So, you want to be a recruiter? You’ve met ‘headhunters’ at parties, or have been called by recruiters over the years for job offer, and have become curious about the industry. Recruiting isn’t really a job that you major in during college, and it isn’t typically even on the list of careers when you’re looking at all the options. Typically, Human Resources is the category that recruiting falls under; however, Home-Based Recruiting is very different than your Human Resource Manager. Most recruiters I know, including myself, sort of fell into recruiting by accident. My story started in sales, and then an offer came to me to use those sales skills to hire other great sales people. This was my introduction to the world of headhunting, and it truly changed my life for the better.
How many jobs can you do from your own home, only need a computer, phone, and a printer to get you started? This is a business that takes very little start-up capital, but can start earning you a very nice income within 3-6 months. Regardless of how you heard about the world of recruiting, I am here to help you navigate it, if this is your chosen profession. If you have ever heard of the fees that recruiters earn on their hires, it quickly can become a very desirable job, especially for us women who want to continue a career after having children, but also need a lot more flexibility than what Corporate America typically offers.
Before, I start teaching you about the world of recruiting, it’s important to make sure this is a path that you are very serious to learn about. This is not a get rich quick scheme. Depending upon your definition of rich, you can become very wealthy through recruiting over many years of successful placements, but it is an investment of time and learning. If you are the major breadwinner in your family, with kids to feed, with health insurance and a steady income — I wouldn’t recommend you quit your day job to dive into this. I would recommend you start part time in the evening and/or weekends to learn how this business works, hit a steady pace of earning, then you can take the plunge. If you are a stay at home mom looking for a way to earn extra money, but did not have a lot of corporate experience prior, this also is not something you want to jump into without really understanding what a day in the life of a home-based recruiter is like. This is a tough, competitive market, and most people trying to break into headhunting will fail. The most successful headhunters, similar to my own story, had a strong corporate background to start, have natural sales skills and people skills, are not just smart, but have a strong “emotional intelligence”, are intuitive, and have a pretty good understanding of human behavior. I’m not saying you need a degree in psychology, but the quicker you can read a client or candidate over the phone, the higher your success rate.
The world of recruiting is so interesting and intriguing to me still after all of these years. I started recruiting over a decade ago, around 2000. I was in sales for the 9 years prior (4 years p/t during college to help pay my way, and 5 after), and stared recruiting for my employer when he wanted to grow large sales teams for GE Medical. I didn’t even know what recruiting really was, but it sounded fun, and unlike my sales job which had me on the road a lot between DC and NYC, I could do this from home and earn more money. I can still remember my first mentor in recruiting. And believe me, if I didn’t have someone to learn from and show me the ropes, I would have never been able to accomplish all the hiring that we did over the years that followed.
It wasn’t until my company was hiring at a faster pace than I could keep up with that I needed to find help. And this was when yet another world opened up to me within recruiting. For the first couple of years, myself and one other recruiter, were doing all of the hiring. But when I needed to find more recruiters to help me, I realized that there were a lot of these home based recruiters across the country hiring for multiple companies, having a lot of fun (which has always been just important as making money to me), and doing this typically on their own time schedule, flying underneath the corporate radar, in a sense.
Until that point, I only hired for the company I worked for, but I was seeing that if you can do this for one company, you can do it for many, and the entire world of opportunity suddenly opens up. After meeting and hiring several of these recruiters to help me — many became my mentors, even though I was the one giving them the business and cutting them the checks. It didn’t take long for me to realize I could start my own business, and be able to hire for many companies, and have even more freedom than I already had. I wasn’t even so concerned with making a lot more money, even though the recruiters I had hired were making double and triple my proud, low six figure income, as a corporate recruiter at the time. The average recruiter was around that same level, if they were valuing their time more than the money. But the couple of recruiters that I also respected, hired one or two employees, and although their time commitment seemed to go up and not down, did make from $250- $400K, which even by today’s standards is a very good living.
Now, your ambitions for this career may be much simpler, or higher. I fell somewhere in the middle for most of the years I recruited, wanting to stay above six figures, probably more for my ego’s sake than anything else, but not wanting to grow something so big, I felt like it was too much to manage. And as the years went by, and money wasn’t the biggest motivator, which has evolved slowly over the past few years, I decided to work less, and make less, choosing to take summers off, enjoy the kids and the life we built, but all on my terms. Until this day, here in 2012, thanks to the world of recruiting, I can still work at home for the most part, and make as much or as little as I want, depending upon the time I want to give it. This past year, I decided to only work it really hard from January to June. I’m also in a business development role which serves my lifestyle better, but not as profitable as the actual “sourcer” or “recruiter” roles I used to play. Now, it’s more fun to get paid to travel to the fun cities, meet new clients to bring in new contracts, but then let the team at home do much of the legwork. I don’t think this is a typical format in recruiting — I sort of created this job for myself, but it’s worked well for the past 3 years, and I continue to get calls often from other CEO’s wanting me to business develop for their small recruiting businesses. Who knew that this world of recruiting could be so flexible and allow us ‘wanna-be stay at home mom’s’ to create our own destiny, while continue to make corporate money. Like I said earlier, it’s been a real life changer, and I cannot imagine what other business could have given me this amazing career. To be able to travel a little or a lot, to work a little or a lot, and be able to control your own calendar for the most part, along with the money you can make. It still seems like one of the world’s quietest industries, moving people from job to job or industry to industry, somewhat behind the scenes. A career where the people are your product, and you have the opportunity to really change lives for the better, including your own!
Now, I’m giving you this quick background on my recruiting career, so you know that I have the experience to walk you down this road, if that is your intention. But I didn’t just get here today. I started this journey over 10 years ago. Considering I graduated college in 1995, and did sales jobs all thru college to help pay my way through — I’ve been selling and then recruiting for almost 2 decades now, the last 10 being the core depth of my recruiting knowledge and expertise. I’ve had my own business since around 2003, and have worked independently through my business, as well as becoming a w-2 employee for clients, when it made sense. There are lots of ups and downs, but always a consistent career path, and one I have always felt grateful to stumble upon, and then to proactively grow.
I hope this gives you a brief look into the recruiting world, and helps you decide if this may be a good path for you. I’ll be back with more detailed information on the day to day life of a home based recruiter. Once you decide if this is a role you can be successful in, I can help educate you on all the little details in a given day that will put you on the path of successful recruiting. Good luck, and I look forward to writing future articles on how you can become a home based recruiter!
