How did you get into recruiting?
This one is for the aspiring recruiters.
I get asked this question all the time. There’s a long, quintessential NYC story but an even better short answer.
That is — I’ve been interviewing people since I was in high school.
It started with journalism. After college, I worked at a legal non-profit where I would do intake for people’s legal cases and refer them to different lawyers. Then I got into podcasting. Around the same time, I started recruiting for tech companies in NYC. So really, I’ve been asking people questions for almost 20 years now.
In college, I had a job as a Relationship Manager for an employment liability legal services company. I didn’t realize it at the time (because I randomly picked an internship that would get me paid — I was 19, could you blame me?), but that role was very much akin to recruiting.
My Very New York City Story
I moved to New York City with the promise of a full-time job with a company that didn’t pan out. In true NYC fashion, I was jobless with a 1-year lease on a room in Brooklyn and I was determined to make it work. From a Craigslist posting, I applied to work at a startup company as a Junior Chief of Staff.
ICYMI, the Chief of Staff at a startup is the right-hand person to the CEO. It’s a role that I thought could give me the best exposure and understanding of how to run a business. Think of it as free business school.
The day of my interview, I showed up to a little apartment-turned-office in Chinatown. I interviewed with the Chief of Staff on the phone (still a good friend of mine) and she had me meet the CEO. He pretty quickly dismissed me and said that I didn’t have the analytical background he was looking for. Totally fair — I had a degree in Psychology and had been a blogger while volunteering on sustainability projects for 1.5 years. The only analytical thing about my job was SEO blog post titles.
But, the Chief of Staff told me that they were in need of a Tech Recruiter. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I didn’t even know how to connect to an AppleTV so I probably shouldn’t be hiring their Software Engineers. So, after a bit more waiting, they had me meet their CTO.
The CTO showed me a drip email campaign that he was using to reach out to some of the most coveted software engineers in the industry (ivy league grads, big four tech experience). The CTO (an ex-Principal Engineer from Google) asked me what I thought of his email campaign.
In my naive state, I told him pretty bluntly that his email was too long and no one was going to read it. He asked me if I could fix it. I told him, “Definitely.” (Again, jobless in NYC — I didn’t know if I could do any of it but I would’ve agreed to turn water into gold had they asked.)
The Chief of Staff told me that because of my phone mannerism, background in marketing, and the fact that I used to work in sales, I would be great at recruiting. They asked me if I wanted the job.
I had to pay rent somehow so I literally had nothing to lose. I took the 3-month contract for a moderate monthly salary (clearly, I knew nothing about negotiating at this point) and started the next day.
I’d be lying if I said that the learning curve wasn’t steep.
I spent hours reading everything I could about tech and recruiting, I’d listen to podcasts about Machine Learning, and go to meetups and networked with everyone I could. I was pulling 60+ hour weeks just to figure out the basics… but it all slowly started falling into place.
The best part was when, 6-weeks in, I hired my first Software Engineer. Then I hired another Engineer a few weeks later. I also revitalized the internship program and hired two Waterloo interns for the next rotation.
Needless to say, the company renewed my contract for another 3-months. I repeated the same level of success during that contract — hiring two full-time engineers and two additional interns. I then went on to do more G&A (General and Administrative) hiring, took on a full-time role and eventually hired across all departments — Marketing, Sales, Customer Support, Product, Manufacturing, Data Science, Machine Learning, Design, On-Air Talent, and other Recruiters.
Eventually, I got lucky enough to land a role where I spend 100% of my time focusing on hiring Software Engineers for incredibly smart teams that build a very technical product. It’s my favorite kind of hiring and I love learning about interesting technology.
I don’t think this is the way to get into recruiting for everyone but if you’re thinking about becoming a recruiter, let me know what skill sets you think a recruiter should have! I’ll be writing a post that covers the essential skills for any recruiter.
