Amy Miller of Recruiting in Yoga Pants joined us to talk about her unique view on the world and how that has in turn helped her be successful in her recruiting career, but more than that, how it has helped her feel more fulfilled in her work and life.
As always, we had our mics and cameras on, so tune in and watch another lively discussion from our latest Recruitment Marketing Roundtable.
Recruiters are inherently helpful people – but how you help is as important as the fact that you are helping. When helping others no longer fills your cup, but rather is draining you, it’s time to take a quick inventory:
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Is it the helping that is the problem, or how you are being asked to help?
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Are the expectations of others that are being placed upon you wrong?
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And are you just going along with their plan, rather than driving the success of everyone in your path?
The challenge is that you can’t always help people the way they want to be helped. The key to recruiting success is to help people the way you can, the way that fills your own personal bucket, that allows you to trade in the emotional currency that makes things work best for you.
Here is a summary of Amy Miller’s Guide to the Recruitment Galaxy (In Yoga Pants!):
1. Solve business problems through talent. Understand your job. You are not an admin, you are not a paper pusher. You are not here to appease the hiring manager and you are certainly not here to make every candidate happy. What you are here to do is to find a solution to a problem by bringing together the best darn people out there to solve that problem.
2. Know what fills your emotional cup. You can’t solve business problems on an empty emotional tank – so figure yourself out. What fills you up? Helping that one candidate who has potential but not at your organization? Volunteering at a career center for people getting back on their feet? Writing? TikTok videos? Whatever it is that helps you to be your best you – make sure that you are prioritizing those things.
3. Have a chip on your shoulder and use it to drive yourself. Rarely has anyone made it very far in this life without some adversity. Humble starts in life, health problems, learning challenges, the deck seemingly stacked against you. It’s important to realize that it can never be about what has happened to you, it needs to be about how you manage going forward. Does your past compel you to greater things, drive you, and make you want a better life? Or, do you let it drown you or distort your world view? Turning your past into your own positive fuel creates the foundation for your personal success.
4. Just do it. Whatever mistakes you might make will rarely be worse than not trying at all. Step up, raise your hand, don’t wait for permission, just do it. As long as you are operating with good intentions and within the limits of the law and company policies – you will get further by trying than by waiting.
5. Pay it forward. No one succeeds without someone else taking a chance on them. Don’t be the person who doesn’t acknowledge that you were lucky enough to get help. Instead, make sure you are turning around and helping someone else. For some people, it’s one-on-one coaching, for others it’s a blog, advice column, cheerleading, or introductions. How you pay it forward can manifest in many ways – just make sure you’re doing it. Karma’s a funny thing, and paying it forward often helps fill your emotional cup.
6. A healthy dose of skepticism is good for you. In a world filled with so much advice and information, make sure the advice you get is in your interest and not in the interest of the giver. One of the hardest things in recruiting is all the bad advice pundits have given candidates – that only serve the purposes of the pundit. This is also true of the demands coming from candidates, hiring managers, and other voices around you. Get to the root of the problem you’re solving (business, career, life) and focus on the steps that will get you there.
7. Make your own success. You can’t wait for that person who is going to recognize your awesomeness. Get laser focused on your current goal. You don’t need a long term plan with all the details mapped out, just the next one or two steps. Figure that out and then work your tail off to make that happen.
8. Look for patterns of success and then scale the solution. When you find yourself giving the same advice to every person (candidate, hiring manager, etc) and it works, or doing repetitive tasks that result in success, figure out how to scale it. Would a three minute video done once give you back 80% of every conversation – are you having that conversation 6 times a week? There are ways to personalize scale and let everyone win; especially you.
9. Automate what sucks. Buy technology that automates mundane tasks, but don’t automate the parts of your job, life, etc., that you love. If calling candidates to make that offer is what fills your cup, don’t automate that. If what you love is manually sourcing new candidates, don’t outsource that. Balance your need to be fulfilled with your need to get things done.
10. Networking is a skill – learn it. Most candidates don’t know the art of networking. Even recruiters who know the value in it often struggle. People have been conditioned to think that networking is a large group of people with name tags meeting each other. But with all the digital means available, it can be far less intimidating nowadays. It’s all about asking for the next introduction. Who else should you meet? And most importantly, and the hardest thing, is that this is something you should do continuously, not just when you are hunting for your next gig.
Bonus:
11. See the magic. In whatever you do, make sure you are a valuable contributor. If you’re recruiting, often the special skill lies in your ability to read people and see magic in a particular candidate. Trust me, this one is worth your time. It’s like opening a bank account, you have to get it right a few times with your hiring manager, but once you have their trust and you see the magic in certain candidates, recruiting really gets fun. You get to help take a chance on that candidate. You get to use all your skills to get to that offer letter.You get your emotional cup filled and you can literally make your own success by solving a business problem with awesome talent.
