Lauren Springer

Last week, my colleague Leslie Swisher and I spent a few days with the good folks at The RecruiterU talking about "Mindset." Here's my number one takeaway:  💡 If you don't give a sh*t, neither will they. 😒 If you have disdain for a project. If you don't like your client. If you believe there are "no good candidates out there." 🥺 Your team won't be productive. Your client will drop you. And no one will want to work for you. Intention and energy matter just as much, if not more, than words and actions. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

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I have been super busy preparing preparing for an ATS transition to better support our hiring strategy...one that is driven by AI. This has me building out interview plans. Unpopular opinion: Most hiring teams are wildly underprepared for interviews. We expect candidates to research the company, study the role, rehearse their stories, and show up polished. Meanwhile, interviewers sometimes show up with… – No clear evaluation criteria – Overlapping questions – Gut-feel scorecards – And 10 minutes spent skimming the resume beforehand That’s not a hiring strategy. That’s improvisation. When interview teams aren’t aligned, three things happen: 1️⃣ Strong candidates get inconsistent signals 2️⃣ Decisions turn into opinion debates 3️⃣ “Culture fit” becomes a catch-all for bias Preparation doesn’t mean rigid scripts. It means clarity. ✔ What does great actually look like? Here come the ICPs! ✔ What are we testing in this interview? ✔ What evidence would change our mind? ✔ Who owns the final decision — and based on what? The best hiring processes I’ve seen treat interviewer prep as seriously as candidate prep. Because here’s the truth: Candidates are evaluating you just as hard as you’re evaluating them. If your team can’t articulate the role, the expectations, and what success looks like… top talent notices. Great hiring isn’t luck. It’s discipline. Curious — how much prep does your hiring team actually do before interviews?

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The Chick-fil-A Manifesto: What Service and Value Should Mean in Staffing Across multiple conversations with contingent workforce leaders this month, a familiar frustration trend emerged: the staffing industry has become commoditized. Across the entire ecosystem, suppliers, MSPs, VMSs, HR Tech, and the clients they serve have found ever-more-creative ways to devalue ourselves. Vendors underbid, clients squeeze at the expense of quality, candidates are ghosted, and hiring managers are stuck navigating a system that feels more like a transaction machine than a talent solution. Here’s a radical thought: what if we looked to Chick-fil-A as the model to improve? Yes, the chicken place. Chick-fil-A generates 2x the revenue and profit per location than any other fast-food chain and they are closed on Sundays!! Why? Not because their prices are lowest, but because their experience is exceptional. In the early 2000s, they hired The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. consultants to train their teams. The “My pleasure” became more than a tagline; it was a cultural shift. They accept just 0.5% of franchise applicants, 10x more selective than Harvard. They invest in people and service, and it pays. Meanwhile, much of the staffing industry has done the opposite. We’ve raced to the bottom, cut costs, automated relationships, and measured success in fill rates and spend, not outcomes or experience. We’ve made contingent labor feel, frankly, disposable. There is an opportunity here, not just for Ursus, Inc. , but our entire industry. What if we reimagined our industry around value and experience, not just cost? What if our recruiters were trained like hospitality pros, focused on respect, response time, and true partnership? What if hiring managers got more than just resumes, and contingent workers felt pride, not disconnection? For procurement and program owners, this is your moment too. Your mandate and your responsibility are bigger than just compliance and cost containment. You shape and curate how your brand is experienced by thousands of workers who aren’t on your payroll but are part of your team. In today’s fiercely competitive market, experience drives retention, and reputation is currency. Do your contingent workers feel part of something great, or just another number in the system? You get what you pay for. But more importantly, you keep what you value. We don’t have to be the fast food of professional services. We can choose to be the Chick-fil-A. It starts with redefining value: from transactions to trust, from price to partnership, from “filling seats” to fueling teams. Service isn’t a commodity. Talent isn’t a transaction. It’s our pleasure. Chick-fil-A Restaurants #Staffing #ContingentWork

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