Sabrina Gutierrez

I have the best partner I could ever ask for. He's my biggest cheerleader, even on days I falter. It was much easier to take certain leaps knowing he was in my corner. I come from a family of nurses and people that think it best to play it safe, and I was encouraged to follow a career in healthcare. I did for a while, even went to UC Irvine with the idea that I was going to apply to medical school. I knew deep-down that it didn't feel right. It maybe didn't feel bad, per se, but it didn't light a fire in me. Finally committing to myself and abandoning others' vision for my future was really key. My partner really helped me through finally making that decision to choose myself. It was tough, I got a lot of pushback. But now, I love what I get to do everyday whilst also having the freedom and flexibility to pursue the parts of myself not connected to my career. I feel whole.

So do it scared. I'm para-phrasing, but my dad told me that I should be making mistakes now, when I'm young. He meant it as a way to say that this is the time when I should be taking risks. My dad and I never really saw eye-to-eye growing up. He, like everyone else, had a strong opinion about my pursuing a professional degree. But when I decided to open up my own business he was immediately supportive. He maybe wasn't very familiar with the recruiting industry or what it entailed, but I think he always had this impression of me that I was meant to be my own boss. There's a few other channels I'm looking to pursue that are completely unrelated to what I'm currently doing, and I do get a bit scared thinking about what life will look like once I press the gas on them. But I guess I'll just have to do it scared. It'll pass.

In the recruiting industry, the lifespan of a recruiter is projected to be very short. There's some statistic online that estimates some 90% of recruiters quit before the end of their first year; that's just the nature of sales. But you can't look at it as a sales role. Honestly, just know yourself and create your own style of building relationships with people, because recruiting is all relationship-based. These are not simple transactions, you hold people's livelihoods in your hands. You're responsible for where you place candidates so it's good to be particular about the companies you choose to work for. So just listen and be receptive, slow-down where you can, and don't chase a dollar. You can make a living off of recruiting, but at the end of the day, you really can't put a dollar amount on human relationships. People will see through that really quickly.

Recruiting gets a bad rap as it is but AI use in my industry has made it look mighty horrific. There's alot of distrust among potential clients that we use AI to screen for resumes, and that we don't have the faintest clue what we're talking about or what they're looking for. Meanwhile, candidates are inundated with spam calls by AI agents that they're less likely to pickup the phone when an unknown number like mine calls. It's made outreach a great deal harder with less stellar results. Online communication, as a whole, is less trusted than it was 10 years ago. It takes a lot more legwork to prove to someone that you stand-out.

Integrity. Say what you mean, and mean what you do. Being reliable will open doors that you didn't even know were available to you. Plus, when you follow through on promises you make to yourself, your ceiling for what you think you can achieve really just gets higher and higher. I spent a lot of time when I was younger admiring the large gap between what I said I'd do and what I actually did. That gap gets smaller every year.