(Spoiler: No.)
Someone asked me last week if they should go into recruitment.
I took a deep breath.
I thought about how to frame it diplomatically. How to balance the genuine highs with the very real lows. How to give a nuanced, balanced perspective that honoured the complexity of a career in talent acquisition.
Then I said: Don’t Do It!
Here’s a fun fact that the recruitment industry buries somewhere between the glossy commission structures and the “unlimited earning potential” pitch: approximately 90% of recruitment consultants leave within their first year. Not their first agency. The industry. Gone. Fled. Last seen updating their LinkedIn headline to “Open to Opportunities.”
For context, most industries consider 25% first-year turnover a five-alarm crisis. Recruitment is sitting at 90% and we’ve collectively decided this is just our personality.
It is not a personality. It is a warning sign.
Look, I’m not trying to be dramatic. I’m here to be honest about what this job actually involves, because I promise you the job ad did not cover it.
What the job ad said: Dynamic role! Relationship-focused! Uncapped commission! Fast-paced environment!
What the job actually is: You spend weeks finding the perfect candidate. The client loves them. The candidate loves the client. You can see the finish line. You’re mentally spending your commission. And then, on a Tuesday, for no reason, with no warning, the role gets put on hold, the candidate accepts a counteroffer, or the hiring manager decides they actually want someone with seventeen years of experience in a technology that was invented four years ago.
You don’t get paid. You eat your feelings. You send a very professional email.
Then you do it again.
The research is genuinely not encouraging. Over 80% of recruiters report burnout, and here’s the bit that really stings, it’s not even the hard work that breaks people. It’s the admin.
Studies suggest recruiters spend more than half their day on tasks that have nothing to do with actual recruiting. Data entry. CRM updates. Chasing people who have entered witness protection rather than return a phone call.
The meaningful stuff, the conversations, the placements, the “you got the job” calls, get squeezed into the gaps between the spreadsheets.
And all of this is happening in a commission-based environment, which means your income is tied to outcomes you only partially control. You are, essentially, running a small business inside someone else’s business, with all of the stress and none of the equity.
So when someone asks me if they should go into recruitment, I tell them no.
Partly to protect them….
Mostly to see what they do next.
Because the people who are actually built for this industry don’t nod politely and reconsider. They look mildly offended, ask a few pointed questions, and tell me why I’m wrong.
Those people make it.
Everyone else goes back to a job with a salary and a sensible relationship with their inbox, and good for them.
That sounds lovely.
As for me, I read all of the above back and chose to stay anyway. Make of that what you will. 🧡
Recruiters: What’s the thing that nearly broke you in your first year?
And for those of you who left, no judgment, I completely understand. 🧡
First published in Sarah’s LinkedIn newsletter, Recruitment Rambles. Read the original edition on LinkedIn.
