The Staffing Playbook Podcast, Powered by YES

Most staffing firms don't have a sales problem. They have a system problem. That's the one-line version of Ep. 84 of The Staffing Playbook, and my guest has spent the last ten years diagnosing that difference inside staffing firms. Shad Tidler of Lushin, a Sandler-powered sales training firm out of Indianapolis, brought a framework with him: the Four S's of Sales Growth — Strategy, Structure, Staf...

The staffing industry is growing for the first time in three years. On Wednesday, the Fed raised rates for the first time in three years. Same week. That's the whole episode. A solo briefing, recorded Wednesday afternoon after the decision, on what it means to be recovering straight into a rate hike — if you run a desk, a branch, or a book of business. What's in it: → SIA tripled its 2026 forecast...

He stood up in a room full of staffing leaders who'd spent all day saying AI is the future of this industry, and asked two questions: "How many of you in this room are technologists?" "And where are your CTOs?" Nobody raised a hand. That silence is the whole episode. Daniel Mastropolo runs a large staffing firm with about 20 people and no office — the #1 fastest-growing staffing company in the cou...

Payrolls went negative in July. Temporary help went up. Not by much — 3,400 jobs. But that number did something no temp help print has done in 45 months. It put this industry into year-over-year growth for the first time since October 2022. Same week, the ISM manufacturing employment index crossed 50 for the first time in 33 months. Two multi-year losing streaks broke in the same seven days. Both...

Waiting for the staffing market to "bounce back" has quietly become a strategy. It might also be the wrong one. What if 2022 was the peak — and we don't get back to it? That's the question at the center of the next episode of The Staffing Playbook, and I brought on the one person with the data to actually answer it: Eric Gregg, co-founder and CX strategist at ClearlyRated. Eric has spent two decad...

Three weeks ago, US staffing hours printed down 2%. Commercial, down 4. The word "stall" started showing up in headlines. The Staffing Playbook Podcast, Powered by YES (https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-staffing-playbook-podcast/) Last Tuesday, the same indicator printed up 11%. Industrial — up 19%. Here's the thing: both numbers had a holiday in them. Ep. 80 of The Staffing Playbook is about t...

Last week, staffing-industry confidence hit its highest level since the pandemic.   The same week, the June jobs report landed at 57,000 — less than half what Wall Street expected, and the weakest month of hiring since winter.   Both are true. That contradiction is the whole episode.   Thursday I'm going live with a news-and-trends breakdown — the headlines that actually matter if you run a desk,...

Here's a number that should make every staffing leader uncomfortable: 0.6%. That's what the average staffing firm spends on marketing as a percentage of revenue. We spend three times more on rent than we do telling our own story to the market. The B2B companies we compete with for budget? They spend 9–10%. That's a 15x gap. And here's the part that stings. Three straight down years. And when Bullh...

An accountant who's never written a line of code just matched a software engineer at coding — within 7 points. That's not a typo. Anthropic studied 400,000 sessions of people working with AI agents, and the credential we've screened for, for decades, barely predicted who succeeded. What predicted it? Whether the person understood the problem well enough to know when the machine was wrong. Not the...

Everyone keeps saying the same thing in staffing right now: “Add value.” “Be a trusted advisor.” “Stop competing on price.” I agree with the message. But I’m tired of the buzzwords. The real question is: what does value actually look like when every staffing firm has access to the same tools, the same AI, the same ATS, and the same automation? That’s what I’m digging into with Kim Henderson, MBA,...

The hardest jobs might just be the safest jobs. In Episode 75 of The Staffing Playbook Podcast, Powered by YES , I’m breaking down what the latest staffing trends are telling us right now. Industrial staffing is showing signs of life, but let’s be honest — “up” doesn’t automatically mean “booming.” After one of the toughest stretches our industry has seen in years, the firms that are winning are n...

Most firms rolled out AI to 50 recruiters on a Monday. By Friday, they're using it to clean up emails. That's not adoption. That's an expensive mailing list. New episode of The Staffing Playbook — Part 2 with Jason Alexander of ChiefAI. He scaled staffing companies to $100M before he ever built an AI roadmap, so he knows the difference between buying a tool and actually using it. The frame: giving...

Travel agents in 2001 still had full calendars. Their managers were happy. Their numbers looked fine. The hollowing-out had already started — they just couldn't see it from the inside. When the next downturn hit, the role got restacked overnight. That's the shape of what's happening in staffing right now. Stable on the surface. Foundation already changing underneath. In Ep. 73 of The Staffing Play...

