Foundations

I started my first “real” job in early 1995 as a recruiter for a small (at that time) technical staffing company, called Aerotek.

I’m going to show my age here and sound like it a bit when I say, we didn’t have the internet, nor did most of us have cellphones.  LinkedIn?  Job Boards?  Nope.  My recruiting consisted of running ads in the Kansas City newspapers for Engineers, Drafters, Designers, and Electronic Technicians.  I also had some success just randomly calling businesses in the Yellow Pages and sweet-talking my way past the receptionist to see if I could find someone looking for a job, or at least if they had received any resumes recently of people they didn’t have roles for.  Resumes were gold because we (were supposed to, anyway) load them up into our internal “Datatrac” tool.

25 contacts, 10 G2s per day.  That was the standard.  It might take 50-100 calls to get those numbers.  I had a 50-foot cord on the end of my desk phone and paced around with a pen and clipboard.  Pro tip:  People can hear it when you are standing vs. sitting.  When you successfully placed someone in a job, there was a giant gong in our office and we all celebrated like lunatics.  In at 7 am, out at 7 pm.  “There’s someone out there who’s a perfect fit for this job who wants it.  Our job is to find him or her.”  That was the mantra.  We worked hard and we played hard.

If you were good as a recruiter, you got promoted to sales and had two recruiters working for you.  Hence, the triangle symbol.  As a salesperson, the more you split your territory, the more likely you were to be promoted to the branch manager.  There was a clear path, and nobody stayed in the same role very long.  You were either moving up, or you were moving out.  The best salespeople were always hard to reach.  They were on the road, meeting clients and potential clients.  We delivered all our workers' paychecks in person - a great way to get in front of the client every week.  Selling in Milwaukee, WI, I drove all over that great state in all sorts of weather and had crazy experiences.  Think “Tommy Boy”, minus the deer, thankfully.

It may sound like something out of a movie, and sometimes it was, but we weren’t doing things of poor character.  If anything, high-character decisions were non-negotiable.  

In an era of remote work, I look back at those days with fondness.  I learned a ton.  I was pushed, focused, and confronted when I veered off the path and did the same with my coworkers.  We were regularly role-playing situations we might find ourselves in.  We were open and honest with each other and responsive to the point of annoying.  If you needed help, you said something.  If someone else needed help, you responded without hesitation.  The competition, we lived to crush them by outworking them.

Work-Life balance?  No, there wasn’t much of that, and it was worth it.  This may be controversial, but I believe people who tell you to follow your passion are already rich.  To quote Scott Galloway : “Find something you are good at, and go all in.”

As part of my sales activity, I kept a case of coffee mugs in the back of my non-descript Ford Taurus.  If I met with you in person, you got a mug.  I must have handed out thousands of them.

I left the organization in 2008 during the downturn.  It was tough.  I’d grown up in that world.  Most of my friends were there.  I had thought I’d be there forever.  But change is life’s only constant, and it was my time.  (see the work-life balance line above).  I’d had a great run and learned the founding principles that have shaped my professional and personal life.  I’d even met my wife of 22 years there.  I’m very thankful to have had that experience and still count some of the people I worked with in those days as my closest friends.

I did keep a mug for myself.  To this day, my morning coffee comes from that mug.  It’s a reminder to always keep moving.  The mediums have changed, but the principles are still the same:  Character, work ethic, responsiveness, honesty, confronting people in a way that lifts them up, and more importantly, being open to that confrontation yourself.