Personally, I’ve never bought into “recruiting season.” I know I am weird. I’ll underscore and bold that so you are reminded that I am not trying to tell you what to do. Nor am I arguing for the sake of being different.
First of all, perhaps those unfamiliar with the concept/term…what is recruiting season? To my knowledge, based off of my experiences in University, it is generally a one or two month stretch where students try to get jobs at firms. For lots of jobs, especially banking and consulting, I know this period generally occurs some time between August and November. It is full of information sessions, recruiting fairs, and..interviews!
I have never bought into recruiting season because I believe in “individualism. “
This may sound mushy and abstract…I’ll do my best to explain. I think that most things about job recruiting (and life for that matter) are optimized for efficiently placing the masses in jobs. This is really capitalism. The market, on a macro level, will do a pretty good job of doing a “portfolio optimization” between talent and opportunity.
We know, though, that there are inefficiencies with this process. So you see a number of companies pop up – like TripleByte and Lambda School – that offer alternatives to everything from education to recruiting to skill-building.
Resumes are heuristics companies use to value masses of talent. I believe my resume undervalues me. I rather get a job by talking to dozens of people at companies versus being driven by a piece of paper. I have stories. Learnings. None of that shows up on a paper or linkedin. I have thousands of blog posts and projects and failures. I want to be fully valued (not just financially, but moreso with opportunity).
I think that lots of people do, too.
When things are built for processing say hundreds of thousands of people, they are often by default not personalized. The process is not built around me. It is built around deadlines determined by some other group of people. You may see how this applies to life, generally.
There are some things I go along with and just “play the game.” I applied to college…I go to college…I am a part of this system.
But there are other things, like say job recruiting, where I know I can beat the market by playing my own version of the game.
How did I make this call?
Well I also know that “faking my interest in a particular field” over a very small period of time is silly (for me). I do not see lines between work and life. Because of that, I do not believe in working, or exploring my future, for just 3 months a year during college – what is supposed to be a massive period of growth?
I believe in always exploring…always experimenting..trying to get better faster!
At school, most everyone is bought into recruiting season. The religion is strong. Perhaps it is good…it is certainly convenient…gives people purpose, makes people busy, and gives them vertical opportunity.
But is it really best for everyone?
I also just hate wearing suits.
Also published on Medium.