How to Start Over- Again

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This Week’s Breakdown

You know, something they don’t tell you about starting a weekly newsletter is that every week keeps happening and a new issue is due! October was an absolute whirlwind for me as I had been talking about in previous issues, and the truth is I just didn’t have it in me to get a weekly newsletter out on top of it the last 2 weeks. All the credit in the world to people like Hung Lee who have been doing this a decade and only ever missed 1 issue.

There will be more on my travels in the Accrued Time Section below, but this week let’s get into a real recruiter breakdown.

I’ve spent a lot of time during my travels the last few months, speaking with so many recruiters, and thinking about how much experience matters in this job. Not “years of experience” in the job description kind of way, but the kind that teaches you to trust your instincts, manage chaos, and see around corners before anyone else does.

As recruiters, we’ve seen the full lifecycle of human behavior at work: overconfidence, panic, brilliance, burnout. We’ve learned how to read between the lines of what hiring managers say they want and what they’ll actually hire. We’ve sat in debriefs that could just as easily be as therapy sessions, or even worse, court transcripts.

That experience is valuable, not just for candidates, but especially for the younger recruiters and the hiring managers we work with.

Because while the internet loves to tell recruiters how easy our job should be, the people who actually listen, the ones inside the process, know that what we’ve learned is worth something.

So this week, remember that:

• Your experience isn’t just history, it’s pattern recognition.

• The mistakes you’ve made turned into lessons someone else can now avoid.

• And the advice you share might actually make the whole process a little better. Even if it’s just a drop of water in the ocean, it’s still a good drop.

Candidates might not always listen. The comment sections definitely won’t.

But your hiring managers, your peers, your new recruiters entering the industry at a time that feels impossible to succeed, they should.

So speak up. Lead with what you know. Don’t be silenced by your own insecurities about if you’re good at the job or if people can be helped by you.

That’s the part AI and “thought leaders” who haven’t touched a req in the last 5 years can’t replace.

Recruited in the Wild

Seen on LinkedIn, overheard in Slack, or posted without shame.

There is obviously a lot to choose from after taking 2 issues off, but in the spirit of recruiter community, I want to highlight a post from someone in hiring that I agreed with, because I think it brings to light one of the biggest issues we are all facing!

 This post from a VP of Operations about how many applicants for their job were not qualified has ignited a firestorm in the comments. We all probably have a similar story of 114 applicants and 0 being the right fit.

What happened next in this post is obvious and we all know it. Recruiters agreed, jobseekers showed up to shame them and say how they should just take a chance on someone and a resume doesn’t tell the story.

I have spoken to dozens and dozens of hiring leaders the last few weeks who all tell this same exact story though, and this will continue to be the area that jobseekers seem unable to understand and where the most strife happens between us. (Well, besides ghosting, which yes we can avoid).

I don’t have a great takeaway from this post as a learning moment, but I do think it’s so important to highlight how so many of us are facing this same problem, and that trying to convince jobseekers of it will continue to go nowhere. As tools continue to be made to help recruiters deal with this issue, we are going to see the gap widen between us and jobseekers, and as bad as that may make us feel online. It is important to keep in mind, just like we talked about in the breakdown, we know what we’re doing! We don’t need internet comments to drive the direction we are going in for our roles or for our companies.

My real advice I suppose is either, just don’t bother making these posts if you don’t want to hear the complaints that you know will be coming, or feel confident standing behind what you know is the right way to hire, which is almost never to just simply hire the closest person out of the first 100 that apply to make someone on the internet happy!

Accrued Time

A weekly check-in on what I’ve got going on behind the scenes, events, projects, and life outside the req pile.

What a few weeks it has been for me. As a quick reminder, this is what my last 3 weeks involved:

• Disrupt MN Talk in Minneapolis

• Family Camping Trip

• RecFest in Nashville

• LinkedIn Talent Connect in San Diego

• Seminar on social media success for introverts

This doesn’t even include the trips in September!

It was a lot, but I had such a blast, and honestly can not stress enough how important it is to get out there and meet people face to face. There are so many amazing people in the industry that I either met for the first time or saw again for the first time in a while, and that personal connection is so different in real life compared to the internet. A few highlights for myself include:

• Meeting and having lunch with Hung Lee who I have always admired and absolutely fanboyed over.

• Meeting J.T. O’donnell who despite having a few clashes with from time to time is so amazing in person and talked shop with me for hours

• Recording 8 mini podcast episodes at RecFest including with 4 people I’d never spoken to 1 on 1 before (those will be available soon)

• Speaking to a room of nearly 400 people in Minnesota in a half talk/ half stand up routine

• Taking pictures with my book all across the country like it was a tourist.

• Amazing meals and conversations with dozens of people who are all working tirelessly to make this industry better for all of us.

But now I’m back, I’m recording a whole new batch of podcast episodes, catching up on my work at home and not going anywhere until next year! But please, one last time, let this be my plea to you: Get out there and meet people, go to these events!

Cope of the Week

Because it’s either this or scream into a pillow.

I’ll admit it: after a month of travel, events, and general chaos, it was hard to sit back down and write again. But that’s the funny thing about consistency, it doesn’t mean you never stop; it means you know how to start again.

And that ties right into this week’s topic.

When you’ve been in recruiting long enough, you earn the right to trust yourself. You’ve built muscle memory for chaos. You’ve collected stories, scars, and instincts that don’t show up on any metric.

That experience is your stability when everything else feels unsteady. It’s what keeps you grounded when everyone with a microphone has a new “revolutionary” way to fix hiring.

So if you’re dragging yourself back into the routine this week, remember: showing up again is the skill.

You’ve done this before. You’ll do it again.

And whether it’s writing a newsletter or filling another tough role, your experience is what makes you capable, even when you’re tired.

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