Hey everyone! Good to be back blogging – it’s been waaaay too long. I missed you all so much and am thankful for the warm welcome...
Gretchen and I are thoroughly enjoying the plunge into entrepreneurship by starting JobSyntax. We’ve experienced a range of emotions – elation, fear, confidence, pride, self-doubt – and that’s just after one day of being “live”. Can you imagine what we’ve been through in the past few weeks and what will come in the future? The energy involved in starting your own company is unbelievable. It makes this jobgal giddy.
This past year has been a huge adventure for me – leaving Microsoft and the tech industry, joining WaMu and learning how to hire “non-techies”, and now this…
Gretchen and I were talking about this today and the differences between these experiences. It seems to make sense to share some of my observations with you.
Microsoft was my very first corporate experience and that is where I formulated my business presence. I think that’s probably true for anyone first starting out – you’re first company is kinda where you learn the ropes and grow up a bit. I really did grow and towards the end of my time took some major risks that really paid off. This is where I developed my passion for the candidate experience that has driven me to where I am today.
At the same time, recruiting for a company like Microsoft was basically like the Cadillac of recruiting experiences. You have the power and flash of a corporate entity, but you have all the potential gremlins that go along with it – tech booms and busts, intense deadlines, lots of people want to work at your company (or hate it :), competing for top talent, lots of opportunities for personal growth and risk taking etc. In the end though, Microsoft really represented a conflicting job environment for me. They wanted to foster you as an employee because they believe that people are there most important asset, but they had to balance this with the bottom line. Ultimately, I found that it was incumbent upon you to navigate this dichotomy and I was lucky enough to be pretty successful. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is a bad thing and Microsoft made no mystery out of the fact that you are expected to drive your own career. It was a good experience for me and something I think is true of most corporations.
Now WaMu is a horse of an entirely different color. What could be a bigger 180 from software then banking? Here’s the deal though, once I had the experience of working at Microsoft I felt pretty invincible as a recruiter at WaMu. What could be so hard about hiring people for the corporate offices of a successful financial institution? Ummm…yeah, folks it’s a bank. They are all about the bottom line which is something I hadn’t worried too much when hiring folks into Microsoft. People don't naturally gravitate towards wanting towork at a bank. However what they lacked in sheer “product sexiness” they made up for in corporate culture. WaMu is truly a place where they live their corporate values and brand - More Human Interest. I experienced working with some of the most caring and compassionate people that I have ever met in my whole work-life. For the short time I was there I can really say that I believed in what I told candidates because I experienced it myself.
Now about starting your own business what can I say? I mean, I think I am in the infancy of even understanding what this all means to me. In these early days I have really enjoyed the risk, how much I have learned, and the intense satisfaction of “what you put in is what you get out”. Not to mention the excitement of working with Gretchen again :). Watch out corporate world, we’re a force to be reckoned with!
Regardless, Gretchen and I truly believe in corporate transparency and hope to live that as we grow our business. I can’t imagine that we won’t be blogging about our industry as well as the ups and downs of building a new business. Ah, I can already imagine the future blog posts…
Thanks so much for the wonderful comments and encouragement so far!
Cheers everybody!
zoë