At What Age Did You Start in the Recruiting Business?

They say that age is just a number. They’re right, it is. (Whoever they are.) What really matters, though, is how big the number is.

But forget about how old you are for just a moment. After all, we have. We just want to know at what age you started your journey in this fabulous profession of recruiting.

As all of you know, nobody goes to college and majors in recruiting. Becoming a recruiter just “sort of happens” somehow . . . which is also a subject for another blog post.

For this particular post, we posed the following question in the Members’ Area as part of a recent poll:

At what age did you start in the recruiting business?

Results:

The choice of answers that we provided is listed below, along with the percentage of Network recruiters that selected each one:

• In my 20s — 43.7%
• In my 30s— 28.2%
• In my 40s— 19.7%
• In my 50s — 8.5%
• Later — 0.0%

Age like a fine wine (then drink one)

Okay, even though just about all recruiters don’t become one right out of college, many in the recruiting network still started young. That’s because 43.7% of poll participants started in the business in their 20s.

Which means, of course, that 56.3% of participants did NOT start in the business in their 20s! (Who said math is hard?)

In fact, 28.2% indicated that they started in their 30s, and another 19.7% chose “In my 40s” as their answer. Put those two percentages together, and you have 47.9%.

That means percentage-wise, more Network members started in the business in their 30s and 40s combined than started in their 20s. That just goes to show, once again, that age is not a determining factor for success in this profession.

Speaking of which, another 8.5% of the recruiters in our poll started in the recruiting business while in their 50s. When it comes to shifting gears and starting a new career, recruiting is NOT a bad way to go.

No matter what age you start in the profession, though, the goal is the same: become better at what you do and bill more. Recruiting does not play favorites; it can be brutal. It doesn’t matter if you’re 25 or 55, it will run you over without so much as a “howdy-do.”

Youth is NOT a leading indicator of success in this profession. Determination, perseverance, talent, and the desire to continually improve are.

It’s not really about when you start. It’s more about where you finish.