People often want to know what the most exciting and impactful job in the corporate world is.   According to many experts, the most exciting and impactful job is recruiting.

It is full of excitement because every day a recruiter is in a head-to-head competition to attract top talents, and he/ she knows definitively within 90 days whether he or she has beaten the competition. The impact of a recruiter is twofold: first, a recruiter can literally change the life of an individual by placing them in their dream job, and second, a recruiter can effectively change the direction and the success of a corporation or a consultancy company with a single great hire in a key job.

Here is a list of the many reasons why one should consider becoming a corporate recruiter. This list might give some insight into why the recruiters are so passionate about what they do.

1. A recruiter literally changes people’s lives —very few things in life have a bigger impact on an individual than landing or missing out on a great job. Because of that tremendous impact, most recruiters find it easy to maintain a high level of excitement and commitment to excellence. Incidentally, even though a recruiter cannot hire everyone, recruiters can certainly help improve the chances and the experience of every applicant by finding their hidden skills, by answering their questions, and by calming them down through educating them so that they feel comfortable and prepared for the rest of the recruiting process. Recruiters can even impact those who do not land a job this time by informally coaching them and helping them understand how they can better develop themselves, so that they will have a better chance of landing a job next time.
2. Recruiting is No. 1 in business impact — research has shown that recruiting ranks No. 1, with the greatest bottom-line business impact on revenue and profit of any talent management function. Just like in sports, it is obvious to almost everyone that recruiters are making a difference when they successfully recruit top talent into the organization. In some cases, a single new hire who the recruiter brings in could create a major innovation or a new product worth millions. If a recruiter has the right skill set, he/ she can tweak his/her own recruiting process so that it also successfully presents and hires high-value diverse candidates and innovators.
3. A recruiter will be the face of the company —the first and in some cases the only contact that applicants have with the organization. As a result, the recruiter will have the unique opportunity to represent the company and reinforce its image by treating them as they were a customer. As a “brand ambassador,” a recruiter also has the responsibility for spreading the word in person and on social media and the Internet about the factors that make the firm a great place to work.
4. Employees and managers will be grateful — as a recruiter fills more jobs, the number of employees who will be grateful to him or her for helping them land their current job will continue to increase. Hiring managers will also be thankful that the recruiter helped to improve their team’s performance by finding and landing top candidates. As a result, most recruiters will have a large number of thankful employees and managers who are willing to do them a favor in return.
5. If one has initiative, he can create new recruiting programs — in some organizations, heavy loads and a tactical focus by most recruiters means that most simply don’t take the time out to create new recruiting initiatives. As a result, if the recruiter, as an individual finds the time to discover or design new recruiting, technology, or metric approaches, he may be given the opportunity to develop and implement them, even though he is not yet a senior person. 
6. The competition is exciting —Fiilling each job is a head-to-head competition that can be energizing. Every day recruiters are competing against recruiters who represent powerhouse firms like Google, Apple, and IBM. Most recruiters also find that discovering hidden talent is also exhilarating, as is successfully convincing top prospects having multiple choices.
7. There is a clear winner — unlike in many fields, recruiting for a particular job has a clear beginning and ending point. As a result, after a top candidate makes their job choice, there is little ambiguity about the winner. In most cases, the result will be visible within 90 days. And even losing an individual talent competition, does not require a recruiter to wait long to get back into the game because another competitive recruiting opportunity will open up almost immediately.
8. An opportunity to meet the best — if one likes to meet and interact with exciting people, recruiting allows him/her to meet and get to know hundreds of outstanding people and some innovators each month. In many cases, recruiters get to know these individuals in some depth because that is necessary if they are to fully understand their needs and to be able to successfully present them to hiring managers.
9. An opportunity to interact with management — recruiters have the frequent opportunity to interact with hiring managers and executives in all levels of the organization. As a result, not only recruiters get to know them personally, they also see the quality of the recruiter’s work directly.
10. Everyone will want to be your friend — because most people look for new jobs several times during their lives, almost everyone understands the value of knowing recruiters. As a result, many of the people who recruiters meet both in their businesses and private lives will want to maintain a relationship with them on the hope that they may someday help them find a job. They will also want a relationship in the hope that the recruiter will provide them with periodic help in improving their resume and their job search skills..
