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Talent Trade Tidbit - Mom, What Do You Do For Work?
Take it from Stephanie: when your kid asks you what you do for a living, try to simplify...
Transcript
This is Stephanie Maas.
Speaker:So I love when people ask me what I do for a living, and to be candid, my answer changes on, you know, the audience, whomever's asked it.
Speaker:So I have three kids, and when my kids, it always was in kindergarten, they would come home, and there was always talk about careers or jobs or different things like that.
Speaker:And I always knew which day, because they would come home and say, "Mom What is your job?
Speaker:What is your career?
Speaker:And it would always make me chuckle because it's such a non-traditional, I'm not a doctor, lawyer, engineer, whatever the case may be, plumber, welder, e- mailman, the, you know, officer of the law, all these different things.
Speaker:So I would tell them, "Well, I help people get jobs." It kinda sounds a little bit noble.
Speaker:It was at a level that they could kind of understand that, and it certainly seemed to appease them.
Speaker:So that was the answer.
Speaker:Well, as I've gotten older, or as they have gotten older, my answer has changed.
Speaker:Also, if I'm talking to somebody who is out in the professional world, and the answer is, "Well, I don't exactly help people get jobs," because the truth of it is, most of the people that I represent already have a job.
Speaker:So I've said things like, "I help them find a better job or a better circumstance.
Speaker:Same job, but a better circumstance." So that has changed, and then of course, depending on what level of professional I'm talking to and how much further I want to extend the conversation, I'll say, "Hey, I work with an executive search firm."
Speaker:Um, sometimes they'll say, "Oh, you're a recruiter." And I'll go, "Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Sure." And I'm not trying to oversimplify or overcomplicate what I do, but the answer is a little complicated, and by the way, if you wanna really drill it down, and this is one of my favorite answers to give, is, "Well, what do you do?" I'm in inside sales, and I love saying this to my neighbors 'cause I'm home all the time 'cause I work from home.
Speaker:I'm in sweats or workout clothes all the time, so I'll say, "I'm in inside sales." And then I go on to say, "And that explains why I'm always home and always dressed the way that I'm dressed.
Speaker:Nobody cares what I look like.
Speaker:It's inside sales." But I think what is really interesting about what we do and that makes us unique is I'm not just a recruiter.
Speaker:There, there are firms that hire just recruiters, and there's nothing wrong with these firms.
Speaker:You're matching skill set to job.
Speaker:It's pretty simplistic.
Speaker:There is absolutely a time and a place for that type of role.
Speaker:Here at Thinking Ahead, it's a little bit more complicated than that.
Speaker:Yes, we're given a role that we need to fill, a defined set of skills, but behind those skills are about half a dozen other criteria that need to fall in line for this role to be a fit, and that's really my favorite part of the day and the favorite part of my job is getting a good idea of what's important and what's needed by my client, then going out into the marketplace, having all those conversations that help me say, "Hey, there was a total of 100 potential candidates that could fill this job, and I've narrowed it down for you, client, to the best three to five And not only are they a skillset match, but all these other things that are needed for them to make a move right now are also a match.
Speaker:I don't know how to say that in super simple terms, but that's kind of what we do, and I think that's the biggest difference between just being a recruiter or just being a headhunter and what we do here at Thinking Ahead.
Speaker:And hey, by the way, if you have any way to explain that to a kindergarten that makes sense, I'm all ears.
