Much of what we do in HR and Recruiting is tedious, never ending work.  Same stuff, same day, same month, year after year.  Welcome to the show, kid.

It doesn’t make the occupation tedious.

Sometimes I think we feel this need that we have to be doing something exciting all the time.  To feel this need to be challenged.  To change the world.  Unfortunately, that isn’t reality of any job.  Everyone has some level of monotony in their daily jobs.  Brain surgeons and Rocket scientists have monotony. It might not seem like it to you, but to them it’s the same old thing, day in, and day out.

I hear this a lot from people when we are talking shop about recruiting.  How do you do it each day, just doing the same thing? And this, coming from a Compensation Pro or a Benefit Analyst!

The very cool, non-tedious part of being in recruiting is that each and every day, people surprise you.  Sometimes in some really negative ways, but also many times in some very positive ways.  I’m always shocked at how people are willing to help me, by just asking.  First time contacts, don’t know me from Adam, willing to go out of their way.  What does that say about the human condition?  I think it says deep down, if given the free choice, we would rather help someone else, than to not help them.  Most people don’t think about that, when they think about recruiting.

Every day, while you’re ‘doing’ the same thing in Recruiting and in HR, people become our non-tedious reality.  I’ve heard for decades people say: “You’re good with people, you should go into HR!” Or have that be the reason why they did go into HR in the first place. But I think it’s more than being a  ‘good people person’.  It’s having a desire to delve into the human condition!  In HR we get involved into the motivations of why employees do this or that.  In recruiting we get involved into the motivations of why a person might want to leave their current job, etc.  In a way, so many people in these roles become a strange kind of untrained therapists.

Maybe that’s the key to dealing with our tedious reality.  We’ve become workplace psychotherapist for those we connect with on a daily basis.  I don’t even know what that says about us?

Oh well, back to life.