Everyone in staffing is talking about AI. Almost nobody is looking at the actual data. I spent the last two weeks pulling numbers from SIA, ASA, Bullhorn's GRID report, and Stanford's Digital Economy Lab. What I found was a story that neither the optimists nor the doomsayers are telling. The staffing industry did $184 billion in US revenue in 2024. Then 2025 hit — temp employment dropped 8.5%. Rev...

The staffing firms winning right now aren't making more calls — they're making better ones. And the ones falling behind? They don't have a sales problem. They have a control problem. In Episode 71, I sat down with two industry heavyweights to break down exactly where deals die — and what to fix first: Jamie Lupo — 20+ years in staffing, 18 at LHH where she rose to VP of Strategy. She rebuilt flatl...

Most staffing firms don't have an AI problem. They have a utilization problem. They're buying tools they never fully implement. Stacking subscriptions nobody uses. Chasing the next shiny platform before they've squeezed value out of what's already on the shelf. My next guest lived this firsthand. Jason Alexander was the #1 sales rep globally at Robert Half. He co-founded and scaled BANKW Staffing...

We’re back with a new episode of The Staffing Playbook Podcast: Ep. 69 | The Stalled Labor Market: Why 2026 Rewards Execution, Not Hustle On March 20 at 1:00 PM MDT, I’ll be joined by David Wilson from "The Ring of Hire Show" for a timely conversation on what’s really happening in the labor market right now. A lot of leaders are still waiting for the market to “turn.”  I don’t think waiting is the...

🎙️ Episode 68 of The Staffing Playbook Podcast is LIVE AI & Change: Why Most Staffing Firms Are Failing at Both 🗓 March 5, 2026 ⏰ 1:00 PM MDT 🎤 Guest: Lauren B. Jones 🐐 In this episode, I sit down with Lauren Jones, Founder & CEO of Leap Advisory Partners — a true force in workforce innovation and digital transformation Lauren doesn’t sugarcoat it. We talk about: Why buying AI tools doe...

There’s a LOT of noise around AI in staffing right now. Most of it sounds impressive. Very little of it actually moves the needle. That’s why I sat down with Pankaj Jindal, Co-Founder of Sense, someone who’s been building AI inside staffing long before it became a buzzword. This episode cuts straight through the hype and gets into: ✅ Why AI should augment recruiters, not replace them ✅ The diffe...

Scaling a staffing firm in 2026 isn’t about working harder. It’s about building the right operating system.   On the next episode of The Staffing Playbook Podcast, I’m joined by Matt Buffington, CEO & Founder of KinISO, to break down the 3 pillars every staffing leader must master to scale profitably in today’s market: ✔️ Sales ✔️ Service / Operations ✔️ Recruiting   Matt has spent 15+ years a...

🎙️ The State of Staffing 2026 — Live Roundtable The Staffing Playbook Podcast, Powered by YES 📅 January 22  ⏰ 1:00 PM MDT The staffing industry isn’t “changing.”  It’s already changed. In this live roundtable, we cut through the noise and talk honestly about what staffing leaders are walking into in 2026—and what actually matters if you want to win. Tom Erb & Mark Winter go head to head in t...

End-of-Year Episode of The Staffing Playbook We pulled the best moments from our 2025 guests—the insights that actually mattered, the ones that moved the needle, and the lessons staffing leaders need as we head into 2026. No hype. No recycled talking points. Just real strategies around leadership, sales, operations, and building teams that win in a tougher, more competitive market. If you’re runni...

Most people in leadership roles were never taught how to lead — they were promoted, handed a title, and expected to figure it out. But real leadership? The kind people willingly follow? That takes intention, skill, and self-awareness. This week on The Staffing Playbook Podcast, Powered by YES, we’re bringing in someone who has lived it, coached it, and built a career on transforming teams: 🎙 Guest...

If you think marketing in staffing is tough today… 2026 is about to raise the bar. AI, content velocity, buyer attention spans, and the shift to experience-driven branding are rewriting the rules — and we’re bringing in two people who don’t just talk marketing… they build it.   🎙 The Staffing Playbook Podcast Hosted by Steven Farrell & Geneviève Bourgeois 💡 Guest Experts: Mike Bradbury– the c...

“Why the Year 2026 Will Be the Year of the Customer.” If you’re in staffing or recruiting, you already feel it — 2026 is shaping up to be a completely different kind of year. Clients want more clarity, more partnership, and a lot less chaos. Recruiters are evolving fast. And AI is redefining what “great service” even means. In this upcoming episode, Geneviève Bourgeois and I break down: 🔹 The rea...