Why I chose to be a Recruiter after completing my Masters in Computer Science

Questions pertaining to career options have always affected individuals. I remember my father telling me that during his college days the major concern for the youth of his age was whether they were going to get a government job with good pension benefits. Today, on the contrary, it is about too many options and which career option to pick.

Right from my school days if there was one thing that I was always clear about, it was the fact that I wanted to be my own boss. This was at a time when I had no idea what entrepreneurship was, and definitely nothing about the word startup. I still remember the days when I was behind my grandmother, dad and aunts to start an Indian pickle business, I even named the venture Ambujam’s Pickles after my grandmother’s name.

For reasons good or bad, Ambujam’s Pickles never became a reality. But the entrepreneur in me grew faster than me. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I started seeing business in everything. My undergrad days at Model Engineering College was a game changer in this regard. I never learnt engineering there, but got the confidence needed to venture out on my own. I was lucky to get campus placed at Infosys, the most coveted success story of those days and, fortunately for me, the only company those days that hired students who knew nothing about engineering for software engineering fresher jobs.

A year and a half with Infosys alienated me further from wanting to be an employee. All the attention that Narayana Murthy and other founders garnered from across the world those days took me further closer to entrepreneurship. Post Infosys I moved to the Land of Opportunities to pursue my Masters in Computer Science from State University of New York, Albany. The entrepreneur in me grew even faster during my SUNY days. I got a chance to interact with quite a lot of wannabe entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs when I was at SUNY. I realized that if there was a way to simply understand what various companies are doing in US that would open a million ideas for you to implement on your own. All said and done, I still had no clue how to go about doing it.

Post my graduation, I joined a company called Marlabs, where I got an opportunity to associate with the Business Development team. Contracting positions were always a foot in the door for closing big accounts. As a part of one such endeavor when I was trying to close an account with a client a need arose to help them with a consultant hire for a contract position. The client was a startup doing something very niche in Austin TX. Understanding their need itself was an interesting experience as I was getting lot of insight into what the company was doing. I was so sure that their idea, if successfully implemented, was definitely going to disrupt (though I had no idea then as to what that word meant) the telecom world.

The sheer thought of disruption and embarking into unconquered territories was super exciting. My first stint at recruitment was an eye opener, the possibility of knowing more about interesting projects being done across the globe was exciting. For the same reason when I got the first opportunity to move to the consulting side of Marlabs, I lapped it up. This is where I had a million eye brows go up in shock as if I had just committed the biggest ever crime in the world. Questions were raised to the extent of my value going down drastically in the Indian marriage market. Why are you working as a recruiter after completing your Masters in Computer Science, Why did you spend all that money to do your Masters if you want to do headhunting — the questions and concerns were far too many.

But I was going through the most exciting phase of my professional life. Every position that I was trying to fill, there were so many different things to learn. The client would first explain what they did as a company, what does the particular project facilitate, how many resources are a part of the project, what do the resources do, how do they do what they do, etc. Then comes the most exciting part, the opportunity to reach out to so many different consultants working for different companies, working on different projects, taking up different roles and responsibilities as a part of their projects, etc. It was the biggest learning for me, much more than any college, university or corporate job could provide.

Again, this might sound very stupid and weird to many, but if you are ever thinking of starting your own business, spend at least 6–12 months as a recruiter. If possible try to work on diversified hiring needs. Since your intention is to understand how business in different verticals operate, don’t be worried about quantity, focus on quality. Understand the project and job requirement in detail and take your time to analyze the right kind of resource. My two cents here would be to avoid resume portals as much as possible, use Linkedin to target passive candidates. The passive candidates who are open to considering new opportunities, are not in the open market and are not desperate to get hired. So, they tend to give you more time to understand the position better. In turn your learning also gets better, you get a chance to understand more about the candidate, what is she doing in her current project and most important what does her current employer do. And the best by-product is that you get quality resources who are not talking to 20 other recruiters for jobs, which translates to better hit ratios. I had 87 consultants on billing when I decided to call it quits to recruiting.

All this learning has helped me a lot to understand about how companies operate, how do they go about implementing disrupting ideas, how do well-run companies manage their employees effectively, what do employees like to do, what would excite an employee to bring the best out of her, etc. This has helped me a lot in my own venture. To all those wannabe entrepreneurs out there, I sincerely hope this anecdote would help you in your journey forward.