Derek Schlender, Partner and SBA Practice Lead, and Trinity Taylor, Partner and Recruiter with ThinkingAhead, share the skills they learned from working in the field of recruiting, and what they appreciate most about this unique and rewarding career path.

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Confidence and focusing on work habits and attitude.

I think that's what's allowed me to be successful in recruiting.

And what really, early on, helped me build a good foundation in building a network.

What we do at Thinking Ahead, it's much more of a long game.

So it's a lot more Inch things forward on a daily basis when something closes, it results from a month or two of work, you're not going to have five customers in a day, you're going to have five successes, five work activities that you're really proud of, but ultimately you're just inching things forward in the process, so it's more of more project management than it really is closing a sale every single day.

Uh, not only that, but we're surrounded by some of the highest performing recruiters in the industry.

And so, we are constantly being shown exactly how to do it at the most excellent level.

You build a very good foundation of understanding the different pieces of a sales process.

When you're moving to intangible sales, like recruiting, when it's a professional service, really, there's a lot more trust that you're building in, in who you are.

And your process that you're going to follow.

And so it really comes down to connecting with people, asking interesting questions and being able to communicate value.

It's unique in that you feel like you kind of step off the treadmill a little bit in terms of the pace to, um, possibly three month process.

And so your daily activities are very controllable.

You kind of know what you're walking into every day.

It's very planned.

Very scheduled, but you really can enjoy life outside of work.

Uh, we really do maintain good work life balance.

I think that's something that we all want in our professional careers.

You want to work somewhere that you're, you're able to kind of do things outside of what you do professionally.

Um, and enjoy life a little bit.

I really started to learn and develop my skill sets with building relationships.

I learned to be a better listener.

I learned how to be more empathetic and also just learned how to carry somebody through a more complex decision making process.

And that translates to what I do every single day at thinking ahead, because everything we do is very relationship driven and we're helping both hiring managers.

And candidates navigate the hiring process.

And a lot of times I'm working with very senior level candidates, um, and hiring managers, of course, um, it's a very professional setting.

One of the things that I love the most about thinking ahead.

And, and one of the reasons I chose to work with them is thinking ahead is very process oriented.

So they give you all of the tools you need to be successful.

You just have to work hard and.

Be coachable.

It's the mentorship.

It's the leadership.

You know, having somebody pour into your personal and professional development is just, it's huge.

And I think one of the things I gained from that is this confidence in, in who I am and what I can achieve when I set my mind to something.