Hey All, I know I owe everyone an apology as I disappeared from this platform while many things have occurred during my years of absence from the” magic world of blogging”.
I must say I have enjoyed the first few bits of it, and I believe this is a project that deserves to keep going, despite the silence that lasted until today (luckily I kept paying my fee to WordPress to keep it alive!).
I guess you do not mind me starting this off again with a non-recruiting related post—I just think I owe you a quick wrap-up of the episodes that weren’t aired on this blog for the past years. May I?
Then here we go…
It has been 5 years and many changes since the last post on this platform, and to be honest with you, loads of things happened both personally and at work: I survived the absurdities of COVID, which kind of put our lives on pause for a couple of years. I finally experienced fatherhood (yes! I have a little girl who just turned 5 years old) and have also experienced the grief of losing my dad, who was taken away rather quickly by—you know—what we call that killer disease.
Work-wise, let’s see… I finally managed to achieve my obsessive target of billing 100M+ as an individual contributor (I guess that happened in 2021 or 2022—it’s ironic how you don’t care anymore after you reach the peak). I racked up a few promotions here and there as I became a Business Director, and I’m still with my old-time shop, my “first love in recruiting,” and still under the same boss, who is now more than a brother to me. I am experiencing an everlasting divorce and have been constantly living between two time zones and two different places, as I spend half of my year in the hustlin’ and bustlin’ town of Tokyo, and the less-than-20,000-people village in Sicily, where I was born and where my daughter lives… As that song goes, “what you gonna do, do it for love.”
But being up in the air as an acrobat jumping around latitudes, although it might sound fascinating and cool when I talk about it, is not really a piece of cake. Especially when you spend all night working like in the worst call centers and you need to explain to your clients over and over again how you’re picking up their calls at 3 in the morning while working JST hours from Sicily. In full honesty, I don’t quite fully process how that works yet—I just understand that days are liquid, as it seems they never end until the weekend breaks through, and you can finally relax.
But all in between, “fatherhood” comes, and I get to spend a few hours with my little one, not more than 9 hours a week, ironically not even 10% of the hours I spend here in business captivity.
There have been a few things that changed my mind and perspective on things, also giving me some takeaways and new directions on how to see life, work, love, music, food, technology, and everything in between.
Life is right here, right now: As simple as it might sound, while we focus on making plans, life just happens. Guess this is what John Lennon used to say, and it’s very true, raw, and straight. Forget about planning only—just think about living, racking up memories, and what makes you feel alive. We lose the essence of things while, with paper and pen, we try to trace the highway to happiness.
Coping, Enduring, Overcoming: I love to call this the rhythm of resilience, a mantra I always look up to. Face a challenge, take it by the horns, engage with it, get to the core, and learn gradually how to confront and defeat it. Isolate it from the things that make you happy. You’ll come out with a solution, an exit plan, or a wildcard for the next rodeo, but most importantly, you will get by and leave it behind at some point.
No matter how tall you stand, be humble: Regardless of being the most successful recruiter in the building, the best in your class, or feeling like you’re at the top of your game, stay humble. At some point, rain will fall, and life will stain that flashy suit you paid thousands of bucks for. You need to be able to navigate through it. Life always finds ways to humble you down—forcefully or gracefully—putting you in your place when needed. Be ready to face it in the most human way possible. At the end of the day, no matter how godlike you feel, we are all made of flesh, and all fall vulnerable at some point.
Get oxygen and vibes from good music: Oxygenate your brain with beats and sounds—with anything that can make your soul vibrate. Life is too short for lousy coffee, a bad espresso martini, and, most importantly, mediocre music. Go enjoy some live music in a jazz club, discover new vibes at a record bar or a cigar lounge, and make sure to Shazam that song you don’t know but makes you move… But most importantly, connect the beat with a memory, and those memories with feelings that will stay with you forever. More music, less useless talk.
Stay young (and invincible): It’s a verse from one of the B-sides from Oasis, my favorite band (I’m going to see them twice in a few months—in Tokyo and London, and yes, I’ve got the tickets). This always resonates with me. You’ve got to be yourself. And most importantly, when it comes to recruiting, in this digital age brought on by COVID and the social media-driven youngest generations, it is imperative to stay and feel young to remain credible and functional at work.
I could keep going with this, but I believe it’s a good starting point to refresh and revive The Banking Insider, hoping to be more consistent and present from now on. I’ll be back soon. Stay tuned.
M.
The Banking Insider 