As a corporate recruiting leader, my days were filled with interdepartmental meetings, one-on-one meetings, strategy evaluations, report writing and fire extinguishing.
Lots of fire extinguishing.
You know, the real and perceived ones that we handle every day, sometimes every hour.
It was in this environment that I recall a moment and an important lesson I learned so clearly.
It happened while I was sitting in my boss’ office with other talent leaders and one of the learning and development leaders was talking about their newest initiative.
Honestly, I was only half listening.
Did I mention the amount of fire extinguishing I did daily?
Anyway, she said something about incorporating the new corporate values into talent acquisition.
THAT got my attention.
Umm, what initiative?
To do the what? with the who?
Seriously, what did they know about talent acquisition? Okay, they knew some stuff, but HELLO? Why is this the first time I’m hearing about it?
After I was done with my silent tantrum (I had enough sense to keep my mouth closed when my brain and emotions were in overdrive).
I realized that I felt… well, left out and then annoyed.
Knowing that I didn’t want to bring those emotions to a conversation, I took a couple of days to gather my thoughts and devise my conversation strategy because I still felt defensive, but I didn’t want to act defensive.
I asked my colleague about it and she said that they would be glad to have me as part of the team, but that I always seemed so busy that they didn’t want to add more to my plate.
Ah, not only did they not ignore me, they were looking out for me.
Interesting. That wasn’t the conversation I expected to have.
It took the wind out of my sails because I walked into the conversation with the story I was telling myself.
Yes, they could have approached me..and, maybe they should have, but I’m 100% responsible for my response so this isn’t about them.
The bottom line was that I made incorrect assumptions that led to wrong conclusions.
I was able to join the meetings that were specific to me and the rest was left in their capable hands.
In my haste to fill in the blanks, I came to a very erroneous conclusion.
My Important Lesson:
When we don’t know why something is happening, we fill in the blanks with whatever information we have.
I’m telling you this because
When you embark on the journey to make your next career move, one of the most dangerous things you can do is fill in the blanks when you don’t have all the information.
To make a finer point, when an executive is making a strategic career move – you will never have all of the behind-the-scenes information.
Many leaders, even the most successful, have this same challenge:
- I didn’t get the job because…
- I didn’t get an interview because…
- I don’t have enough…
- They must have thought…
While it’s human nature to try to figure out why something is or isn’t happening, you will be unable to draw a proper conclusion because you will always be missing key details.
The simple reason for this is that recruiters are not incentivized to tell you everything.
As a matter of fact, they are incentivized not to!
(remember, I was in the interview debrief meetings for years and trained dozens of recruiters on what should and shouldn’t be shared).
The next time that you’re tempted to fill in the blanks, please remember this:
You can’t control the outcomes
But you can control the factors that influence the outcomes
To mastering your next move,
Sue