It Started with Paying Attention

When I first started in staffing, I’ll be honest, I thought the job was mostly about speed. How fast can you get the right resume to the right person. And speed does matter, especially when a hiring manager has been short-staffed for weeks and the pressure is building.

But over time I noticed something. The hiring managers who kept coming back to me weren’t necessarily the ones where I’d moved the fastest. They were the ones where I’d asked a question that went a little beyond the job description. Things like, “What’s going on in your team right now outside of this hire?” or “What would make this placement really successful six months from now, not just on paper?”

Those questions came from curiosity more than anything. But the conversations that followed gave me something I hadn’t expected. They gave me context. And once I had context, everything about how I worked shifted.

The science that surprised me

I came across some research a while back that put words to what I’d been experiencing. A team at the University of Michigan ran a series of studies looking at what actually drives satisfaction in relationships, and they found that “feeling known” was one of the strongest predictors. Not knowing the other person well, but feeling like the other person knows you. They even found that when someone forgot a detail about a participant, the drop in how that person felt about the relationship was sharper than if the roles were reversed.

That clicked for me immediately. Because in my work, when a hiring manager shares something about their team and I remember it months later without needing to be told again, I can see the shift. It’s subtle, but it’s there. They relax a little. They open up more. The whole dynamic changes.

There’s also a neurochemical layer to this that I think is worth mentioning. Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist at Claremont Graduate University, studied what happens in the brain when people feel genuinely cared for. His research, which Harvard Business Review published, found that those experiences trigger oxytocin, the same chemical tied to empathy and collaboration. He actually identified caring, as in the intentional building of relationships, as one of eight core building blocks of trust. I didn’t know any of that when I started working this way, but it makes a lot of sense looking back.

Neha

I can’t write about this without talking about our CEO, Neha Verma, because a lot of what I’ve learned about connection I’ve learned from watching her.

Neha listens in a way that’s hard to describe if you haven’t experienced it. There’s no ego in it. No agenda. She’ll ask you something and then just be there with your answer, fully. Not formulating her response, not redirecting. Just present.

I remember the first time I noticed it and thought, this is what it feels like when someone actually cares what you have to say. It sounds simple but it’s honestly rare, and when you’re on the receiving end of it, it changes how open you’re willing to be.

That taught me something I think about all the time now. The way you make someone feel in the first few minutes of a conversation sets the tone for the entire relationship. Neha does that naturally, and it’s shaped the culture at Zenex in a way that I’m really proud to be part of.

What it looks like day to day

I work with hiring managers in healthcare and IT, and even though those worlds look nothing alike, the thing they share is that every hire matters. The right person changes the feel of a team. The wrong one can quietly unravel months of good work.

So I try to hold onto what people share with me. Not just the role requirements but the stuff around it. If someone mentions their team has been through a rough stretch, that stays with me. It shapes who I recommend and how I frame the conversation.

I also check in when there’s nothing on the table. No role to fill, no agenda. Just a quick “how’s the team settling in?” or “how did that new starter go?” I’ve found that those conversations, the ones with nothing attached to them, are the ones that build the most trust over time.

Something I’m really proud of is that more than 90% of our business at Zenex comes from referrals. That didn’t happen by accident. It comes from the way Neha has always run things, with this quiet insistence that people should walk away from every interaction feeling like they actually mattered. And I think they do. That’s why they come back, and that’s why they tell other people about us.

If you’re a hiring manager in healthcare or IT and you’ve been looking for a staffing partner who actually wants to understand your world, I’d love to have a conversation. You can find me through Zenex Partners.