I stopped into a boutique stationary store last week to pick up a last minute gift for a friend. The woman who helped me with my purchase had operated the store for 25 years. She corrected me when I asked her how long she had “owned” the store. “I operate the store. To say you own something is such a passive statement. Operate is a verb–it implies action.” She’s right, of course.

Owning a house is different than making a home. Owning a car is not the same as taking a scenic drive. And we all understand that owning a treadmill is not necessarily synonymous with running.

Best-selling author, Sue Grafton once said, “A writer is someone who wrote today.” It’s the act of writing that makes you an author.

It’s the same for recruiters. Just calling yourself a recruiter doesn’t make you a credit to the industry. Being a professional recruiter requires a commitment that is brought to life through a certain set of daily activities. The most important of those activities is to recruit. If a writer is someone who wrote today, then a recruiter is someone who recruited today.

In this economy with unemployment rates inching upward, it may be tempting to sit back and let the candidates come to you. It’s a huge mistake. If you do this, you will become an “interviewer”–not a recruiter. Interviewers are not a credit to the industry and, worse, bring no value to their clients. “Recruiters” who take this path of least resistance will not survive a prolonged downturn.

Your client can find unemployed candidates on their own. They won’t pay you a premium fee to pull someone off a job board. You’ll find more and more fee pressure when the candidates you produce aren’t discernably better than those who respond to their job postings. Simply put–a recruiter who doesn’t recruit and produce high value candidates will find they have become irrelevant.

My recommendation in the current market is to maintain some daily dose of recruiting calls to keep your skills sharp and build a pipeline of placeable and marketable candidates.

Any day you go home without actually recruiting, you are taking a step backward. You are choosing the path that leads to downward to lower value, lower billings and lower personal income. It’s your choice. Choose wisely.