Where do you belong?
August 12, 2024
Last week I was in the audience for my daughter’s high school production of Mean Girls (she played Regina George, which is a whole other story), and during the song Where Do You Belong? I found my mind wandering, thinking about how the song applied to recruiting.
The lyrics explain to the new girl at school, Cady Heron, the different groups that she could align with and some of the consequences of joining each group. “The strivers & survivors just waiting for June, the freaks and the geeks, and the peaking too soon, the junior achievers, the Christian believers” — these are a few of the groups Cady could choose to join.
It’s a fun song, which brought me back to my high school days. But it also felt very relevant to the conversations we have every day with candidates, hiring managers, and agency leaders. Everyone wants to belong. Belonging means being around people who get you, understand your powers, and blend those powers with theirs. What this song is describing is culture, and culture’s bedrock is values. Each of these groups’ members have come to high school with a set of goals and a set of values. They found their people based on these goals and values.
This doesn’t change much when you get older. The organizations we join are all attempting to lay a foundation of values and weave it into a culture. It isn’t as easy as high school groups that have loose affiliations where kids can come and go. But even then, as we see in Mean Girls, it can be tough to leave a group you once identified with. Where do you go when that happens?
Answering that question is very often our job as recruiters. The number one reason people give for wanting to make a career move is “it just doesn’t feel the same here anymore.” In other words, they’ve lost their feeling of belonging, which can leave them feeling like they've been set adrift. Not a pleasant feeling.
But there is good news. From our perspective, there is actually a place for everyone. Some cultures are on the rise, some have lost their way and need someone to help them find it again. Some cultures are intense and some are laid back and chill. Some are direct and stern, others are funny and goofy. And if you are not a joiner, there are plenty of exciting freelance options in this gig economy.
So, where do you belong? Let us help you figure that out. It’ll be fetch!
2024 Here We Come!
As we head into the final weeks of 2023, I think we are all happy to see what 2024 has in store. As always, sideways markets can be challenging to navigate, but challenging times drive new thinking, fresh innovation, and give us time to develop new collaborations. I am thankful for the new muscles we needed to develop in order to thrive in 2023. So many of the conversations this year revolved around how we were all adapting to so many new normals. I have to think the accumulation of everyone stepping up is moving us all along and will pay off in 2024 and beyond.
Happy Holidays,
Cory