Doing justice to things, putting them on the scale

By Paula Guiñazú, Recruiting Lead

It’s difficult to start this piece of writing without getting excited and having that sensation of butterflies in my stomach when I made the decision to flip the table.

There are people whodecide to make a 180° turn in their lives due to some need or complicated situation, reinvent themselves and start from scratch. But there are others who feel that life doesn’t fulfill them and decide to go another way, even if they have a well-settled working life. This was my case.

I was 18 years old and just got out of high school. My parents’ speech was: “Paula, you must study for a true career, there’s no alternative. No International Relations, Tourism. You’d better choose between Law, Medicine, Architecture or Accounting”.

Oops!

“Not Medicine because seeing blood terrifies me. Not Architecture either, because I don’t see myself making blueprints of buildings and houses. Not Accounting because numbers get me dizzy and I still find it hard to get percentages… everybody knows that”.

Only Law was left… oh well.

I was a teenager who liked to talk my head off (I still do), kind of a fighter for the under-dogs and a fan of Law and Order series… How bad could it be?

Academic stage of the Catholic University of Córdoba, surrounded by the best GPAs of Law School.

More than 14 years have passed since that moment when I decided to dedicate myself to the legal world. An infinite amount of files, hearings, briefs, colleagues, reaching leadership roles and bosses during all those years passed in front of me.

However, something wasn’t right.

Corridors of the Courthouse were a great space to ponder with oneself.

I was having a hard time preparing a brief, and I grumbled more when I had to argue in a hearing. I felt like I was surrounded by conflict all day long… until I started to realize that I really enjoyed going to interviews.

Yeah, totally crazy! Who likes to feel like they’re in a situation of evaluation, adrenaline, where your hands are sweating?

Let me tell you: no one… but me.

But that wasn’t the focus. This went beyond being interviewed or getting the position I was applying for; I wanted to see how people were interviewed, what questions they asked, how they made me feel and what was generated on the other side when they said the magic words “we want you”.

I think I’ve lost count of how many interviews I’ve had in my life. My colleagues would say to me “Pau, have you thought about recruiting? You really like interviewing, chatting and finding people jobs.”

It wasn’t an easy road.

Breaking mandates by saying that Paula, with one of the best GPAs in college, with two postgraduate degrees and a Master’s in Law, was going to do something else (that would make her happier).

“Are you going to store your degree in a drawer? Are you going to start a new profession at the age of 31?”

HELL YES!

As Paulo Coelho said, “the ship is safer when it’s in port, but that’s not what ships were built for.”

And that’s how I started taking several courses from scratch! I was getting trained in this beautiful IT world and I became a LinkedIn fanatic (You can find me scrolling through LinkedIn late at night, instead of being on Instagram or Tik tok).

Today, I’m proud to say that I’m the leader in PSh’s Recruiting department. Helping people find their ideal job is my driving force; there’s nothing more rewarding than receiving a message that says: “Pau, thank you for the opportunity!”, “thank you for helping me find this job!”, “thank you for making me feel comfortable in the process”, “thank you for your feedback”, “thanks for allowing me to be part of this great family that is PSh!”.

This is my day to day life. This is what I’m passionate about!

I look back and think that I was able to overcome those family and social mandates, I was able to do more than what my head imagined, I dared to question, to change my destiny, to start from scratch and go for what I knew would make me happy.

Life is about putting yourself above all else. If flipping the table means being happy, then do it… why not?

I’ll always be a lawyer, but TODAY I choose to be a Recruiter (: