The Most Common Career Transitions for Recruiters

The recent, widespread layoffs in the tech world have been hard on recruiters.

“It’s been brutal,” says Anne Fuller, a Milwaukee-based former recruiter who, in 2022 alone, left one company because they were in the midst of a hiring freeze and was then laid off from her next job. “Recruiters and HR professionals in general have really felt the brunt of these layoffs.” 

Demand for talent overall has dropped compared with last year. But for recruiters, it’s been even worse. Linkedin data shows that global demand for recruiters has dropped at three times the rate of overall hiring demand. Finding (and holding) a job in talent acquisition is tough right now. 

But recruiters have skills that can be relevant for a variety of jobs, not just talent acquisition. “As a recruiter, you learn so many valuable soft skills,” says Michael Garcia, a former LinkedIn recruiter in San Francisco. “Technical skills can be taught, but when I went into interviews for new jobs, I highlighted my soft skills.” 

We know that many people in the recruiting world are looking for work right now. We also know that making the next move isn’t easy. That’s why we wanted to help, by sharing some of the most common jobs that recruiters move into and the stories of two recruiters who made the jump into brand-new roles.

The most common jobs for recruiters who make a transition

More than half of recruiters who have left the field made a transition into a different HR role, making it the most popular function by far. Sales and business development are also popular landing spots.

Let’s look even closer, to see the specific job titles held by former recruiters. Since so many move into HR roles, we’ve broken down our list of the most popular job titles into two categories:

Because talent acquisition teams are often deeply embedded in HR, it’s a natural progression for recruiters to move elsewhere in HR — often within their current company. Twenty-five percent of all recruiter job changes last year were internal transitions. 

Recruiters are often a good fit in sales

Sales also accounts for a large chunk of the roles newly held by recruiters, claiming two of the top five non-HR spots. That was the path that Anne took. After working as a recruiter for six years at companies such as Intuit, DoorDash, and Snap, she was swept up, twice, in tech layoffs.

During her four months of unemployment, she says, “I took some time to kind of reevaluate things.” She put out feelers and interviewed for jobs in a variety of professions, including HR and account management. In December, she landed a job with Circa — a company that sells diversity and compliance software for talent acquisition pros — as a sales account executive. In April, she left for another sales-related venture when she became the co-owner of a mobile beauty business. She says that recruiting gave her skills that lined up well with a sales role — after all, she had to sell companies to candidates and good candidates to hiring managers. 

Anne has advice about what it takes to move into sales or another non-recruiting job: 

• “Really use your personal network,” she says, “including boosting your online presence, so people can see you’re looking for work.” When you post on Linkedin, Anne suggests, ask friends to comment on and share your posts, to increase the views. Then, ask your connections to put you in touch with people who are hiring. “I had a couple of interviews set up that way,” she says, “by someone who said, ‘I know so-and-so, who’s hiring at Starbucks.’”
• Reframe your resume to reflect skills needed in other professions. “I had to kind of rework my resume so it looked more like a sales resume than a recruitment resume,” she explains. That included highlighting skills she learned as a recruiter and explaining how they would be relevant for the jobs to which she was applying.

Recruiting skills that transfer well to other roles

Both Michael, who spent five years in recruiting, and Anne point to a number of skills that TA professionals already have that can help them get new jobs, whether in HR, sales, or business development. 

“The role of a recruiter is hard, for many reasons, but you learn so many soft skills like communication, collaboration, presentation, and storytelling,” Michael says. “I put all of these into practice when I was a recruiter, owning 20 reqs and working closely with leadership, and being able to communicate in a way that was clear and concise.” 

For Michael, recruiting was also a way to learn about an entirely different profession. He had always been creative, but when he got out of college, he felt like he needed a stable job that would pay the bills and provide health insurance. He went into recruiting and eventually became a recruiter at LinkedIn, sourcing product designers. Through the job, he learned about product design. 

“As a recruiter, you really have to put on this hat to understand the individuals you’re recruiting,” he explains. “You also have to stay up to date on the latest tools, and what’s hot and what’s not.” With this knowledge, he found the courage to go back to school and earn a master’s degree in interaction and UI/UX design at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University while he was working full time. In 2021, he left his job at LinkedIn to pursue his dream job. 

His biggest piece of advice? “If somebody offers to help you or offers their time, take it,” he urges. “Don’t say, ‘Okay, I’ll follow up.’ No, just ask them, ‘Are you available next week? Let’s schedule something.’”

Because he connected with so many people in the field, Michael was able to land a paid internship at the software development company ServiceNow designing B2B software. This March, he was named senior product designer. He regularly leans on the soft skills he learned as a recruiter to do his current job well. 

Final thoughts: Go for it 

If you’re thinking of making the leap, Michael says, “Trust your gut. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be a roller coaster. But if it feels right and it’s what you want to do, it’s going to be worth it.” 

Anne agrees. “I would say, without a doubt, go for it,” she adds. “Recruiters are great people. They communicate well. They connect with people well. They know how to manage stakeholders, and they know how to deal with a ton of different things on their plate. I think they have a lot of really nice translatable skills.” 

Methodology

This analysis looked at aggregated LinkedIn member data to identify the most common roles to which recruiters transitioned from March 2022 to February 2023. The analysis excluded transitions to “recruiter” roles to identify other cohorts of roles to which recruiters moved. Any transition within the same company is identified as an internal transition.