A Fresh Start

36 has been one of the more interesting years of my life. In the dwindling days of my 35th trip around the sun I was graced with the news that my wife and I were expecting twins, the fourth and fifth members of our growing family. I was working in a role I truly enjoyed with the planet’s largest employer, where it was my job to recruit senior leadership professionals to join the AWS machine. I was blessed with an incredibly supportive team and captivated by the scope of work I was doing.

Shortly after my 36th birthday and fresh off a journey to Amazon headquarters in Seattle, a bit of news hit me like a ton of bricks. We were freezing hiring and a large-scale layoff was likely coming. An echo of panic flushed over me; “how am I going to support a family of 5 if I lose my job?” News came down shortly after from corporate that anyone, under a certain level, in Talent Acquisition would be eligible to accept a buyout which included a more than generous severance package to stay afloat while searching for other opportunities. I decided to accept the package and coincidentally found another role at a local employer shortly thereafter.

I won’t go into the details of my next role but unfortunately it did not work out as I’d hoped, and I was back on the market in search of my next thing. To set the stage a bit better, it was the end of April, my wife’s C-section was scheduled for May 25th, and I was trying to figure out how to claim unemployment benefits, calculating how long it could sustain us without emptying our savings.

Fast forward a couple weeks and life decided to throw us a slight curveball. At this point we were going to O’Shei for sonograms to monitor the twins’ growth/heartrate/vitals on a weekly basis. At the beginning of each visit, they would check Megan’s blood pressure to ensure she wasn’t at risk of pre-eclampsia. Her numbers were a bit elevated but to me it didn’t seem super concerning (which I guess is why I’m not a doctor). With a calm demeanor the doctor informed us that because of her elevated blood pressure, we would be pushing the C-Section from the 25th to sometime in the next few days. It may have been a blessing (and I hope she doesn’t kill me for sharing this) because Megan’s ankles were swollen to the size of deli-salami’s hanging from a butcher’s window. Nevertheless, here we were, the twins would be born a month before their original due date and almost two weeks before the original scheduled C-Section.

I’ll skip the gory details and let you know that we welcomed John James and Maeve Marie Kowalski, two days after the visit, on May 14th at 12:24 and 12:25 pm. The delivery went off without a hitch, both babies were healthy and even though they were a month early, didn’t spend a minute in the NICU. After a brief hospital stay, we brought the twins home to meet their big sister Genevieve and entered into the chaos of living with two newborns and a 3.5-year-old.

Amid sleep deprivation, feedings every three hours, figuring out how to entertain a rambunctious three-year-old while keeping two newborns alive, I had to refocus the little energy I had remaining on finding a job. I’d been a Technical Recruiter for almost 10 years, working for agencies before delving into corporate recruiting. I played a major role in the expedient growth of a unicorn technical startup and was lucky enough to see them go public in 2021. In 2022 I joined a technical giant and shifted focus to senior executive recruiting before the bubble burst. Now I was back to square one, applying for 50+ jobs on LinkedIn and Glassdoor without so much as a callback. Wasn’t my profile impressive? Building professional relationships on the agency side for almost 5 years, hiring 100+ technical professionals in a year at a hyper-growth startup, having success recruiting executive-level talent for the world’s largest tech employer? Maybe the universe was trying to tell me it was time for a change. A few weeks of self-reflection and some timely words from a good friend affirmed that it was indeed time to get outside of my comfort zone.

My first interview with Joel Shapiro and Jacob Lamos from JMS Tech Solutions took place on a Wednesday in early June. I figured they were looking to add another recruiter and was surprised when they pitched the idea of a Sales role. I’d dabbled with sales in the early days of my career and always considered recruiting to have a sales component, but did I have what it took to develop leads and cold call? Joel and Jacob felt my experience in the industry gave me a leg up on developing lasting relationships that would ultimately lead to short and long-term sustained success. We ended the interview on a positive note, and I felt confident that it would eventually lead to an offer. ?

When I got home Megan asked me how it went and before I could answer she could tell that something was different. After months of personal, physical and emotional struggles, she noticed a spark in me that she hadn’t seen since my time at AWS. I was speaking with a renewed excitement in my voice about a job again. Full disclosure, going into said interview I was a bit pessimistic that I’d be lacking in what JMS was looking for, but something clicked in the 2 hours I spent in the conference room with Joel and Jacob. I received an offer the next day and after ruminating over the weekend I decided to accept.

Now, sitting on the precipice of my first completed week of work, I’ve had some time to reminisce and postulate the past 9 months, to examine whether I’m having an existential crisis or maybe finally finding excitement in work again. I’m surrounded by a group of people I really enjoy working with and respect, back in-person in an office for the first time in three years, in the heart of the city that I hold so close to my heart. As far as first weeks go, this stands out as one of the better ones of my 14+ year career. Will I ultimately be a success in this new venture? Only time will tell. In the meantime, I can say for the first time in a while, I’m truly excited to see what comes next.?