About a year ago, one of us was out to dinner at one of our favorite local haunts. Over time, there was a bartender we had interacted with enough to notice a pattern – he handled a busy room with composure, communicated easily with people he had just met, and had a natural ability to read situations and adjust. At one point during the evening, the phone rang. He went over and picked it up, greeted the caller warmly, took notes, and smiled through the whole thing. We weren’t sure if it was his job to answer the phone. But no one was around, so he did. Having the awareness to see what needs to be done and just doing it is a valuable skill.
Around the same time, we were looking to expand our business development team. On paper, those two things weren’t connected. In practice, they were directly aligned, because what we were actually hiring for wasn’t a background, it was a set of behaviors. At a certain point, observation turned into action. A business card was handed over, which led to a conversation, then a more formal interview process, and ultimately an offer. This individual is now a core part of our team. And if you look at the path that led there, it follows a much more familiar framework than it might seem at first glance. It started with noticing something specific, validating it through conversation and interviews, and then making a decision with conviction.
It’s easy to frame stories like that as luck, or to chalk them up to something like Serendipity, or being at the right place at the right time. But that framing misses the more useful takeaway. Out of everyone in that environment, something stood out, and someone paid attention to it. That’s not random, that’s pattern recognition.
Most hiring strategies today are built around structured, reactive processes. You define a need, open a role, evaluate applicants, and make a decision from the pool in front of you. That system works, and it’s needed to scale, but it’s inherently limited to people who have already decided to raise their hand. It doesn’t account for the people who are already demonstrating the exact qualities you’re looking for, just in a different environment. Those signals show up everywhere, at a restaurant, on a flight, in a client interaction, or at a conference, and in many cases, they offer a clearer view of how someone actually operates than a polished interview ever will.
The takeaway isn’t that serendipity should replace structure, or that you should hire every great person you meet in passing. Our whole industry wouldn’t exist if that were a sustainable model. It’s that some of the best “tenbaggers” start the same way. You notice something before it’s obvious, you take the time to validate it, and you act on it with intent.
If you’re hiring, that means widening your aperture and paying closer attention to how people show up outside of formal processes. If you’re early in your career, it’s a reminder that opportunities don’t only come from applications, but from how you show up in everyday interactions.
Hiring doesn’t just happen when a role is posted online. It’s happening all the time.
The question is whether you’re paying attention.
Until next time,
Your Spherion WI & Northern IL team