What I Learned from My First FULL year of Agency Recruiting.

Ahh, the fresh smell of Spring. (Sadly Spring isn't really a thing in Los Angeles, but bear with me.)

As March comes to a close and April is quickly approaching, I am working hard to make sure that I am able to hit my goals for the month of March as well as Q1. A little ping on my LinkedIn reminds me that April 9th marks my 1 year anniversary with ConSol Partners.

A Whole Year- how did that happen?

As a millennial, I feel directly in the job hopping trap but somehow found myself a profession in which I don't even bother updating my resume. People say "Time flies when you're having fun" and I guess that's true because I still can't believe it's been a year.

Before I dig into what I learned, I did have to emphasize that the last 365 days was not always rainbows and butterflies but it's the lows that make the highs that much sweeter.

Agency Recruiting- where do I even begin?

Many people will think that recruiting is synonymous with Human Resources but it is far from that. In fact, recruiting seems like a nicer way of saying Match Maker, or People Sales. You have a pool of candidates and a pool of roles and do your best to match them up.

Recruiting is sometimes a "Feast or Famine" role, in which some days I'll be on top of the world by smashing big numbers but if I'm not careful, I will blank the next month (I've learn that the hard way).

Agency recruiting teaches you to diversify and always to be thinking of the future. Just because your candidate gets the offer, doesn't mean they will take it. Best case scenario, they take it and start and you get paid but that empties your pipeline.

I've always thought of myself as a pretty resilient person but having multiple deals fall through can be disheartening. This has taught me to never count my chickens too early.

Over the past year, I started off as a Delivery consultant, focusing on finding the right candidates and qualifying them for the roles at hand but then slowly progressed into building my own "business" within a business. I immersed myself in the CDN/OVP and Cybersecurity industry and really made myself an expert in the candidate market of those industries. As I progressed throughout my first year, I was tasked to bring in my own clients, consult them on their recruiting needs, and build my own pool of candidates and roles.

On top of the technical and professional skills that I learned this past year, I have learned a lot personally about myself.

Even though I have learned a lot this past year, most of it was paving my way to a hopefully even more successful future!

The beginning is rough but I believe it is the most educational time of any career.

I'm told it gets easier so let's see!