I’ve been cleaning up my Facebook memories. I don’t have time to go through my entire timeline at once—instead, every day, I log onto Facebook to see what horror has been unearthed in the memories popup. I usually delete a few—maybe the original media was deleted, or the status is nonsensical. Apparently I’ve had a slew of “worst days ever” that I don’t remember.
Must not have been too bad after all.
But last week, an interesting status came up. Posted on February 8, 2013, it read: ‘Nights like this where I apply for every chemical engineering job on the internet are like my own little hopeless career fairs.’
Set to graduate in May 2013, I didn’t have a job lined up. I wasn’t alone, either. Several others in my class were in a similar boat. I spent night after night tailoring my resume to countless positions, writing cover letters that were researched and personalized and explained why I was a good fit for each job’s requirements.
I didn’t get an engineering role until June 2014. My resume was fine—I had an internship in process controls, I was a student researcher, and I had my EIT. At the time, I had three jobs. What was the problem? Over a decade later, I genuinely don’t think there was one. Too many graduates, maybe.
At last, 13 months and several truly horrible interim jobs after graduation, I landed an engineering role. A friend of the family took a chance on getting me an interview. The hiring manager and I got on very well, so I took the position (and ultimately started with a higher salary than most of my classmates had).
The day I got my offer, I cried. I never forgot that feeling. That period of my career (or lack thereof) put into perspective the power of one person saying yes.
My career has taken me to interesting places since, from junior to management to something completely different. I’m no longer an engineering manager, but when I sat on hiring panels, I saw resumes that looked like mine all the time. People who had a gap, people who just could not manage to get hired anywhere even though they were wonderful, people who needed a yes. And I vowed to be that yes wherever I could.
Sometimes, this is perceived as taking a risk—but you can’t predict what a person will do by their CV. Maybe they leave after three months. Maybe they’re your next CEO or your best culture champion. Maybe they have something you don’t even know that you need.
They’re human, first and foremost.
On the Skellig.com homepage, some of the first words you see are “Solving problems, being human.” What human means in that context is: we treat each other well, how we’d want to be treated. We make space for our people to be who they are and lift each other up. It’s a worthy goal (and one that I believe).
But to me, maybe it means something a little different. Humans aren’t perfect. They have gaps in their work history, they get fired, they get turned away at the door for no good reason—a candidate’s perceived risk is not (usually) a failure on their part.
One yes can completely change a life. One changed mine. I look back at that Facebook memory and know that candidate is about to have a hard 15 months spent hungry and anxious and hopeless. But that yes is on its way, and it eventually leads to something wonderful, surrounded by great people doing great work.
This blog post isn’t an advertisement for what I can do for Skellig applicants—I’m not a hiring manager or a recruiter, I’m just an engineer-turned-communications-head. But I know I’m surrounded by leaders who would have taken a chance on me in 2013 if they had the opportunity, and for that, I’m immensely grateful.
