Take Pride in What You Do

On Recruiter.com, we’ll often discuss all of the fun positives of working as a professional recruiter. We talk about the flexibility, fast-pace and great opportunity.  We joke about the off-time, the compensation and the competition.  A lot of other times we discuss the negatives…the difficult clients, kooky candidates and all around frustrations of recruiting.  But there’s something that definitely deserves a lot more time: professional pride.

Many of us gravitated towards the recruiting profession because of the flexibility it offered along with the immediate return on investment.  After all, there aren’t a lot of careers where you can so quickly and so aggressively affect your own bottom line. But these days, with dire economic news on every front page, pundits bemoaning the still sky-high unemployment, and others questioning whether agency recruiting will even exist in ten years, recruiters should be taking heart and taking pride in their profession. Let me tell you what I mean.

Earlier today I was walking into a client to meet my candidate before her interview.  I was pleased because her resume was a great fit and she seemed to have the right personality for the client.  But as I sat talking to her before the interview, I started to focus on a couple of other important things.  First of all, she had been out of work for a couple of years after she had started a family.  And second, she really needed the job after her husband had fallen ill.  As I sat with her, waiting for the Hiring Manager to come meet her in the lobby, I realized how important it was that she actually lands the job.  The rest of our conversation is a blur…the Manager came down and she went in to the interview.  But I couldn’t shake the conversation from my thoughts for the rest of the day.

It turns out the Manager liked her a lot, but wasn’t sure if she would be able to step back into a professional environment as quickly as he needed.  Now certainly I could go find another candidate, but instead, I worked on selling her skills, assets and drive.  In short, I sold the dickens out of her.  I want her to get the job.  In an economy like this, it will be hard enough to find a new role, let alone after you’ve been out of work for a time. Now things are looking good for her, by the way (cross your fingers!)

This got me to thinking…Recruiters tend to treat their job with blithe humor.  Honestly, I think it’s necessary for any of us to remain sane and successful in such a changeable and people-based business.  But at the end of the day, we work to get people jobs.  We work to get people careers.  We work to make peoples lives better.  Now certainly our day to day tends to focus on getting people a better opportunity or more money (and thusly, a greater payday ourselves), but sometimes, maybe even a lot of times, what we do can really truly help someone.

These days in particular, it’s important to take pride in what you do.   There are a number of people out there struggling to find work and more than a few will find their way to your email or voicemail.  While in reality we work for our clients, we still have a responsibility to our candidates.  Take pride in the fact that someone views you as a lifeline.  Take pride in the fact that you may be the person who makes all the difference in their little world. Because in the last few years, and again just a few days ago, we all became a lot more important.