I always had a tough time understanding how my relationship with God affected my relationship with my work/career and, to a greater extent, the pursuit of success in it. I gave God the other stuff – sports, academics, relationships but my career? Nah, that was for me to control. 

7ish years later, in the real working world, I’ve come to understand that there was and is an undeniable linkage between what I had once thought (and wanted to believe) were two worlds. It didn’t make sense before because I had on blinders. I had some past wounds and hurts from my upbringing and unmet expectations from myself and others that led me to separate the two worlds. If it was my wound, then being successful in my career was the band-aid for it. If it was my wound, then it was up to me to control the outcome and create my own little kingdom built to serve and give me glory. There’s a lot there to break down, but that’s another post for another day. 

For now, I’m here to reflect and celebrate how God has worked as a recruiter in and through this career. What was once confusion is now rock-solid truth in seeing how God is in everything I do, how I do it, why I do it, and who I do it for. 

Here are three areas that I’ve experienced God moving powerfully from my early days in recruiting to the present-day running a consultancy.

The Unknown 

In recruiting, facing the unknown is a constant thing. On some days, it’s more lightweight: fear for how an initial call with a hiring manager will go or if a candidate will buy into your pitch and be open to interviewing. 

It can get more intense on other days: months of work leading to one final decision from a candidate who has five offers to choose from, including yours. Or, on the other end of it, when you get a string of rejections, and you are left wondering how you’re going to make it financially here in the Bay Area. 

Fearful thinking leads to excessive control, which in the world of recruiting (or sales, or any commissions-driven type job) means doing more work. More work isn’t bad, but when it becomes an idol and replaces God as the center of our hearts, minds, and souls, it becomes something else entirely. I worked in a lot of fear during the earlier days of my recruiting career. There were countless nights of sleepless and anxious pondering, back molars that I had grounded away in stress, and midnight oil that was burned as a response when things didn’t go my way. 

I had a distorted view of who I was and whose I was and medicated pretty heavily on work to help answer those questions. Ultimately, I didn’t trust that God was a good Father and that He had a good plan for me and that He would provide for my every need.

But praise God for being so patient and graceful in allowing me to experience those darker seasons so that I could proactively seek out a different route. I’ve learned to praise Him in the high and to praise Him in the low. It didn’t matter what the outcome was, and nothing went wasted in His Kingdom. I’ve learned that I can’t always control the unknown but that I can control my response. 

How am I responding? With my arms lifted high in praise and thanksgiving? 

Who am I responding to? To the fearful voices in my head? Or to my Heavenly Father and all the promises He has for me? 

What am I magnifying? My fears, doubts, and worry or the power, goodness, and love of God? 

“When what you know is greater than what you don’t know, there is no room for fear.”

– Pastor Adam

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still human, and I definitely still struggle with releasing control when things get rough, but there’s a greater awareness to just pause … be still… breathe and remember who I am and what I was called to do. 

Money, Money, Moneeeeeey

Let’s just start with the facts. Having money and wanting to have more money can be a very alluring and addictive thing. Money represents more than just what it is externally but what it reveals about your heart and who you are. 

As I gently alluded to earlier, recruiting and other forms of commission/bonus type jobs can lead to overworking, because why wouldn’t you? More work means more opportunities to make more money. There’s no ceiling, and there’s always that delicious-looking carrot dangling in front of us to consume, replace and do it all again. When is enough enough? When does contentment become replaced by greed? 

In Paul David Tripp’s book, ‘Redeeming Money’ he writes,

“the love of money sits at the epicenter of a lifestyle of self-glory and constant craving. It is not a lifestyle in which sin is retained.”

There’s a reason why Jesus talks about money more than any other topic in the Bible. Money exposes the heart and paints a pretty clear picture of whose kingdom we are building. My own or God’s? 

But as much of an addiction and object of worship money can be, it can also be a GOLDMINE for God to teach us a few things and help us to become more like Him. 

This topic on money deserves its own post, but I know for me, it’s been a heck of a journey in understanding how money works in His Kingdom. At my first recruiting agency there was a major focus on how much money the company made, how much each team made, and how much I made. I was still struggling with my identity and thought that being a top earner at the company could be a way to gain approval from my peers and be seen as successful, a winner, and a somebody. Money fueled my kingdom, bandaged my wounds, and served my desires. Even when I joined some of the top branded companies in Silicon Valley, I always felt in lack, undervalued and underpaid when the reality was far from the truth. I couldn’t distinguish between a WANT and a NEED and found myself constantly comparing my financial position to others, wanting more because it just wasn’t enough… I wasn’t enough…God wasn’t enough. 

But how incredible is it that we serve a God who provides boundless grace, new mercies every morning, and is jealous after our hearts. He’s all about renewal and redemption, even when we get it wrong. 

In my greed, He taught me to be content. In my insecurity, He reassured me that He is near and that He is for me. In my desire for MORE, He showed me the power of generosity. In my desire to control things, He reminded me that it’s a privilege to be a vessel and a faithful steward. In my impatience, He painted a picture of eternity and what the bigger picture is all about. In my selfishness, He elevated the truths to elevate my standard of giving and not my standard of living. 

