THE OVERWHELMED RECRUITING LEADER
(JENNA)

(6 minute read)

This is a true story.

About ten years ago I was interviewing for a Head of Talent Acquisition job at tech start up in New York City. I performed well through the early stage interviews so they invited me on-site for a final round at their really cool offices in the heart of SoHo. I was so excited!

But my experience wasn’t great. 

For starters, no one knew I was coming. I waited in the lobby for 40 minutes while the front desk called around to find someone — anyone — who knew why I was there. And since I wasn’t provided with an itinerary, I wasn’t much help either.

I eventually learned that my first interviewer — the SVP of HR (and hiring manager) — had “something come up” so she wouldn’t be able to meet with me that day.

Awesome…

I just made a 3 hour trip into the city for nothing. And I'll probably have to come back another day.

So that sucked. But what happened next was even worse.

I was told by the front desk attendant that since the hiring manager couldn’t make it, the first person I would meet with was the current Head of Talent Acquisition. 

That’s weird…I thought. I was told there was a performance issue and that’s why they were looking for a new leader. So why would they have her interview me? 

Well, when she walked in, it was clear to me why I was there and why she was being replaced. 

When she crashed into the tiny interview room, the door hit the table, she dropped her laptop and her interview guides went flying across the room.

Fortunately, she held on to her coffee!

As I helped her pick up the pieces, she apologized and told me that she just ran from another interview and had to climb three flights of stairs because the elevator was broken. She was out of breath, her hair was all over the place, and her shirt…her shirt was so wrinkled it looked like it spent a couple weeks at the bottom of a laundry basket. But that wasn’t the best part… 

Her shirt was on inside out!

I didn’t have the heart to tell her about the shirt because she was clearly having a bad day. But as we got started with our therapy session – I mean interview – things continued to go sideways. 

She opened the interview by asking if I had any questions. So I took that opportunity to ask my favorite one. I was eager to hear her perspective because I knew she would have a unique viewpoint.

But I didn’t know she would start crying…

“So, tell me the top three challenges I’m going to face in the first six months here.” I asked. 

She paused. Put her head down. And sat in awkward silence for what seemed like twenty minutes.

When she looked back up at me, her eyes were welled up with tears. Before they ran down her face, she wiped the bottom row of her eyelashes with both index fingers at the same time so as not to ruin her makeup.  

In that moment, I felt bad for her. For some reason though, I wasn’t surprised it was happening. 

I had seen these tears before. Many times. It’s the cry of frustration from talent acquisition leaders and recruiters who are struggling with the demands of a busy hiring function.

If I’m being honest, I’ve gotten emotional about my work too.

Not in front of a candidate in an interview…but I’ve been so angry and frustrated in my job at various points in my career that I’ve very nearly gone off the deep end.

As a result, I knew my interviewer — let’s call her “Jenna” — wasn’t upset because her dog just died or because she was being replaced. Jenna was just so overwhelmed, she didn’t even know how to begin answering the question I just asked her. There were just so many challenges running through her mind. And at the very moment when I asked her to narrow down ALL of her challenges to three — her mind short-circuited and it all came crashing down right there in front of me.

So this wasn’t the cry of an incompetent recruiting leader, this was the cry of an overwhelmed recruiting leader. 

“I’m really sorry.” She said. “I shouldn’t be crying in front of my potential new boss. Things are just a little crazy around here and I’m having a hard time keeping it all together.”

Why We’re Overwelmed

Now, not all talent acquisition leaders hit this level of pain on the job. But if you’re ambitious, care about your performance, and you’re being honest with yourself…you’ve probably reached some form of unhealthy stress on a regular basis over the duration of your career.

No matter how good you are, you’ll inevitably hit those moments where you feel so far “underwater” that you physically feel like you’re drowning. Running a busy talent acquisition function will drive you to drink most days!

But why? Why does it have to feel so chaotic and overwhelming?

You WANT to feel like things are under control but the problem is, being the head of a recruiting department is really hard. It’s complex. It’s full of stakeholders who have high standards, unreasonable demands, immediate wants, and PLENTY of opinions about how your job should be done.

And despite ALL the advancements we’ve made in our profession over the years (and all the software vendors that promised to make our lives easier) it seems like it’s getting harder and more costly…not easier and less expensive.

Read the sentence above one more time.

Am I right? It’s getting harder!

The truth is, if you’re fortunate to hold a head of TA position, on most days, you’re just trying to keep your head above water. You live meeting-to-meeting, project-to-project, request-to-request, just trying to stay afloat. You’re under extreme pressure to deliver hires with fewer resources from demanding clients. You have an outdated technology stack and you’re struggling to develop your team to meet the challenges of an ever-changing landscape.

It’s a thankless job we have. And it seems like the work JUST…NEVER…STOPS.

Do you feel this way sometimes? All the time???

If you don’t, congratulations! You’re a rare bird. And the content on this website probably isn’t for you.

But if the last few paragraphs resonated with you in any way and you want to feel more in control…stick with me. I’m going to share a system and a framework you can use to take control of your function and, most importantly, your life.

There Is a Solution!

Now, before your ego kicks in and tries to convince you that you “don’t need no stinking help”…I want you to know that you shouldn’t be embarrassed by this feeling. What I’ve described above is happening to heads of talent acquisition in almost every company, in every industry, everywhere in the world. 

I’ve been in this game for over 20 years. I’ve led recruiting teams in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and more.

I’ve seen this overwhelm everywhere.

I don’t want to be dramatic, but I’ve seen this problem so frequently that I would categorize it as a bit of a “global epidemic”.

An epidemic of overwhelm.  

So, what can we do?

Talent Acquisition is supposed to be unpredictable and chaotic, right?

Hiring managers are supposed to go rogue. The labor market is supposed to be out of our control. The business is supposed to view us as order takers.

Right???

Well, maybe.

But I don’t believe there’s nothing we can do about it. The problem is, that’s what we’ve told ourselves in the recruiting profession.

We’ve resigned ourselves to the belief that this job is supposed to be crazy. As a result, we react to whatever happens. Not by choice…but because no one has shown us there’s a better way.

That’s how Jenna was feeling. So when I started telling her about the framework I use to take control of the chaos in my own recruiting function — she leaned forward, put her chin in the palm of her hand, and listened intently as I walked her through it step-by-step.

In the next few pages – if you choose to continue reading – I’m going to unpack this Epidemic of Overwhelm a bit more and advance this concept of taking control of your recruiting function by way of a more predictable framework.

By the end of this six-part series, you’ll learn strategies to get your function under control, be seen as a strategic business partner, be celebrated as a great boss and – best of all – get a little more “YOU TIME” back in your life. 

Who doesn’t want that?

Next Up — Part 2 of 6 — I’m In The Trenches Just Like You