03-19-2019 Why I'm Passionate About Recruiting (Part 1)
Disclaimer: My experiences and thoughts are about tech recruiting and jobs, as that's the field that I'm familiar with. All thoughts and opinions here are my own.
It might seem odd that as a fresh-faced milennial that I'm so obsessed with tech jobs. On one hand, I'd argue that because I'm a materialistic millenial that it makes more sense for me to love investigating jobs. On the other hand, yeah, I'd agree it's pretty weird, especially considering that I've never held a stable 9-5 yet. Perhaps that's precisely why I'm so interested in them in the first place. I'd like to reject the idea that I'll be chained to a position I merely tolerate for forty-some years. Now, I don't just want to be an edge-lord and scream at a wall about how life is unfair and how we should be passionate about jobs. I've slowly cultivated a network of tech recruiters, and gathered some information that I think is useful. I'm going to plug the latest project I'm working on, but first, let's take a look at some basic background information about jobs.
Why don't we love our jobs?
For how critical they are for enjoying life, there are few things less celebrated than jobs. That's not surprising considering the following applies to most Americans.
You spend more time at work and getting to work than you do spending time with your friends and family. (Not counting sleep)
You are not overly fond of your job. You work mainly for the money, and you don't have a particularly large amount of loyalty to your company.
You spend the most productive hours of the prime years of your life making someone else's dreams come true.
This intrinsically seems like a recipe for resentment, a quasi-abusive relationship if you will, but this doesn't end up in a messy break-up where both parties leave with life lessons and some emotional scars. No, while there are some (rare) exceptions, the one that suffers is you.
What's a job? What's a recruiter?
First off, I'd like to clarify that the job of a recruiter isn't to get you a job. A recruiter is a sales person. The job of anyone in sales is, well, to make sales. Only this time, you are the product. The recruiter makes commission (usually %based but sometimes static) when you make it past all the interview rounds and accepts the offer. The important detail here, is that they get paid when you accept the offer at the companies that make a deal with the recruiting company. And like all sales people, recruiters have a quota that they need to make. As a summary, recruiters are not your friend. Oftentimes you will be pressured into accepting offers that are a poor fit, or from (for a lack of a better word) questionable companies. Ones that could have a fun medley of few benefits, long work hours, and Game of Thrones-esque office politics. A you-pick-two deal like what you can find at Panera, but instead of broccoli cheddar soup you will contemplate choosing a different profession.
That being said, recruiters are not evil. While the most skilled recruiters can have you somehow signed up to fight forest fires with webpack and slack emojis, there are plenty of bad new grad recruiters that you can take advantage of. In my next article I will document how to use recruiters as a tool to aid your career progression.
KEYWORDS: jobs, recruiting, tech