Recruiting… Now there’s a word that people either know or they don’t. And even better if you throw out “headhunter” because that gets some good deer in headlight looks. I stumbled into recruiting like most people.. on accident. My roommate at the time was a branch manager at a staffing firm and invited me to interview. I got the job as a “sourcer” amongst a company of full desk recruiters. Myself and one other were an experiment on sourcing only. Not to date myself, but this was before Internet, fax paper was waxy and nobody had email.. it was “here is a phone book and a phone” in a bull-pin kind of environment. But I loved it! It was challenging, cut throat, I had to sell my candidate over someone else and it was a game.. until the day I made my 1st hire. I had cold called her one day, had no idea what she actually did, but I listened like she was the most interesting person on the earth. I had her come into the office (we did that back then) and had her fill out our 20 page application and spent about an hour with her. She told me how she was a single mom, struggling to pay bills, was actually losing money coming to see me, and how if she could just get a small increase, it would make life so much easier. After she left, I ran her resume around relentlessly amongst the other recruiters and finally found something that was a fit. I sent her off for the interview and they loved her, I got an offer and invited her back into the office. I was nervous, she was nervous, and even her kiddo seemed nervous. I sat her down and said, Nadia, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get you the increase you were looking for.. and she bowed her head in defeat.. but in a quick second (because I’m not that cruel).. I burst out and said.. I got you a 10k increase!! (keep in mind, she was only making 30k) She jumped up, tears rolling down her cheek and bear hugged me.. the whole office was clapping. She mumbled words I couldn’t really comprehend, but that feeling of changing someone’s life is what got me hooked. You never really have time to think about the impact we make on a life. Yes, we joke about the money, the challenges, the technology, the roller coaster, but at the end of the day, recruiters are recruiters because of the people. I love recruiting because of the people.. the candidates, the clients, the coworkers and the educators.