NABJ recruiting report

I joked with some of you that for some reason, I had never been as popular at ASNE as I was at this year’s convention.

Judging from our reception at NABJ in Indianapolis this week, the same is true for our whole company. Although attendance at the convention and recruiting fair were down and the total number of interviews reduced, I had more inquiries from experienced, talented journalists than ever before.

There were Blackberry-based scanners that let us record barcodes from name badges of applicants, so we should have a fairly comprehensive database of names from our walk-up traffic. Many candidates were interviewed by only one or two of us, of course, so it may be a little harder to get details on everybody, but we’ll work to gather that info, as well.

We had a couple of corporate folks and recruiters from Miami, Ft Worth, Kansas City, Raleigh, Columbus, Tacoma, Myrtle Beach, Belleville, Charlotte, Wichita and probably somebody I forgot (sorry). All did yeoman duty on the floor and in the hallways. How they did at the parties remains unreported.

This was my first experience working with Knight Ridder’s super-rep Reggie Stuart, who worked hard and well on our behalf. He’s a legend in recruiting circles, for good reason, and it was a pleasure to have his assistance.

We’ll talk some in Ft Worth Tuesday about opportunities. We need to be sure we capitalize on them all.

–Howard Weaver