman" and masterfully has taken care of making sure that everything runs smoothly. In addition to being an SEO expert, she's also a gift from logistics heaven. My role has evolved into occasionally helping promote the events to Upper Midwest employers who are in our database. In other words, I don't do nearly as much as the others yet still get to be called a co-founder. Cool.