My Mental Health Struggle in Recruitment

Over the last few days, I’ve been deliberating on how to approach the topic of Mental Health; how I can be supportive in helping make people aware. Before I start, I want to make it clear this is my job, and I have never had a job that I love so much. People get motivated in different ways. The challenges I face each day drive me to achieve more and make me stronger in my personal life.

However, awareness is key. I can only discuss the areas that I understand, and as a sufferer of mental health for over 10 years, I wanted to make people aware of the struggles and challenges of working in recruitment.

There are negative preconceptions that a lot of people have about Recruiters. “Salesmen”, “liars”, “sheer incompetent”, “robots”, “no feelings”: these are just some of the quotes I have seen on LinkedIn this week. When in reality, working in recruitment has been the most difficult industry I’ve worked in. This job can create:

Loneliness – When you see others around you succeeding and you are not. When you’re the only one left in the office late at night trying to get results. When you’re working after hours at home or working the weekends to succeed, while others are out enjoying themselves.

Stress – To deliver, meet deadlines, to perform, to multitask without anything or anyone falling through the cracks, achieve your targets, meet the expectations of your client, meet expectations of your candidate…

Anxiety - Picking up the phone to call somebody new or calling a client you don’t have a good relationship with can be difficult. The panic that someone might say no, and the panic about being in an environment where everyone else can hear your failures.

Depression – When things aren’t going well and all you are getting is nos. When a candidate pulls out last minute or ghosts you. When you aren’t hitting the targets you need to hit.

These are all things that have affected me personally.

These small things could affect anybody: However, for someone with mental health struggles these can be escalated to levels people may not understand.

It’s like a Jenga tower: Each small thing that goes wrong takes a piece out, and you’re waiting and wondering when it is going to crash.

And it doesn’t just affect you when things don’t go your way. Every time you have a win or a high, there is a part of you waiting for something to go wrong.

I asked for help, not something that was easy to do. But it worked, and each day you find you get stronger and stronger.

In my career in recruitment I have been promoted 4 times, now manage a team, and have beat each year’s targets; being top biller twice. As difficult as an industry as this is, i love it, i thrive in it. I still have bad days. But after the help I received I have the tools and skills to deal with this.

I’m no expert, but if I could give advice to anybody from my own personal experience it would be:

• Firstly, to understand you aren’t the only person feeling like this, you aren’t different from everybody else.
• It is an illness and like any illness, there are ways to treat this.
• Asking for help isn’t a weakness.

As I mentioned asking for help was key for me. However, on top of that:

• ?Listening to relaxing music like mindfulness

• Once a month I sit with my boss and we just talk, vent, de-stress and help clear the mind.
• On lunch I’ll go for a walk around the city to clear my head.
• I walk and get the train to work so I have breaks, get fresh air, and have time to myself.

I really hope this helps anybody and everybody out there. If you ever just want to talk, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

This is written by myself and all words here are my own opinion.

Mark Humphreys, Managing Consultant