I’m going to give the current president of Burger King a lot of credit. If you aren’t following what they are doing on social media (especially TikTok) you are missing out. It’s been an absolute class on how a legacy company can approach a new social outlet and make it work. So, like any good artist, I’m going to borrow an idea he posted and make it applicable to our industry.

At Atlas, we make hundreds of placements and extensions every month. But the truth is what we actually do is make one unique placement, hundreds of times per month. Every traveler we work with starts the same way. A conversation or a question. Someone trying to figure out where the next step in their career might take them. A recruiter trying to understand what matters most to that person; location, unit, schedule, pay, adventure, stability. And sometimes all the above!

From the outside, a staffing agency like Atlas can look like a numbers business. The talking heads that follow the industry and report on it only seem interested in bill rates, margin pressure, bill/pay spreads, fill rates, submittals, contracts and extensions. The spreadsheets tell a story about volume. But the real work with us is much smaller and much more personal than that.

It is one traveling healthcare professional at a time. A unique set of goals. Changing life situations. A career path that is rarely as simple as a job description or a facility request. Behind every contract is someone making a decision about where they will spend the next thirteen weeks of their life. A personal decision that can either reinforce why they chose to travel in the first place or make them question it. That is the work. Work that has never changed in our industry. The process repeats itself hundreds of times each month, but the mindset stays the same. Treat every placement like it is the only one that matters. Because to the traveling healthcare professional on the other side of that decision, it is.

So yes, the numbers say we make hundreds of placements and extensions every month. But what we really do is make one placement, hundreds of times per month, that is unique and personal to that individual. And that mindset is what keeps the work human. Or as we like to call it, Unapologetically Human.