Reflecting

Last night was a great night but also quite a tough one because it highlighted all the things that I would miss about Hudson. Recruitment is a hard industry with massive turnover. A lot of new starters don’t make it past 6 months because they can’t hack it or they just don’t do well enough so the company let’s them go. Last night was about the good times, team work and a great bunch of people.

For me, Hudson has been a big achievement. To get into the company in the first place I had to go through 3 rounds of interviews (6hrs, 4hrs and 2 hrs) and finish up with 5 hours of psychometric testing.

My first year was horrible! Crazy hours, coming in on Saturdays then working a second job all day Sunday. My base pay was pretty bad because I was new and had yet to make bonus, back then it didn’t matter as much because I just wanted a good job in a good company. To save on the $12 parking fee next door I would park 30mins away at a free car park and walk to and from work every morning and afternoon. The drive home was 1 hr and 15 minutes (each way) making my work day 14hrs long.

The job itself wasn’t easy and you pretty much get thrown in from the deep end from the word go. My patch had been left empty for about 9 months before I joined, my predecessor had been in the role for 4 years and was now working at a competitor right across the road marketing to exactly the same clients (why would clients use someone like me when you can go back to the same person?) it was such a battle to make a name for myself.

My first marketing call was terrible; it was to one of the Accounting managers in one of the Boral divisions, I was so nervous that I must have sounded like a robot reading from a script. In my first few months no one knew who I was, no one wanted to talk to me and there was definitely no way that they were going to give me a job. Rejection after rejection, day after day, it was pretty painful but you learn to toughen up and persist. With a good manager who was an excellent mentor I billed over $100k in my first year. I really missed her when she left, I still do.

Fast forward to now, I’ve been in the game for over 2 years. I've placed many people in their current roles and interviewed over 250 people. Most importantly my clients call me, they ask for me by name (which 2 years ago seemed impossible). It was hard making this decision to leave because I was finally where I wanted to be and my patch is red hot. In these 2 years I've invested a lot of blood, sweat and many MANY tears. I now have to kiss my baby goodbye and hand it over to some one who…let’s just say that I don’t think that this person deserves it and it kills me; but I made this choice so I have to let it go and live with it.

Next week is my last week, it's hard to say goodbye to people I consider good friends. I know that we’ll keep in touch but it’s not the same when you don’t see them everyday. I’m not going to dwell on that too much right now because I get upset at the thought. In recruitment you meet THE BEST people! Everyone is personality plus, there is never a dull moment. I never realised how important this was till I went to Jacky’s Christmas party at Schneider. My new team and environment seems a lot quieter and it’ll be an interesting but scary change.

I’ll probably blog about it to keep track but I’m very aware that my blog gets up to 80+ hits daily which is a big surprise (who are you all!?!? Introduce yourself! I won't bite =P). Someone also recently pointed out that I wrote a lot of personal stuff here, since getting my new job it has made me a little paranoid and with the nature of my new company I also need to be a bit more careful.

So when it comes to blogging about work or if I need a place to vent my frustrations I’m going to do it on my Xanga. I know I’m pretty boring, but to my friends out there if you have a Xanga and you actually want to hear about my ramblings make sure you subscribe because I will begin writing protected posts allowing permissions to people I know. If you don't have a Xanga you're seriously not missing out on much and you'll hear about it in person or on msn anyway.

7 more sleeps till my last day.