You know the feeling – the moment when your candidate ghosts you right before the final interview, when a great client stops returning your calls, or your usually reliable inbound leads unexpectedly stop. We stare at our screens, knowing we need to take action, but feeling oddly frozen in place. But you can’t act. Not after last week’s ghost, or the month before’s last-minute counter-offer acceptance. This isn’t just a bad day or a temporary slump.It’s the state of being stuck.

The fascinating thing about being stuck isn’t the state itself, it’s how we all experience it in such similar ways. Your morning starts with good intentions. You’ll definitely make your cold BD calls today, you’ll finally get the blog post up the website, you’re return all the calls you’ve been avoiding. But then you find yourself checking LinkedIn for the fifth time in an hour, or reorganizing your ATS instead of using it. Meanwhile, the nagging voice in your head gets louder. So many of us have asked the question… “Was that the last placement I’ll ever make?”

The reality is being stuck isn’t about lack of knowledge or capability. In fact, most recruiters who find themselves in this position are actually quite experienced. Like the Dunning Kruger effect – meanwhile the least experienced think they know it all. Instead, it often stems from a complex interplay of fear, momentum-breaking experiences, and the particular challenges of our profession.

When a candidate you’ve nurtured through a three-month process suddenly accepts a counteroffer, it’s not just about losing a placement; it’s about the subtle way such experiences can make us hesitate before fully investing in the next opportunity. It can be like a build-up of recruiting trauma. The longer you’ve been doing this, the more you realize how little you can control.

Each setback leaves a tiny scar- invisible but cumulative. That candidate who accepted another offer is a little hit to your ego. That’s not just a lost deal, it’s a small voice whispering ‘better double-check’ in every similar situation moving forward. (Spoiler: the voice should be screaming ‘you got this!’)

There is a path forward, and the same patterns trapping us can also point the way out. Consider how differently we operate when we’re in an upcycle or a flow state. You know intuitively which client to call, candidate conversations feel effortless, and even setbacks feel manageable rather than catastrophic. The key isn’t to avoid getting stuck (that’s impossible in our profession), but to develop better strategies for breaking free.

Start with “micro-momentum.” Instead of trying to solve everything at once, focus on one small action to create forward movement. Maybe it’s reaching out to a Known Contact who always gives you good referrals, even if you don’t have a current role for them. Send that check-in email to the client who ghosted you three months ago. Update one job description you’ve been procrastinating on. Call that candidate who’s ‘probably too senior’ for your role. Success in recruiting isn’t built on grand gestures – it’s built on small, brave actions taken consistently. Small actions aren’t about immediate results; they’re about breaking the paralysis keeping us stuck.

Get comfortable with uncertainty. We’ll perpetually feel stuck until we stop trying to create perfect certainty in a fundamentally uncertain process. We wait to reach out to a potential client until the pitch is perfect, or we hesitate to present a candidate because we’re not 100% sure they’re interested. But what if we started seeing uncertainty as a natural part of our process rather than an obstacle to it? What if we lowered our standards to increase our fees?

When I’m feeling overwhelmed by life and worry about what can go wrong, it helps me to ask myself, “What’s the next logical step here?” If a candidate goes quiet, the next logical step might be a simple check-in text. If a client’s requirements seem impossible to meet, the next logical step might be a conversation about market realities.

Remember, being stuck isn’t a sign something’s wrong – it’s a normal part of any significant professional endeavor. What separates successful recruiters isn’t that they never get stuck, it’s that they’ve learned to recognize it sooner and have developed personal strategies for regaining momentum.

Every placement you’ve ever made started with a single action. One call, one email, one event, one referral, one conversation. The way out of being stuck always begins the same way. Action.

The beauty of recruiting is that it only takes one conversation/match/deal/etc, to shift your entire momentum. And we get lots of opportunities. Your next big placement isn’t hiding in your LinkedIn feed or your email inbox. It’s waiting on the other side of action. The question isn’t whether you’ll get stuck again (you will), but how quickly you can recognize it and take that first small step toward momentum.