My First Placement: Harry Hantel
BLT Recruiter Harry Hantel shares his first placement story.
I started recruiting pretty much right out of college, give or take a few months. I was living in New York and I had gotten an English degree, which meant that I hadn’t really plotted out much of a professional path for myself. I had tried working in publishing and at a well-known magazine, but neither one had really stuck. I needed a job! A friend of mine was working at a boutique recruiting firm in midtown and told me they had an opening. I interviewed and my friend reminded me to send a thank-you note within 24 hours and I was hired as a ‘talent acquisition specialist’ or recruiter or headhunter, depending on who was asking.
I didn’t know much about recruiting or advertising and marketing, which were the industries we were mainly working with. The first role I was assigned to search for was a VP of Strategy for an experiential marketing agency. A more experienced coworker (the indomitable Joan Segal!) acted as my coach and guide and explained how to do boolean searches on LinkedIn and how to look at a job description and figure out what they were actually asking you to find.
She sent me off with my keywords and search parameters and I started collecting my list of possible candidates and when I had enough to get started, I began crafting introductory emails and then calling them. I like talking to people, but calling up a stranger out of the blue to tell them they should consider a new job when I was a 23 year old in my very first one felt pretty daunting. Luckily, almost everyone I spoke to was polite and it turns out that people will make a lot of time for you if you might be able to help them get a raise!
The very first candidate I talked to turned out to be an absolute gem. He was a charming New Zealander who checked every box we were looking for and I had called him at just the right time. His wife had recently had a baby and he was thinking about looking for a job that paid more and challenged him more too. After a few weeks of interviews, the client loved him and they were able to come to a quick agreement on an offer. I was overjoyed. Joan made sure to warn me that it wasn’t always this smooth or easy, but she said I showed promise. She told me that I had ‘fingertips’, a recruiting term that basically means that I know what to search for to find the right people.
I can proudly say that four years later, my first placement is still at the company I recruited him for. It was a dream start to my recruiting career and has helped me keep things in perspective in all the times when it hasn’t gone as smoothly.