11. Continually changing assignments — because most corporate recruiters handle a variety of different job openings, recruitersface a variety of assignments and challenges as different jobs open up. This variety can be challenging but it also keeps the job interesting and continually changing.
12. Freedom and control — because filling each req has its own unique challenges, most corporate recruiters have a great deal of control over their work. That complexity generally means that the recruiting manager may provide the recruiter with recommended approaches but they seldom require that a fixed regiment is followed. This means that most recruiters have a great deal of freedom over their daily work, as long as they produce results. In many cases, remote work and contract work options are also available. For the best recruiter, the independence level is even more.
13. Recruiting tools are continually evolving —Recruiting is exciting because it is probably the fastest changing field in talent management. Because of this rapid rate of change, recruiters constantly learn how to use new technologies and new communications approaches. This is in part because a recruiter simply cannot successfully recruit top talent without using the same advanced communications approaches that the top candidates have already embraced. Fortunately the recruiter does not need to return to school in order to update recruiting knowledge, because the best recruiters learn continually but informally on social media and the Internet. 
14. No heavy entrance requirement — recruiting is an easy profession to join because there are no strict degree or certification requirements in order to become a recruiter. Many in recruiting come from a variety of backgrounds because the focus when selecting a recruiter is on their skills. And if one has those skills, he or she will find it relatively easy to sell him/her in the resume and during their own interviews with the recruiting manager. Entering into the subfield of college recruiting is even easier for recent grads because they are already likely to know the college job search process and in addition, they likely have empathy and understanding for what top college prospects expect.
15. Good pay and job opportunities — as in any profession, the pay varies by company and region. However, technical recruiters can earn well. Contact recruiters are often paid well and external executive search professionals can earn hundreds of thousands per year.  In addition, recruiter positions are needed in all industries, so there are more opportunities available when job searching.
16. You will have the best tools — if you work for a successful recruiting function, you will invariably have the latest equipment (i.e. smart phone, tablet, etc.) as well as an expense account for coffee and lunches with top prospects. If you are assigned to recruit at professional conferences or on college campuses, recruiting can also provide exciting travel opportunities.
17. Becoming senior takes less time — even though recruiting is exciting, many in HR actually prefer the more predictable fields of training, development, and OD. As a result of this yearning, recruiting has a high “pass-through rate.” So if one sticks with recruiting as a profession it often takes much less time to reach senior or manager status then it would in other areas of HR.
18. Being a recruiter means one will have excellent personal job search skills — a recruiter’s familiarity with the job search process almost assures that, should he/ she seek another recruiting job or a job outside of the field, he/ she will have a powerful resume, extensive contacts, and exceptional job search skills that should ensure success.
19. At a top firm, recruiting is easier — for a recruiter working at a top employer-branded firm, the applicant flow will be so great that recruiting becomes more of a sorting problem. If the firm has a top-performing employee referral program, by finding and assessing top prospects, employees will do a lot of the recruiting work for the recruiter. Moreover, at top firms the recruiting processes are so well refined that they will guide even those with little experience to success.
20. You’ll know right away if you are any good — unlike many fields, it does not take years of practice to become competent as a recruiter. In the same light, success being so obvious, a recruiter gets to know within months whether he or she has what it takes to become a good recruiter.

Even though this article focused on the many reasons why recruiting is such an exciting and impactful job, there are obviously also some drawbacks. The strongest drawback is that recruiting runs in spurts and there are some time periods where recruiting slacks off and a recruiter may find challenges in his or her own career growth. However, even during tough times, the very best recruiters still continue to grow, and especially those top recruiters who have a strong secondary skill like internal placement, outplacement, or technical recruiting.In some organizations, the loads can also be crushing during growth periods, but that is a factor that one should examine before accepting an assignment.

If after reading the above positive argument above (which is almost equally applicable for recruiters working with corporates as well as those with HR consultancies), one is still unsure about recruiting as a career path, he/ she can informally meet up with top recruiters at one of the famous recruiting conferences. It only takes meeting a handful of top recruiters over coffee to realize that they are among the friendliest, engaging, intelligent, and innovative corporate people one can ever meet. They almost universally love their job and the impact that they have.