How Early Life Experiences Molded Me Into A Top Technical Recruiter

My story as a technical recruiter is one of resourcefulness, perseverance and overcoming difficult obstacles. I was born and raised in Chicago to two hard working, middle-class, Assyrian (Middle-Eastern Christian) parents (Robert and Alma Sargis) who met at Lake View Presbyterian Church. This is the same church where I was baptized. I am a product of the Chicago public schools including graduating from Mather High School.

One example of my resourcefulness and perseverance was my drive to transform myself from a fat, weak, high school freshman into an excellent athlete during my senior year including making the varsity basketball team. Another example was, during a trip to Los Angeles in 1979 to investigate business schools, a supposed friend failed to pick me up from the airport. Despite a lack of money, I didn’t give up. Instead, I found ways to achieve both of my major goals at the time: 1) working out at Bruce Lee’s dojo in Carson, California and 2) visiting the UCLA’s campus!

I have always been a natural recruiter and innate judge of talent. For example, at North Park College, where I attended my first year of college (before transferring to DePaul to complete my undergraduate education), I uncovered and recruited several top basketball players to help my intramural team almost defeat (lost by one point) the intramural champions of previous year.

Throughout my life I have possessed excellent sensitivity and intuition, which have enabled me to quickly and properly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in others including myself. On the positive side, I am passionate, compassionate, introspective, bright, outgoing, assertive, playful and youthful with a strong sense of adventure. Unfortunately, not all of those traits are natural to me. Instead, due to my life-long drive to improve and reinvent myself, I have willed myself into a more assertive leader able to overcome my weaknesses. For example, I was able to overcame a sever case of dyslexia, which impeded my reading abilities throughout my life, to achieve an MBA at the prestigious Duke University Fuqua School of Business in 1982. Another example occurred in my mid-40’s when I pushed myself to overcome a propensity towards obesity in order to reshape a fat, 244 pound body into a sleek and trim 203 pound one. In the process I became one of the top 5% of performers in the very strenuous and demanding Bulldog Boot Camp. This is a particularly important achievement considering most other top performers were 15 or more years younger than I!

I gained my excellent research abilities and long-term memory skills from my mother, who went back to school to achieve her undergraduate degree at the age of 50! These skills have helped me to overcome my dyslexia and to quickly acquire and retain an understanding of new and difficult fields. For example, I went from no knowledge to professional-level competency in Final Cut Pro (profession-level) video editing at the age of 50. This is versus most others who have difficulty learning video editing at even 18 years of age!My story is one of resourcefulness, perseverance and overcoming difficult obstacles. I was born and raised in Chicago to two hard working, middle-class, Assyrian (Middle-Eastern Christian) parents (Robert and Alma) who met at Lake View Presbyterian Church. This is the same church where I was baptized. I attended Chicago public schools including graduating from Mather High School.

One example of my resourcefulness and perseverance was my drive to transform myself from a fat, weak, high school freshman into an excellent athlete during my senior year including making the varsity basketball team. Another example was, during a trip to Los Angeles in 1979 to investigate business schools, a supposed friend failed to pick me up from the airport. Despite a lack of money, I didn’t give up. Instead, I found ways to achieve both of my major goals at the time: 1) working out at Bruce Lee’s dojo in Carson, California and 2) visiting the UCLA’s campus!

I have always been a natural recruiter and innate judge of talent. For example, at North Park College, where I attended my first year of college (before transferring to DePaul to complete my undergraduate education), I uncovered and recruited several top basketball players to help my intramural team almost defeat (lost by one point) the intramural champions of previous year.