Discovering RecOps: When RecOps Discovers You by Tom Ford
I recently came across an article discussing how Recruiting professionals should stop saying they “fell into Recruiting” and instead say they “discovered Recruiting.” This phrase really resonated with me, mainly because if you had told me at 20 that by 40, I would have a fantastic Recruiting Programs Lead job at a major tech company in the United States, I would have never believed you. However, I absolutely support rebranding “fell” to “discovered” as Recruiting sometimes helps people discover themselves - that’s what happened to me.
I’m not exactly your typical Recruiting expert. I was a Spanish major in college who spent way too much time reading about Linguistics/Gender/Sociology/Literature/LGBTQIA+ Studies (I regret NOTHING!) and had incredibly supportive parents who told me not to work during school. This was great during school but left me very jobless and inexperienced when I hit the job market in 2005. Recruiters who, impressed with my grades and communications skills, took a chance on me and helped me find my first temporary jobs, which eventually landed me a full-time, permanent job in advertising. I eventually ended up at a company where I spent a decade doing everything from Account Management, Product Management, Integration Consulting, and System Administration - including my happiest and best role where, on a shared-services Team, I supported 100+ Recruiters working in an RPO business model on a custom instance of Bullhorn with a unique integration for clients to disposition candidates in a Salesforce-powered web portal. It was challenging, exciting, and damn fun!
When I left that company, I never thought I would get back into Recruiting and that I was destined for Product Operations until a friend reached out to me about a Rec Ops role. While I initially told him no, I ended up interviewing and falling in love with everything: the people, the process, the tech stack, and the authentic humans I encountered during the interviews. While Product Operations gives you an excellent background for Recruiting Operations, here are two concepts in “ROps” that, upon (re)discovering, hooked me to Recruiting all over again:
Helping People Find Work Is Work That Always Matters And Teaches Resilience: Products sunset, but Recruiting never really sleeps, although it does ebb and flow. Recruiting is often seen as a field that many people think “is simple” (hence why so many people supposedly “fall into” it), but it’s actually one of the most nuanced, challenging professions you can do (if you do it well)! However, Recruiters and ROps Pros must breathe resilience - they have to if they want to survive their jobs - which means they’re always willing to roll up their sleeves and find a path forward, even if they have to flex at the final hour, to both directly and indirectly help people find work that they love.
Recruiters, Hiring Managers, Interviewers, and Candidates ALL WANT THE SAME THING: A Product Manager, Engineer, CEO, and Customer all have very different needs from product X and motivations for those needs. This can make alignment and prioritization very difficult without extensive research that ultimately ends with producing what the highest-paid person’s opinion in the room is anyway. But for the significant players in Recruiting, the needs and motivations are almost always the same, even when each side is still hilariously suspicious of the other side - data can ultimately inform where the opportunities are:
Clarity: From the job description to the resume and the calendar invites to the emails, each person in the Recruitment process wants information that’s well-written, accurate, timely, and straightforward.
Truth: We often talk about “selling yourself” as a candidate or “selling the job” to a candidate as Hiring Manager or Interviewer. Selling, if it helps describe real potential, can be helpful for each side to evaluate the other. However, at the end of the day, the sale still needs to be genuine. A candidate who pretends to know C# because they asked ChatGPT or a Recruiter who does not tell a candidate applying to a remote role that in 3 months they’ll be forced to come into the office 3 days a week only helps to ensure that no one will succeed in the long-term. When in doubt, remember the wise words of TLC: “Don't go chasin' waterfalls!”
Fit: This is the most simple common ground that everyone shares: the desire that the hire is the right fit for the job and intends to stay and grow with the company.
Respect: Treat others how you would want to be treated if you were in the other person’s shoes:
Show up on time to interviews
Create a safe space where everyone can be authentic, vulnerable, and curious with their questions
Offer feedback
Update timelines and communicate those updates transparently
Even with all of the painful layoffs and technology changing the Recruiting industry, I have never been prouder to be a Recruiting Operations professional because of the extraordinarily talented, thoughtful, kind people who call Recruiting their home. I call RecOps my home because it allows me to be my best, most authentic whole self, while also giving me the opportunity to use data to improve the relationship between employees, candidates, and Recruiters. Recruiting Professionals must have so many stories to share as to how they discovered Recruiting. What’s your story?
Disclaimer: The views expressed and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and they do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author. Since we are critically-thinking human beings, these views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time. Please do not hold them in perpetuity.
