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#189 - You Got Lucky

Ask 10 recruiters how they got into recruiting, and 9 of them will tell you the same thing:

"I fell into it."

A firm they went to for help with their own job search turned the tables and offered them a job instead. Or they were a people person whose aunt worked in recruiting.

It makes sense; it's not like you can major in "recruiting". There aren't many "recruiting internships" out there. It's a job function which finds people.

Not me.

At 22, fresh off a marketing job at a software startup, I knew I wanted to recruit. I'd never done it, but I wanted to learn how. I had a hunch it would suit me, and I went after a recruiting role.

I know: weird. 🤷🏻

I reached out to different recruiting firms, booked a flight from Austin to San Francisco, and crashed on a friend's couch while I interviewed. Then I flew home, chose a firm called Otec, and two weeks later, I packed up my car and drove to San Francisco.

I didn't know it at the time, and I definitely didn't have the language or the framework for it, but I'd just made a big, consequential bet. On a very small firm

Otec wasn't the kind of brand that made eyes light up at a dinner party. But I’d spent enough time in different environments to have a sense of the work I'd enjoy: people-heavy, fast-paced; ambiguous, autonomous. And I liked the people I'd interviewed with; my boss, especially.

So, I drove west.

3 roles, 3 industries, 3 cities

By the time I decided to lay down this bet on Otec, recruiting and San Francisco, I'd held three roles, in three different functions and industries, on two continents:

• HR Intern, Ford Motor Company in Beijing, China
• Consulting Intern, JPMorgan in New York
• Marketing Associate, enterprise software startup in Austin, Texas

I was, literally and figuratively, all over the place. But each role had taught me something: a bit about who I was, and a bunch about who I wasn't.

This is the career phase I now label divergence. It's exploratory. You go broad. You dabble and try new things. New contexts, places, people, bosses, environments. You raise "internal" career capital and build muscles like awareness, judgment and resilience.

The curve

I started at Otec as a "trainee". There was an intense onboarding program that was part recruiting: client management, cold calling, sourcing, negotiation; part crash course on the tech industry we were serving: business models, org charts, product, distribution, software stacks, equity compensation.

There were hard targets and quotas for outreaches and revenue. And as a commission job that paid peanuts in salary, you had to produce quickly to a) not get fired and b) pay your rent.

Expectations were high, and it was competitive. I started alongside a Division I swimmer who'd just graduated from Stanford and had more stamina than I thought humanly possible, and a guy from Berkeley who ran (still runs!) analytical circles around me. It was intense, and hard.

And I loved every minute of it.

The relationship building, the deal-making, the autonomy. The colleagues who mentored me and pushed me and made me laugh.

Something clicked from the get-go, and I don't think I've replicated it since. The best way I can describe it was as looking at the many, disparate parts of the work, and all of it coming together and making sense. Some of my colleagues found the volume of calls, the ambiguity and the constant negotiation tedious or opaque. I found it invigorating.

I didn't have much work experience or career capital. But what I had, I deployed: people and business curiosity; network from my brief time in tech; even Chinese skills that helped me connect with engineers and leaders from Taiwan and China. Not for the last time in my career, many small and seemingly inconsequential experiences combined and collided, to surprising effect.

The ROI of fit

I spent three and a half years at Otec, from boom times to bust. I went from individual contributor to managing a team, and socked away a bunch of savings. I picked up new, useful skills.

Years later, I still enjoy the benefits of the growth story, the network and the friendships I forged. To say nothing of stumbling, early on, into a Venn diagram of something I enjoyed, did well, and got paid for.

In short, the experience returned, in every sense of the word.

That’s what convergence does: it pays dividends. Not just in a paychecks, but in validating fit. In this case, that my hunch about the work, and myself, was correct.

Under the hood

For the longest time, when I reflected on Otec, I told myself, "You got lucky". And I did; unambiguously so.

But now, with hindsight, and with language to better understand career dynamics, I can see that randomness was only part of it. I had also tamed risk; maybe even "bent" luck my way a bit.

After all, I had done hard things before, in other tricky environments. I had some career capital to deploy, and chief among it was awareness. I was aware of the people I'd enjoy; the kind of boss I'd gel with. The industry I enjoyed. The skills I had, and the skills I wanted to build.

The upshot was that, yes, I had to work hard. And yes, I got damn lucky. But I didn’t have to perform to get results. I could just show up, and be me.

In fact, one great sign of a convergent fit is just that: you don't have to edit yourself to thrive in it.

Because if divergence builds awareness of self, convergence is where you get to deploy that self, fully. That's why the returns are outsized -- you're not adapting or performing or pushing against friction: you're just you; full throttle. So when you find it, you hold on, and allow the returns to stack.

The better bettor still has to bet

​​Last week​, I made the argument that:

But divergence without convergence is incomplete, folks.

Convergence is when you deploy the capital you've built up. You stop spreading out and go deep. You find something that fits, and you commit because the signal is there. You give all that accumulated awareness from your divergent years somewhere to finally concentrate.

Without it, you can spend years becoming a better bettor; building judgment, accumulating capital, sharpening your sense of what you want. But it doesn't compound into anything unless you eventually place the bet.

At some point, the goal isn't to collect more options, but to have the courage to pick one, and swing hard.

Most people wait for a convergent moment to find them. What divergence actually gives you is the ability to better recognize when one arrives.

And then, when something fits -- when you can feel the growth and the meaning and the return all going in the same direction -- you let go, and commit to the wave.

Boilerplate career advice misses the point. Not "work hard" in the abstract. Not "stay flexible." Not "pick a lane." The people I've watched build something that endures across pivots and market shifts haven't been permanently one thing. They explore, and focus. Diverge and converge -- sometimes by design, sometimes because the market forced them to.

They work hard, on the right hard things.

Divergence helps you recognize what the right hard things are. Convergence is where you work hard on them, and feel the returns.

Then the cycle starts again.

Converging vs. settling

I realize, only now as I write this, that I've cried with colleagues four times at the point of leaving a company. Which, for the meaning, connection, and belonging that connotes, makes me feel fortunate.

The first time was Otec. Where eventually, the signal started guiding me elsewhere, and I was learning to trust that pull over the comfort of staying.

I'm dwelling now on those four moments, and they're telling me the same thing: you know convergence is real when leaving costs you something. I'd been so myself in each of those environments -- doing work that fit, with others who made me better -- that stepping out of them actually hurt. In the best possible way.

There's a version of staying, though, that looks like convergence from the outside, but isn't. I see it a lot, and I want to name it because I've been there, too.

It's when you hold on not because the ROI is real, but because leaving feels impossible; because "good enough" jobs can be surprisingly soothing; because the external uncertainty feels worse than the internal toil.

Convergence by choice and convergence by fear look the same from the outside. But on the inside, they feel completely different. One is a conscious bet on your future; the other is a default shelter from your present.

I can’t tell you which you’re doing right now. That’s not something I can know, much less judge.

But it’s a question I've learned to come back to when I look at my own career; past and present. Not diverging versus converging, which was last week. But a more uncomfortable version of it:

Am I staying because it’s working, because I can feel it, because I have the judgment to trust what I feel? Or am I staying because I’m scared of what’s on the other side?

No shame, of course, in the honest answer. Just the awareness that comes from asking. 🙌🏻

Thanks for reading and exploring with me -- and have a great end of the week!

Aki