I was reading a story on LinkedIn the other day about a woman who had a big job interview. She was on the train on her way to the interview when she got a notice of an issue at her child's school. Her husband was 10 hours away and she had to reverse course and pick her child up.

She called the company. Naturally, she was distraught. She hated canceling so late and wondered if her chances were shot. They were not. The company was, in fact, happy to reschedule.

Let me ask you this: how do you think she feels about working there?

Which got me to thinking about whether one word can really make a difference. I'll admit the whole idea makes me nervous. So much goes into every little thing we do that talking about one word is a little facile. Also, it can be manipulative...I give you Ronald Reagan calling a nuclear weapon a "peacekeeper."

But when I think of the story above, I do wonder about how one word might be at least the start of a change that will help the companies and organizations I deal with address their biggest challenge: finding adequate numbers of quality employees.

To wit: rather than a hiring process, what if we had a recruitment process?

You'd need more than a name, but you know as well as I do that 99% of the job interviews we've ever been in consisted of the prospective employee selling the employer. What if it was the other way around? And not just for the hot-shot VP you are stealing, but for every employee?

To me, it seems like that's a chance for one word to at least open the door to an important change.