Whether you’re at a small or big company, the competitiveness of the commercial world and the demands for growth make your firm either prey or predator. If a company can’t grow organically - by growing sales of its own products - often leadership looks to be acquired or acquire another firm.

But what does that mean for a manager? What is our role in helping two organizations come together? How do you navigate the stressful, water-cooler-talk-filled, flurry-of-emails world of a merger or an acquisition? In this series of casts, we lay it out for you.

Today we cover part 2 of our series on mergers and acquisitions. Hopefully, with this podcast, the idea of a merger or acquisition will be just a tad less scary. Put some of the ideas we discuss to work today and you’ll benefit handsomely even if there isn’t a merger on your horizon!

In a previous cast, we talked about how many managers don’t understand the importance of taking recruiters’ calls, and walked through step by step (hey, this is Manager Tools) how to handle those calls. What to say, and what to learn, and how to proceed.

But there’s another side to the recruiting relationship, isn’t there? What if you want to contact a recruiter, without waiting for them to call you? Maybe you’re recognizing a change in opportunities where you are, or you want to move in a different direction, or perhaps it’s as simple as suddenly inheriting a terrible boss, and alarm bells are going off in your head.

How does one contact a recruiter? What are the basics to consider, and how does one approach them when you’re going to initiate contact? It’s easy if you do it step by step, the Manager Tools way!

Note: During the show, we mentioned we would post a couple of links to some recruiter resources. Hunt-Scanlon is a provider of information about the executive recruiting business - great resource for access to recruiters. Kennedy is a well known technology executive recruiting firm.

• Hunt-Scanlon Corporation
• The Kennedy Partnership

This cast gives guidance for managers’ use of Social Networking Sites like MySpace and FaceBook.

If you’re one of our younger listeners, members, or premium subscribers, with less than 5 years in the workforce, chances are you have a MySpace or a FaceBook page. You stay in touch with friends, let people know what you’re doing, share photos, put yourself out there.

And you may have trouble, too.

OR … you’re a manager with one of those people working for you.

And you may have trouble too.

Learn how to get out of trouble in this cast.

In today’s cast, we conclude our conversation on Myspace and social networks. As always, if you’re new to Manager Tools and haven’t listened to the first part, you may wish to go back and listen to that first.