As I said before, I’m not perfect, especially when it comes to how I view, manage and utilize money but praise the Lord for his present and future grace that’s constantly at work! I am looking forward to the many more lessons that I know God wants to teach in and through me when it comes to this fascinating topic of money. 

Here’s a few recommended books around God + Generosity that gave me some good thoughts on chew on:

Redeeming Money: How God Reveals and Reorients Our Hearts – Paul David Tripp

The Legacy Journey: A Radical View of Biblical Wealth and Generosity – Dave Ramsay

God and Money: How We Discovered True Riches at Harvard Business School – Gregory Baumer

The Mundane Grind

Scroll, scroll, click. Look at Linkedin profile. Email. Click. Next. Email, email. Call. Linkedin profile, call, call. Day’s done. Repeat. 

Welcome to recruiting. 

Noelle and I recently started to sleep train our daughter, and one of the tips we got was the big C, Consistency. Keep it consistent. The grind, I think, has so much more to do with showing up, staying focused, and getting work done. Less so about one defining amount of impounding stress or even about the beginning stages of a new project. It’s about the day-to-day, the mundaneness, and how we bring our attitude and activity to what we do. 

Recruiting can get really boring sometimes. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do and know that God has called me to this career, but can we be honest and acknowledge that not EVERY moment is filled with joy, adrenaline, and satisfaction? 

One of the most challenging parts of starting and staying in this recruiting is embracing this mundane grind and mustering enough energy to do it repeatedly. We’re talking about thousands of emails, hundreds of calls, over many years and companies. I’d go as far as to say it’s this grind that burns recruiters out of this career or steers them away from their potential and settling for comfort. 

This notion has been especially true over the past two years, working as a solo consultant, alone in my backyard office, and doing everything remotely. Something that helped embrace this mundane grind was digging beneath the exterior and getting to the Why of Why I Work. I knew it wasn’t enough to just self-motivate myself, especially when I had a melted new dad brain and had been zombie shuffling all night. There needed to be a deeper why that would reshape my perspectives and flow into the work I did.

It starts with understanding that I’m a vessel: a carrier for what God wants to do in and through the work I’ve been given to do. My career is more than a job; it’s a calling. It’s a ministry. It’s a way to help shape and form this incredible world God has created. It’s an opportunity to bear the image of Christ in doing my work with excellence and to love and serve the work itself and the people I interact with every day. As a vessel, I recognize that I also have a Creator and a purpose. I did nothing to deserve these gifts, talents, and opportunities, which gives me a more significant reason to seek a higher, eternal, and greater WHY for what I do. Because I am in Christ, I also recognize that my potential is greater than the sum of my own parts. I know I’m never alone, but that His presence is with me in every call, email and meeting. 

Once again, these revelations don’t mean I still fall suspect to bad habits and distractions (ahem Youtube…), and it doesn’t mean I don’t have rough days where I feel like a failure and finish the day pissed off about a candidate’s decision. But those moments are just moments, they pass and go, and I get to celebrate in God’s grace for giving me a deeper WHY to get out of those dark thought cycles and step into the freedom He has given every morning, in every season, good or bad to continue to be His vessel. 

“If the point of work is to serve and exalt ourselves, then our work inevitably becomes less about the work and more about us. Our aggressiveness will eventually become abuse, our drive will become burnout, and our self-sufficiency will become self-loathing.”

– excerpt from Tim Keller’s book, ‘Every Good Endeavor.’

The work itself doesn’t change. Work was never meant to serve us and be the answer for true fulfillment. But the deeper stuff does. When there’s a precise alignment behind why we work, who we work for, and how we work, we get to respond differently. 

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” 

– Col 3:23

More book recommendations!

Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human – John Mark Comer

Every Good Endeavor – Timothy Keller

Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation Create, Innovate, and Risk – Jordan Rayno

Wrapping Up

Here’s what I believe – our work can be an incredible expression of how God transforms us to be more like him. Note, it can be. We can’t always control what happens to us, but we always have a choice to decide what our response will be. If work makes up such a significant part of our lives, I think it’s essential we get the deeper stuff right and aligned. 

It took me a while to trust God with my career, but when we flip the equation upside down to understand that it wasn’t mine to begin with, our perspectives, actions, and purpose change.

Learning to trust God is very much that, a present-tense process of learning. When we get it wrong, which we all inevitably do being the humans that we are, we get to run to the grace that He endlessly supplies both today and in the future. There’s a new pep in our step knowing that we’ve been set free from all the pressure, expectations, insecurities and fear that try to weigh us down.

I have no doubt how my career as a recruiter is inexplicably linked to my relationship with God. I’ve learned a lot in these past seven years, yet I know I’ve only scratched the surfaces of the many things God still wants to show me. Here’s to the next decade-plus! I’m here for the adventure, and I hope you join along too.