After 35 Years in Recruiting, I Still Believe in People
By Lyn Kleinbach-Reilly, Founder, The Kleinbach Group
I’ve been doing this long enough to have plenty of reasons to give up on people. Funny thing is, the longer I do it, the more I believe in them.
More than 35 years in recruiting gives you an unusual view of people. You see ambition. Ego. Success. Failure. Great decisions and terrible ones. You watch careers take off. You watch them fall apart. And sometimes you get to watch someone put the pieces back together and become even better.
It’s also made me less certain about our ability to predict what another human being is capable of. That’s an interesting thing for a recruiter to admit.
Why Humility Belongs in Every Hiring Decision
Our job is to evaluate people. We look at experience, skills, and accomplishments. We interview them. We ask questions. Eventually, we make a judgment about what we think they can do next. We should be good at that. But we should also have enough humility to know we won’t always get it right.
I’ve seen the person who looked perfect on paper disappoint everyone. And I’ve seen the person who didn’t quite fit become extraordinary. People grow into jobs they weren’t completely ready for. They recover from mistakes. They get passed over and come back stronger and wiser. People surprise you.
The Hundred Reasons We Say No
Maybe that’s why I worry about how quickly we’ve learned to eliminate them. Wrong background. Not enough experience. Career gap. Too many moves. Hasn’t worked in our industry. We can find a hundred reasons to say no. What’s harder to see is what someone might become.
That doesn’t mean lowering the bar. It means leaving a little room for possibility.
Someone Took a Chance on Me
Someone did that for me. There were people early in my career who trusted me before I had the experience to prove they should. They taught me. They gave me opportunities. They let me figure things out. Most successful people I know have someone like that in their story.
And yet once we become successful ourselves, we can start expecting everyone else to arrive fully formed. That’s not how people grow. Someone has to give you the bigger job before you’ve done the bigger job. Someone has to see the leader before you have the title. Someone has to take a chance.
Recruiters get to be part of those moments. That’s one of the reasons I still love this work.
Why I’m Still a Glass-Half-Full Person
Of course, I’ve been disappointed by people too. Believing in people doesn’t mean being naive. It just means I refuse to let the disappointments become the whole story.
I’m still a glass-half-full person. Not because I haven’t seen the other half. I have.
So maybe what all these years have taught me is pretty simple. Do the work. Ask the questions. Use your judgment. But leave a little room for people to surprise you.
They will.