5 minute read
Compassion, Ambition, and a Little Bit of Luck
Compassion, Ambition, and a Little Bit of Luck
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Recruiting is one of the most vital and valuable functions of any organization. It's also one of the most unsung. People who build careers in talent acquisition know how rewarding the field can be: You place skilled professionals in roles they love. You connect innovative organizations with the talent they need to change the world. You can make a whole lot of money while you're at it.
Yet from the outside, many struggle to see why recruiting attracts such passionate people. After all, it's not like anyone grows up wanting to be a recruiter, right? (Well — sort of. We have a story on that subject below.)
To show you why so many people are so enthusiastic about this seemingly mundane career, we asked three successful recruiting experts with three very different career journeys to share the stories of how they got into the field — and why they're still at it today.
I was an administrative assistant at a consulting company and business was booming. One day, the HR manager asked me if I could help her sort some resumes, which I happily did. The next day, she asked me if I could help her with scheduling interviews. A few days later, I was asked to conduct assessments and do some interviews. Before I knew it, I was participating in recruiting fairs. One day, without even realizing it, I was an HR person. In my first year, I hired 80 new consultants. And that is how my HR career started.
I love recruiting. I love the thrill. I even love getting a “no” because it pushes me to be better. Most of all, though, I love getting a “yes.” My favorite four words are “Congratulations, you are hired!” To experience the candidate's happiness makes my day.
Recruiting is one of the few areas where you get paid while marketing yourself. A happy hiring manager is likely to hire your services again. A happy candidate can take your name to other companies. Your brand can help you land more positions, it can help you find more candidates, and it can bring in new clients. So, stay focused on both sides. Treat hiring managers and candidates with the same attention and respect. It will pay off!
Cristine Sauter, Stark HR
- Cristine Sauter, Stark HR
I've always described myself professionally like so: “HR is in my blood, but marketing is my passion.” When I was a kid, my dad didn't read me fairy tales — he read me HR manuals as he edited them. He was a VP in numerous Fortune 500 companies. When I was in elementary school, I asked him what he did. Knowing I wouldn't understand his title, he said, “I hire and fire people.” That answer had me so intrigued.
In college, my dad started an employment agency. After school, I would go and help him. The first day we were open, we didn't have our furniture yet, but we had a phone and our fax machine (remember folks, this was the late '90s); I worked on a notebook and a piece of paper. We had 15 resumes come in our first day, and all of them had to be scheduled, so I did it.
Throughout the years, I wore different hats in the business, including interviewing, placing employees, filling in for orders when people didn't show up, and marketing. I still remember my first interview. I was terrified, but my dad gave me a cheat sheet, which I still have today.
When I moved to Florida after graduation, I worked virtually on marketing material. It was so much fun, so I stuck with that for the last few years of the business. Then, on October 24, 2004, we had to shut the doors. It was devastating to all of us. It took a few months to shake off, but I eventually went into corporate America, starting at the bottom as an HR assistant for a trucking company. After many interviews and being told I was underqualified or overqualified for most positions at 24, I was grateful for the position I had.
Then, my ambition got the best of me. I started climbing the ladder through various companies. When I was a senior HR generalist, my dad was diagnosed with cancer and passed away months later. I had only been in my position for a year, but when he passed, I was at a crossroads: continue to climb the ladder or do something totally different? I chose to do something completely different and got out of the HR game for a while. It brought back too many memories of conversations with my dad, and it was a necessary break for what was to come.
After a few years out of the field, I decided that I should start a company. When I got to my fourth business idea that didn't amount to anything, I found myself lost.
It was then that I searched for an answer to the burning question of “What company should I start?” It all became clear one evening when I came across Proverbs 26:10 in my Bible reading: “An employer who hires any fool that comes along is only hurting everybody concerned.” The ideas started flooding in.
Since then, I have made it my mission to teach startups and small businesses how to recruit and hire effectively and affordably. I evaluated what I did right, what I did wrong, and turned those lessons into easy processes that employers can do on their own. I'm constantly emphasizing the use of strategy and planning when it comes to recruitment — and that has been the key to my success.
Jen Teague
- Jen Teague, #BeAHiringHero
You might say I was in the right place at the right time. In the '80s, a friend of mine owned a job fair company and offered me a lucrative job I couldn't refuse. Eventually, I ventured out with my own job fair company. Five years later, I was organizing more than 100 job fairs per year all over the country.
My goal was to become the leading job fair company in the US. We accomplished that goal in five years. It takes a good amount of work to set up a successful job fair. To be effective, you must be able to attract great companies and great candidates, which takes a little bit of ingenuity and a lot of perspiration. As time went on, I expanded to create a retained, end-to-end interviewing service — aka, a recruiting service.
After 20 years, I collapsed our job fair division and moved completely to retained services. Retained recruiting gives me and my team the chance to really focus on getting the right person for the position. It's not a situation where you have a recruiter working 10 different positions in the hope that we get one hire. It's a situation where we commit all resources to finding the right person.
That's the most rewarding part of recruiting for me: finding the right person for the job. The person who's going to stick around, move up in the company, and really contribute to the bottom line. Years ago, I helped a company find a member for their sales team, and he's been there ever since. He's gone from sales rep to sales manager to managing director. To this day, that client continues to thank me. It really made a difference for the employer and the employee.
Jeffrey Audette
- Jeffrey Audette, VMG Recruiting
