I have been working as a recruiter for about 2 years. As I mentioned earlier in the previous story, I started my career as a Talent Acquisition Assistant in a retail company, then got the opportunity to work in one of the unicorn tech companies as a Recruiter (of course). It was a roller-coaster ride working in the recruitment area since I experience a lot of things that affected my emotional states. You feel happy when a candidate accepts the offer, but at the same time, you can also feel the sadness coming along when a candidate declines the offer or cancel join. Why? Because it means you need to go back to the first square and starting all over again — sourcing, phone screening, scheduling the user interview, reference check, offering.
From my experience, I conclude two essential things to determine your hiring success.
Effort. Effort means the time and energy that you have spent on LinkedIn or Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to source the best talents that suit your company’s needs. On the other side, you need to manage stakeholders who sometimes have unreasonable expectations to fulfill. For example one of my users was looking for a junior team member, but their expectation was to have a junior team member with the skill of a manager. I know it makes no sense, but that is the truth in the practice
Luck. Huh? No wonder, luck is important. I have dealt with a situation when the candidate had signed the offer letter, stated formally that she would join with us. Then, suddenly, a few days later, she changed her mind and canceled joining. Another example is when the candidate has communicated his salary expectation but after we put the number as what he expected, he asked for more salary since he got the counteroffer from other companies. How cruel is our world? But what can I do? I already tried my best to highlight the company’s selling-point but in the end, money talks. Again, it just the universe wasn’t on my side and sending me a bunch of rotten luck.
Because I often feel that recruitment is more by accident than by design, I am trying to let go of disappointment and realize that it just a matter of finding the right person at the right time. It is similar to the concept of finding the right person to be your life partner tho. It is something that out of my control and what can I do is to do the best as I can to fulfill the hiring needs.
Do not blame yourself if you can’t make any closing this month because you are underperformed. We have done our best and let time do the rest. Sometimes, thoughts about failure are crawling to my mind and it affected my self-confidence. I see myself as incapable and difficult to practice self-acceptance. Here, changing the mindset is the key to deal with the situation and assure yourself that things will fall into place by themselves.
Believe in your self.
