Life is a numbers game.

Life is a numbers game.

The more times you step up to the box and take a swing the higher your chances are to hit the ball.

As a recruiter and sales executive, I have learned that you can never rely on one thing. It`s better to have multiple activities going on at the same time.

Don`t expect one deal to close; daily grinding and consistency trumps hope or luck any day of the week - doing the same boring stuff over and over again is what leads to success.

Let me give you an example.

In recruiting you work with a lot of jobs and clients. You may have two to three accounts which are your bread and butter, we call these our main accounts - you get the most job orders from and revenue from these clients.

A lot of times you work on a specific roles. For this purposes of this story, let's?say you are working a technical account management position for a Large Cloud software vendor.

You have two strong candidates who are in the final stages of the interview process and you feel that one of them will likely get an offer.

The Final Interview comes.

But…

The situation changes.

It comes down to one of your candidates and another candidate repped by another headhunter.

The hiring manager goes back to his team, has some discussions and ultimately decides to give your candidate an offer.

Yeah! You think the deal is closed, but, in the 10th hour your candidate pulls out because his wife is not cool with the conditions!

ERGH!!! WTF!! The feeling of loss and grief creeps into your stomach and you realize you aren't going to make quota. You've worked over 50 hours on this search with no results.

Recruiting is one of the professions, like Real Estate, in which there are no upfront payments, it`s?100% commission.

NOTHING IS GUARANTEED!

You only get paid once the deal is closed and the candidate starts the job.

At this point you have three options.

• Give up and move to the next search or job order.
• Try to find and source more candidates for the position.
• Never work recruiting again because it`s such a roller coaster ride and nothing is guaranteed.

Remember? “Life is a numbers game.” We know that quitters never win and in order to increase your odds for success you simply have to increase the amount of tries you put in, in this recruiting example it would be the number of candidates you present for the role.

Since we know that neither 1. or 3. is an option we go for 2., which is to increase more candidates for this role.

Sadly, this all could have been prevented if we had pursued 2. in the first place.

This phenomena is called counting your eggs before they hatch.

We all want positives outcomes in our life. And sometimes we try to bend reality to satisfy some part of our brain that says, "You succeeded! You're fine", before we get any result.

Life doesn't?work that way, there are so many X-factors out there that will botch the deal at the last hour.

You might be a real estate agent and have both the buyer and seller on board at the same time, but suddenly the bank comes back and says the buyer's finances aren't 100% what they claimed to be, and therefore they cannot qualify for a loan to close the deal.

Or,

As a job seeker, you have one offer on the table. You assume that the company will be fine and that you will start 1 month later.

Two weeks later you get a message from the HR that the company has decided to backfill the position with someone internal and the job is no long available.

?? OUCH!

You didn`t? see that one coming and now you have to go back and start the process again for looking for another job, it took you over 3 months to get this one, you have no idea how much longer it will take to find another one.

Lessons Learned

I think the main thing I want to impart on you is that you can:

1. Never rest on your Laurels.
2. Never assume the deal is closed until the paper is signed.
3. Always assume the worst.
4. Never get too emotional.
5. And the main thing is that most things in Life is a numbers game, the more activity and throughput you put in, the more chances you`re likely to succeed.

?? Born in Japan, raised in the US since the age of five, and boasting a unique blend of Japanese and Chinese heritage, my bicultural background lends a distinctive perspective to my content.

You can get in touch with me at [email protected].