Decade in Reflection
I plan to share this with my team during my Monday Morning Meeting (MMM). We meet weekly on Mondays to start the week off with a check-in and set our intentions each week.
2009 — Dorothy Constance
The story of my decade in reflection really begins in 2009 when my best friend passed away in April 2009. My grandma Dorothy (Dottie). The one I loved the most. The person whose unconditional love carried me through much of the dramas of my young life. When she died, I went through a long period of deep depression. I wrote about it a lot. I posted on Facebook about it a lot. People who were in my circle were “sick” of hearing about my pain from this loss. One morning in September 2009, I was too sad to get out of bed. I laid in the darkroom all day. I heard this annoying tapping on the window. The incessant tapping continued for what seemed like hours. I got up to see what it was. It was this big black crow that just sat there, tapping and staring. It wouldn’t leave. At that point, I was ready to talk to someone about this loss. I called my therapist and began the healing process.
2010 — Where was I?
Fast forward. After I started talking to my therapist, I was able to refocus my energy back to my work. I was 25; I just got back from an expat assignment in Singapore, where I spent 4 months working with the APAC team at Blackberry to help streamline their recruiting process to align more to HQ (North America) process. I was loving life and planned to extend my assignment for a year. But then I got laid off the day after I got home.
So what did I do? I really wanted to land a job in Silicon Valley, but not live in Silicon Valley. I interviewed with all the big tech co’s for in-house recruiting gigs. I got rejected by some of them like Facebook, and some other startups. I kept charging forward.
I interviewed for an Amazon subsidiary in SoCal, where I was living. It was the hardest, most stressful, unpleasant interview experiences I’ve ever had. But for some reason, that made me really want to work there. I was fixated on working for a big tech co. I got the job. Hooray!
I signed my offer. Started my “dream job”. Immediately edited my Linkedin to reflect my new title, “Lead Recruiter”, since that it was my offer letter said. Whoops. Turned out my offer letter was wrong. I was asked to change my title to “Recruiter”. “Lead” was actually for the other person on the team, not me. #dreamjobfail
After a few months, I knew it wasn’t a fit for me, so I left. Alas, DotConnect LLC was registered officially.
Oddly enough, as soon as that happened, work started pouring in from what felt like anyone I’d ever worked with in the past or any boss I ever had up to that point. It was an amazing feeling.
2010 New Goal
Become a Corporate VP of Recruiting or Head of Recruiting (when it was still called Recruiting and not Talent Acquisition). That was the new goal. But I just never felt good enough. I didn’t feel like I would ever be on the level of the leaders I’d known and admired throughout my career.
2010 New New Goal
Stop chasing the pipedream of corporate recruiting leader and just focus on what I know. At the time, I knew how to be a very good, senior-level recruiter. And so I was. It was fine. It kept me out of the office politics, which I’ve never been good at.
2015 Another New Goal?
By 2015, things were ticking along well. At that point, I had a 2-year-old son. I was enticed by yet another corporate dream job. Maybe now was my opportunity? Maybe that 5 years made a difference. So, I packed up my family and off we went, to New Jersey, to chase the corporate dream job…again.
Landed in New Jersey, and to my surprise, my corporate dream job had a strict requirement that I had to have my Bachelor’s degree to even be considered. (I should have read the fine print). For those of you who know me, know that if I am ever faced with a challenge or someone saying I can’t do something for a specific reason, you know that will motivate me to do that very thing.
2016 Back to School
So, in 2016, I went back to school to finish up the 10 classes I put on hold when I was 22 (because I already had my full time recruiting career and was traveling a lot and living several places). I had so much work it was crazy. I had an almost 3-year-old. I worked my day job, by day, and then at night, I wrote papers and did tests. If I was lucky, I kissed my son goodnight. I spent 52 weekends writing papers, taking tests, and proving my worth.
2017 I’m a Graduate
I graduated with my Bachelor’s. Oddly enough, my main motivations to wrap up school were: my son, and my grandmothers, and not the people who wouldn’t hire me without a degree.
While I was knee-deep in schoolwork; the boss who hired me in NJ, moved on and so my corporate dream job died on the vine, again. #dreamjobfail
2017
I keep on trekking. Maybe my corporate dream job will pop up again. Maybe it won’t. Things start to get busy, like really busy. I hire a few friends to help me. My west coast client work is picking up steam.
2018
We got even busier. I’m really burnt out by the end of the year. 18 years of recruiting work and cramming in 10 courses and a toddler in the peak of it all took a toll on me.
2019
2019 hits and I decide to really lean into this thing that has become bigger than me. I decide to put the dream team out there, and just kinda see what happens. Maybe it will work, maybe it, won’t but let’s see.
And so, it happened. The team quadrupled in size. Hiring over 400 people for clients, conducting what felt like 58,769 interviews (J/K!!) The team formed, stormed, normed, and performed!
2020
I can honestly say that I’m pretty sure I’ve landed on my dream job. Maybe it was a decade in the making; maybe it was all the mistakes along the way and the offers that I did or didn’t get that landed me here; right now.
Maybe it was a lifetime in the making and DotConnect was really everything I was always supposed to be because of my guardian, Dorothy Constance (Dottie Connie →DotConnect) always believed in me and encouraged me to think big.
When I look back on 2019 and the decade; I can feel it in my soul; 2020 is a whole new chapter; a new beginning; a blank page. I’m ready to write the next chapter, level up, and dive into building a legacy that is so much more than just me.
