One of my saddest days at work over the past year occurred early last fall when one of my favorite client contacts was let go by her employer not because of poor performance or anything of the sort but instead because her employer was hard hit by the recession and needed to quickly reduce the number of people it employed or it would likely go out-of-business and then everyone there would be out-of-work. There's never a good time to lose a job but it is particularly hard in a recession. Unfortunately, that scenario repeated itself many times over the fall and into 2009 with many organizations terminating the employment of many recruiters and other human resource professionals. One of the saddest days occurred when one of our sales people called me and told me that she had to cancel one of her sales calls for the day because she was supposed to speak with the three people in the employer's college relations team but two of them were let go earlier that day.

Some of these people who have been laid-off have approached me for help in finding a new position and I've been able to help some but not most as there simply aren't all that many recruiting and other human resource positions available. But earlier today I spotted a position that looks great. One of our clients, Black & Veatch Corporation, is hiring a College Relations Leader for their Overland Park (suburban Kansas City) head office.