I have been a recruiter for over 16 years…and I love it!
This isn’t a profession that I chose. In my younger days, I worked in information technology, initially designing and hosting websites for companies with a friend of mine. This was back in the very early days of the internet…the .COM boom when creating and hosting a site was some type of voodoo.
Over time, I gravitated towards network integration, working for a company that supported client’s network infrastructure…basically a company that was big enough to need technical help to support their network but was still too small to require a dedicated employee for that purpose. After 5-6 years, I decided it was time for a change and I contacted a recruiting/staffing firm, Robert Half Technology, to see if they could help find a new opportunity for me.
After meeting with me, the thought they had found a perfect fit for me…working for them as a recruiter! I learned later that my interpersonal and technical skills made for an ideal recruiter. I thought about it and then figured I would give it a shot.
My life as a recruiter, working at a staffing firm
Though I loved being a recruiter at a staffing firm, the role isn’t for everyone. After an initial ramp-up period where they pay new-hires a salary, they take the training wheels off and you have to support yourself…by finding and placing candidates with clients. It was 100% commission-based. If you struggled finding and placing candidates you were out…usually within a few months.
I was pretty good at it. During most of my time, I functioned in a role as a recruiter…my job was to simply find the best candidates and my colleagues on sales side found clients to place my candidates on contract or contract-to-hire roles. If I didn’t have solid candidates ready to go for a client that needed someone to start tomorrow, as a recruiter, you were in trouble!
My role required that I constantly find new candidates of all sorts of skill-sets, ready to start a contract on a moment’s notice. I had to learn how to creatively search and source candidates. I was not only competing with other staffing firms to find and place candidates, but also competing with my own teammates to find a candidate for an open role with a client.
Every week, within the entire firm, “scorecards” were emailed out every Friday, listing every recruiter and where they ranked, along with info showing how much profit each recruiter billed out for each week.
Check out this old scorecard to the left.
I was consistently inside the top 10.
Week after week.
Month after month.
Year after year.
Everyone could see how well (or poorly) everyone else was doing. We could also calculate how much a recruiter was making. It was a dog eat dog world.
While I was good at finding the best candidates to place with clients, I decided I needed a change
My life as an internal, corporate recruiter
I was a staffing recruiter for nine years and moved into an internal/corporate recruiting role by my own choice. While it was nice to place hundreds and hundreds of candidates across tons of firms, I thought it wold be nice to work internally, sourcing candidates for one company and really helping to build something entire teams within a firm.
My time as a corporate recruiter has also been rewarding…directly seeing an impact that my hires make for a company is a great feeling. Helping hiring managers build out entire teams with very in-demand, but hard to find skill-sets is challenging but fun.
I’m an expert at sourcing. Searching for and finding great candidates across the wide expanse of the internet, across job boards, LinkedIn, blogs, Github repositories and much more.
My life helping others like you – with this website
I can help you too.
If you are a recruiter or sourcer working for a staffing/placement firm…I can help you because I’ve been in the trenches!
If you are an internal corporate recruiter and happen to have hiring managers breathing down your neck to make that hire…I can help you, because I know what that world is like too!
My specialty is boolean searches. I can teach you how to find candidates, because I do it every day.
How can I help you?
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I am currently developing a very comprehensive PAID course, where I share all of my 16 years of knowledge as a sourcing recruiter. Right now, I am developing a list of those interested getting free access to the course when it launches. All I ask in return is your valuable feedback to help me refine aspects of the course. Also, if you do enjoy the course and find it helpful, I would welcome any testimonials, which will help the course reach a wider audience.