This post first appeared on John’s Try Harder is Not a Strategy LinkedIn Newsletter. 

I’ve interviewed well over 100 recruiters and TA manager candidates for jobs on my corporate teams over the years.

And when I evaluated Talent Advising skills, there were a few things I always listened for:

1. Do they sound like a process manager who fills reqs — or more like a businessperson there to solve a business problem with talent?
2. Do their examples reveal a “keep the Hiring Manager happy” mindset? Or do they see the business as their customer — willing to do what’s right for the company even when it’s not exactly what the Hiring Manager is asking for?
3. Can they influence challenging Hiring Managers? Not just by sharing reports and market insights, but by understanding the root issue and framing the problem in a way that makes the business want to solve it with them as a partner?
4. Do they want to work on hard-ish things? Do they run to the fire?

I want to dig into that last one.

Hard-to-fill, high-impact reqs. Difficult closes. Challenging, high-expectation Hiring Managers. Messy problems where the answer isn’t obvious. Those can be the hard-ish things that have battle-tested someone’s talent advising capabilities.

How do I get evidence that they enjoy working on hard things and choose hard-ish things? When I interview, I’m listening for good examples that highlight the challenge when I ask “tell me about a time” questions. I’m asking candidates to problem-solve challenging situations with me. I’m giving them metrics and seeing whether they can uncover probable root issues, and then show me how they’d solve the problem. Sometimes I’ll even role-play a challenging Hiring Manager during the interview (we do this in our talent advisor workshops, too).

But as I listen, there’s something subtle I’m trying to hear:

Do they describe the hard things they’ve worked on with a “got to” orientation or a “had to” orientation?

Why is this important? Let me share a little personal reason. Frankly, I’ve never been a great people manager. I’ve always been pretty average at that part of my job. One way I’ve accommodated my average-ness is by trying to hire people who are naturally motivated to do the real work required of a Talent Advisor.

If they’re already wired to Talent Advise, they need less managing. That’s a win for the business, for the hiring managers, and me :)

So when I interview recruiters, I’m looking for a two-way job match: give them a realistic preview of the job, test whether they can Talent Advise, and figure out whether they actually want to do that kind of work.

That’s where “got to” versus “had to” shows up.

Some candidates describe difficult experiences like opportunities:

“I got to work on this incredibly challenging role.”

“I got to partner with a really demanding Hiring Manager.”

“I got to take over a new high-impact team where the executive was personally asking for weekly updates from recruiting at her staff meeting – she was intense.”

They’re not pretending the experience was fun every day. They’re telling me that hard work made them better. That they saw those experiences as opportunities to practice, to get their reps in, to test their approaches in the real-world arena.

Other candidates can tell essentially the same stories, but the framing is different:

“I had to take on all the impossible reqs.”

“I had to deal with this terrible Hiring Manager.”

“I had to keep fixing everyone else’s problems and then try to explain everything I was doing to fix stuff in these staff meetings where I got bombarded with questions from the exec.”

You can hear the difference.

And when I’m listening, I'm trying to uncover whether this recruiter candidate sees challenge primarily as something being done to them, or something they can learn from, influence, and get better because of.

For a senior recruiter who I’m looking to hire into a high-expectation, talent advising culture, that difference matters. Why? Because high performance isn’t just a function of capability.

Motivation matters, too. Wanting to do a great job. Seeking out the harder reqs. Taking on the more difficult closes. Working with the Hiring Managers everyone else avoids. Being willing to have your metrics challenged. Being confident enough to have your candidate recommendations challenged. Great Talent Advisors know something important:

Choosing hard things is often how you get smarter, better, and more valuable.

If you want to grow — or want to be perceived in an interview or performance review as a high-performing Talent Advisor — pay attention to how you frame your own work.

Do you describe your career as a collection of things you got to do? Or things you had to do?

There were so many “got to” experiences that shaped me before I became a head of TA .

26 year-old John was anxious every time he had to meet with a scary VP of Engineering — until, eventually, I looked back on that as the experience that leveled me up to true talent advisor and a good TA manager.

28 year-old John felt like the dumbest person in every room when he was hired to build the tech recruiting machine at Amazon – rarely meeting lofty goals, always being challenged to do more, struggling to scale – until I looked back on that and realized I got about 20 years experience crammed into my first 3 years there.

None of those experiences felt easy while I was living them. But looking back, they shaped me. Tested me. Made me better. Not all felt like “got to” experiences, at the time, but now looking back, all of them feel that way. And that’s how I’d describe them today.

It’s tough now for a lot of recruiting teams. Application volume is up dramatically for many jobs. TA teams are leaner. Hiring Managers are busier, and may not be receptive to talent advising. Recruiters are being asked to learn new technology, rethink workflows, use AI, and maybe even create their own vibe-coded solutions (!). All while keeping the hiring bar high and wondering what the next big change will be.

Some of that is legitimately hard.

The question is:

Which of today’s “had to” moments will you someday be grateful you got to work on?

p.s. 25 resources to help you become a Talent Advisor here.

© Recruiting Toolbox, Inc.