Stop Fighting the Headlines: My Big Picture Reset

In early February, the BLS job numbers dropped and the glowing headlines hit the internet immediately. AP News reported: “Surge of 130,000 US hires last month is a stark contrast to the weak hiring of 2025.”

I took that data with a healthy dose of skepticism—especially after the consistent downward revisions we saw every month last year. But as I read those headlines, my frustration started mounting. The information was in stark contrast to what I am seeing in the Tampa Bay employment market.

Even more important than the BLS numbers was the realization that I was allowing a press release to frustrate me. I was ignoring the daily conversations I have with business owners and candidates right here in our community.

That realization led me to give myself a kick in the pants and back away from the computer.

I needed a reset. So, this month, I’m ditching my normal data-heavy newsletter for some much-needed positivity, a change in perspective for my office, and a few laughs. With all the employment bad news and stress lately, it’s easy to get caught up in the frustration.

I know I did.

Celebrate Your Wins: Ring the Bell!!

We used to have a great habit: every time we made a placement, we would “ring” a silver bell at our front desk. It was a loud reminder that a new job had been secured and we had accomplished something worth celebrating. That one little ring always brought smiles to the office; it was a small reminder of why we do what we do for the businesses in Tampa Bay.

Somewhere during the hiring struggles of the last two years, we lost that tradition. I needed to break the pattern of “just working” and bring back a way for us all to be reminded of the good that we do. So, the bell has made a comeback! When that first ring reverberated through our office, everyone took a moment to smile.

If I am honest, we were lucky. We had a candidate who had just been offered a job ring the bell because they had come back to the office to finalize paperwork. As big as the smiles were among my staff, nobody’s smile matched that of the candidate who was getting a fresh start in a great role. Seeing their sheer joy was the best reminder of why we do what we do. We’ve just been missing it.

Look At the Big Picture

My firm focuses our attention to the Tampa Bay market, specifically temp-to-hire and direct-hire career positions. Because we pride ourselves on finding people and businesses who value long-term connections, turnover is something that bothers us tremendously.

With that tunnel vision—and in this market—it became easy to focus on our turnovers and not our wins. I completely missed the positions that were quietly doing exactly what we hoped they would do: be consistent and successful for our clients. That’s on me. While striving for better results now, I lost sight of the bigger picture.

I was letting my daily emotions run entirely on the losses of a specific week. When a buddy pushed back on my whining and asked how our hiring went for the year, I couldn’t answer. I was so buried in the “now” that I never considered looking at all the placements that have been going well all year. When I finally looked at our annual hiring data, it reframed my emotions. While turnover is an unfortunate attribute of what we do, the candidates who trust my firm have proven to be remarkably stable over the long term. My focus on week-to-week volatility was masking the success my team had over the year because I failed to look at it that way.

“Did They Really Say That?”

If we can’t laugh, we aren’t having fun. Here are a few gems we’ve heard lately in interviews:

• The Dead-End Job: A candidate asked if we had any “dead-end” jobs. Their explanation? “I am overqualified for everything else, so just give me a dead-end job so I can stop worrying.” In 12 years, that was a first.
• The Pre-Check Honesty: “If I come interview with you today, do I need to take a drug test right now too?”I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but… where else do you go with that?
• The CEO Special: We got a phone call from someone saying: “I need to get out of town quickly—I uncovered fraud in my local government. Find me a CEO job and I’ll be there in two days.” While I appreciate the seriousness of their situation, I’m fairly certain a C-suite role isn’t that easy to find.

Bottom Line: Remembering our “Why”

I got into this business to help people find happiness in their work and to help Tampa Bay businesses succeed. Helping a client find a new employee who helps that business grow makes my day. In the struggle of the last few years, I’ve been spending too much time paying attention to the bad news instead of appreciating our wins and the people who trust us.

While it may be a touch late for a New Year’s resolution, I think I just found mine. I need to be better at appreciating the good happening around me and not just focus on the few situations that have some…well…let’s call it…growth opportunities. While I will still be a data nerd—because I love it—I am going to be better at stepping back to look at the bigger picture and celebrating the wins we have. My team is good at what they do, and they deserve a leader who can focus on that rather than the noise in the headlines.