Recruit

When a recruiter goes out into the field looking to snag a candidate recruit, what do they look for?

So many people have the conception that what "they" look for, whether it be a college or a job, that your accomplishments show your value. I feel the whole system of viewing a recruitment with this perspective keeps the focus too narrow. Instead of looking to the past, looking for someone that wants to be found, maybe a recruiter needs to be three steps ahead of everyone. A person's potential does not need to be realized by some nondescript age. X, Y, or Z. No, I think expecting a resume to speak about a person's future success is flawed.

Imagine that one person has the potential to heal thousands. Their minds, souls, hearts, or bodies are all affected by just one person. That person does not need to have a picture perfect past do they? If I were hiring someone for a job, a criminal record is written off before it hits my desk. Don't want to hear excuses. Don't want to hear a back story. But life is hard and it has challenges that we don't all recover from so easily. Some falter for far longer in that valley of death. Rising above tragedy is not a sign of strength, and I say this because I think each person is strong enough to recover. Rising above tragedy is about hope. It is about hope for something still left in the world worth living for. If a recruiter enters a field cold and doesn't now the hardship or pain people struggled through then the might as well leave. They won't understand. They won't see that people don't need your judgment or your pity. They need a steady arm to lean on just to get on their feet. No one likes being a burden, but it is an addiction for some to remain a burden as a means to an end. What tragedy teaches us is beyond the shadows of the cave, for it is when you see the source of shadows and are revealed to the truth that you kill a part of you where naivete lived. You self loathe for once believing. If you recruit without moving from your bounds in that lonely cave, then you are not saving them.

I knew very little pain before the truth was revealed to me. The pain and sadness that resulted from my escape from the underground orchestration of lies was necessary for me to love the truth. Despite the terror of knowing, I am glad I do because now I can show others.

I "recruit." I see three steps ahead because I am who I recruit. I know the real life scenarios that people actually live. I'm not a college admissions board reading applications, personal statements, or hearing interviews. I don't expect you or anyone else to sum up their current being or future potential in a 5 page essay. I think the act of articulating "being" is a rare gift. Those that I recruit are a special bunch who know what towing the line of "being" and "no being" is like. They've spent weeks, months, or years of their lives working, hoping, pleading to no exist, not "be." They were those who wallowed in the valley of the shadow of death. Yet, no matter their own tortured existence, they lacked the follow through to cease existing. You'd think more people would kill themselves. Really, if they are as depressed as some of the people I recruit, there is little holding them back from flinging themselves into death's arms. Every decision they make is one that means their death. Though they may say they don't care, I think it is instead a frame of mind where they don't exist, they aren't, they cease to "be." What holds them here? Why not just pull the proverbial plug? I have been there and I know why. Hence, I am the best kind of recruiter.

Each human has a sense of being, a creational potential. I didn't kill myself because, as I have realized since, I had a profound and deep knowledge that my path was not meant to look like this. I was meant, not for the stereotypical "great things," but I was meant to change the world, to send a ripple through the world with my creations, my very being. A feeling of purpose the likes of which no word can possibly describe. Knowing bitter histories makes me a seasoned philosopher. The best philosopher does not think he is brilliant. Indeed, he or she knows just how LITTLE they know. I knew a few things and those are what I teach to recruits. The rest I've learned has been yet to be revealed to me.