Top 5 life lessons I’ve learnt as a Tech Recruiter
Recruitment is all about the RIGHT relationship creation.
Let’s do a simple google search about the tagline “Recruiter is…”!
If you change the word Recruiter in the search results with words like Salesperson, Spy, Murderer, or Girlfriend, the meaning of search suggestions will still be relevant. Sounds funny, right?
In reality, people still have wrong dogmas and associations with the recruiters. For sure, it is gonna continue for a while, until the recruitment industry is fully automated, recruiters are replaced with bots, and thus new dogmas arise. Just #PredictingTheFuture don’t judge :)
The work in this kind of environment teaches you a lot of things, and it is time to share some of the valuable lessons I have learnt as a technical recruiter or, more fancy said, as a tech recruiter.
P.S. For you to know, the role of technical recruiter is to find the brightest tech talent for technical jobs. OR as JobHero says “Technical Recruiters are a unique breed of recruiter” (Advice: never say this to technical recruiters ever again) XD
Lesson 1: Sorry, I am not interested… No worries
If you have been rejected today from a college application, job interview, or life changing academic program and you think it is the end of the world, please think twice. You will hear a LOT OF rejections in your life, believe me.
Los Angeles Times: The average job seeker is rejected by 24 decision-makers before they get the “yes,” according to research from career coach and author Orville Pierson.
Daily, as a recruiter, I was getting on average 80 rejections out of 142 people contacted candidates. Attention, this is without follow ups XD
I am not interested in changing my job
I am not interested in the relocation
I am not interested to live in Berlin
I am not interested in your salary range
I am not interested in your industry
I just had a baby, sorry, not interested
I am not interested and period
Hence, the only choice is to get used to hearing a substantial amount of rejections. It is just a rejection, come on :)
Lesson 2: Not feeling valued ??? You should
Candidates will ignore you. Candidates will not value your job.
Candidates will think you are just a random recruiter.
But there will always be a candidate who says “Thanks dear for your support and for the suggestion”, “Thanks for changing my life”, “Thanks for helping me on weekends as well”, OR “Thanks also for helping me after working hours” (Recruiter: Although it is 3 AM in your local time and you are already in the bed).
Don’t worry about not being valued by a lot of people. There are still people who will Really Really value your efforts. Besides that, there is You who should value your work.
Lesson 3: Patience you must have, My Young Padawan
This point is the hardest one, at least for me.
Being a recruiter requires to have a strong patience, which I am still lacking with 80% :)
You need to have a patience of hearing “I am interested” after thousand of rejections, communicating with the semi-interested candidates, and, eventually, waiting for a candidate’s decision about the offer acceptance.
Believe me, patience will result on more productive results and outcomes in your life.
Comment: Still in the process of learning how to be more patient!
Lesson 4: Being a Change not only in somebody’s life
The candidate’s decision to change her/his job will not only result on a single individual, but also on family members, relatives, colleagues, current projects, and many other factors. Therefore, as a recruiter you also have an influence on other factors’ integration process.
You may help her spouse or his wife to find a new job as well
You may help children with finding a new school
You may help with finding a new apartment
You may help with finding local community groups of interest
You may help with finding tutors for learning local language
Indeed, we, tech recruiters, can help with all of these life decisions, through our great sourcing skills. Magic!
Lesson 5: What is the difference between Chef and Ansible?
The main difference between Chef and Ansible is…, ok let’s stop here, cause this is not the point :)
The point is that as a tech recruiter, you actually learn in a detailed way the stack information of the position and all the required tech skills needed in the requirements.
So, yes the main difference between Chef and Ansible is that Ansible is easier to manage because it uses YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) to manage configurations, and plus there is python in use. While for Chef there is still ssh at your service and you can leverage the whole brilliance of client/service architecture for your benefit. It is always matter of choice and engineering problem at hand - credits to my team lead.
Please don’t take it serious, I am still not an engineer :)
Being a recruiter, and, especially, a tech recruiter is a hard job.
But, honestly, every recruiter, or at least me, can say that the warm relationship with candidates is one of the most pleasant and spectacular things. The End.
P.S. Ending is not as good as it was in the “Parasite” movie, but still I tried :)
