When I started recruiting what is now called cybersecurity, it was 1997, and the idea of security in the technology realm was focused on securing mainframe technology with RACF and ACF2.
My first search in what is now cybersecurity was an effort to find someone who could harden Windows and UNIX. I called my best UNIX guy, at Southwestern Bell at the time, and I called my best Windows NT engineer and asked them to describe the process of hardening operating systems.
In 1999, after placing many information security professionals, I launched SecurityRecruiter.com. It is for sale now, by the way.
Over the years, I added IT audit, risk management, privacy, compliance, threat, and more in both the information security and corporate security realms. Though I had no plan to recruit globally, opportunity knocked on the door and I answered.
Answering the door led me to recruiting around the world. An accomplishment I am very proud of having pulled off from my mountain location at the base of Pike’s Peak in Woodland Park, Colorado.
One day, on a Friday afternoon, a client asked me why I did not provide coaching services. My response was, "What's that?” Over the next week, three other people asked the same question. I went back to the first person and asked him to explain more about what he was thinking. Again, it was a Friday afternoon. Mike challenged me to add a new page to my website by Monday.
“But Mike,” I said, “I don't have any formal credentials for coaching.” He said, “Jeff, you've been coaching for the past 20 years and you’re really good at it.” Wow! Did that ever give me something to think about over the weekend.
I followed Mike's advice and dove headfirst into coaching. Over time, I took on a mentor for one year. Additionally, I did earn credentials. And most importantly, I thoroughly developed my own unique personal strengths. Strengths that lean heavily towards coaching and guiding others to improve their performance.
In September 2018, I went through cardiac arrest, an electrical storm in my heart. It happened for no clearly definable reason. After being rushed to the hospital from the ice rink where I was playing hockey that night, I was placed into a medically induced coma.
My wife was told that I might never wake up from the coma. She was told that I might wake up with severe stroke conditions. She was given a very small glimmer of hope that I would wake up with any kind of normalcy whatsoever. Apparently, I missed the memo. I'm told that when the cardiologist came in and asked how I was doing, while I was still under the influence of heavy narcotics, I asked him how long I would have to sit out of hockey.
As soon as I woke up and was coherent, I set a goal of 50 hockey games post cardiac arrest. This was a huge stretch goal because 90% of people who experience cardiac arrest die. Six months later, I had skated 50 times. I increased the goal to 100 games. I made it to 79 games before discovering that the brain trauma I went through around cardiac arrest was likely the trigger for the ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, that is killing me today.
A few weeks after leaving the hospital from the cardiac arrest experience, I was sitting in a heart surgeon’s office. This surgeon was the first person I had ever encountered in the medical profession who lead with exceptional emotional intelligence. This made all the difference in terms of the weight of the topics we would soon discuss.
During cardiac arrest, I was tested and measured every which way. Here’s a bit of amazing news. Between 2014 and 2018, it was clear to the cardiologist that I had reduced the amount of plaque in my arteries by myself. This occurred purely because of a healthy diet of hiking, mountain biking, skiing, and ice hockey 2 to 3 times per week.
During the same measurements, it was determined that I have a second aortic aneurysm. The first one was operated on and apparently fixed in 2014 through open heart surgery. That day, the surgeon had to let me know that I would need another open heart surgery to fix the second aneurysm. That was news I was not expecting. All I cared about that day was getting permission to get back on the ice to play hockey.
The surgeon gave me permission, but he also asked me to commit to two things. First, no lifting of heavy things. This could burst my aneurysm. Second, he challenged me to reduce my stress. At that moment, my wife and I looked at each other and, without words, we knew that my recruiting career had to come to an end.
Just two hours before arriving in the heart surgeon’s office, I received the equivalent of a ‘Dear John’ letter from a company that called me on June 10. They retained me for a large search. Multiple places in the contract, we let them know that we do not begin a retained search until the engagement fee has been received. This company used a third-party procurement company to send the ‘Dear John’ message through email.
They sat on the situation from June 10 to September 13. On September 13, I arrived home from a near-death experience. This group took three months and three days to return a signed contract, along with the engagement fee. I’ve seen this happen in less than 24 hours many times before. Not this time.
My contact at this company was someone who used to be an outside recruiter, but he failed at doing what I’ve done since 1990. He did not have the courtesy or the courage to face me directly. I was fired a couple weeks after returning home from a cardiac arrest experience, by a failed outside recruiter and a hiring decision-maker who had no backbone or integrity.
If this could happen on a retained search, after I had already been put out of business by a generation of HR people who have no business being in talent acquisition, in my mind, there’s nothing else that could be any worse in the recruiting business. Enough was enough.
I’m happy to tell you that there is a way to reduce work stress. First, get out of any business you might be in where you have to wonder who will be the next to take income off of your dinner table. I made this tough decision, as gut-wrenching as it was. Enough was enough.
In my world today, despite the fact that I am dying from ALS, I have never been happier, or more deeply engaged, more professionally fulfilled, or professionally appreciated, and I am working with some of the smartest, brightest, warmest, authentic people in the world and around the world through coaching.
