I was doing some bizdev (business development) to the restaurant industry this morning so I thought to myself, “Gee, I’ll go to LinkedIn and do a search on “CEO” in there to see who all it surfaces and then I’ll contact them.”
Yeah, sure.
Putting my thoughts into action I did just that. Doing so over 500 “results” were promised. Yippee –skippee! Scanning down the first page I saw twenty (listed below). Reading through them, all but two (Ken and Tim) appear to be offering service(s) (recruiting, consulting, etc.) to the restaurant industry – not actually working inside restaurant organizations and most able to use my service.
I see an early stage leadership/strategic sourcing advisor, a CEO who promised to target the RIGHT candidate, another CEO of an organization that promises “engagement”, yet another VCEO at a Talent Solutions company – and on and on.
They sure as heck don’t appear to be leading any type of decisions inside a restaurant organization. 90% of the results were not what I was looking for!
I clicked on the second page of twenty results. Infidel that I am LinkedIn (denying me access) returned me to my original Members page (I guess unpaid nonbelievers like me aren’t allowed to see more than twenty members in a selected search) and was reminded of a recent post I read where the writer warned that LinkedIn will continue to tighten (unpaid) search until it will be almost impossible to move around on the site and concluded that unfortunate event is already happening.
Discouraged and taking another tack I glanced at that first page of my “Members” listings and saw the same titles and offerings I’d seen on the “CEO” search results page.
Wait a minute…there’s one (out of twenty):
Brian Hood
Vice President of Operations at Restaurants of America Inc. Hooters Restaurants/Lil Riccis/Moon Saloon/Off Broadway
He even listed his “contact info”:
Email & Phone:
*******@****.com primary
Thinking I’d hit the jackpot I thought, “I bet he could bring TechTrak into the fold” I (with high hopes) sent an (what I thought was friendly) email to his listed email address:
Hi Brian,
We belong to the same LinkedIn Restaurant Network group.
The National Restaurant Association reports that the restaurant industry employs nearly 13 million people and is expected to add another 1.3 million positions by 2020. Our organization helps find quality individuals to help the restaurant industry members grow their businesses and better serve their guests.
My name is Maureen Sharib and I’m a phone sourcer.
What’s that?
A phone sourcer finds people who currently work for specific organizations in current roles.
For instance, if you needed Managers for a restaurant in Dallas we could find who all the Managers are (and maybe Assistant Managers, if you thought appropriate) in your competitor company stores in Dallas.
We would then forward them to you for appropriate action or we could call them for you and gauge their interest in your opportunity.
If you needed to hire a high level position for your organization we could even help identify those ready to take that next step!
We do a good amount of work for several retail chains in the country and they find our service very useful and cost-effective.
We’d like to do this work for you!
If you have any questions please call me at 513 899 9628 or 513 646 7306.
Our website is www.techtrak.com
I hope to hear from you.
Maureen Sharib
Phone Sourcer
TechTrak
Cincinnati, OH
Maureen@techtrak.com
Immediately I was rewarded with the following:
****@****.com ?The recipient’s e-mail address was not found in the recipient’s e-mail system. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please check the e-mail address and try resending this message, or provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.
“Who has the time?” I thought and decided to buy a 2012 restaurant association directory.
What are you doing these days for business development?