Cindy Loggins

Good Morning or Good Evening, Wherever You Are

"Good morning or good evening, wherever you are." It is the sort of greeting only a certain kind of practitioner reaches for: someone who long ago stopped assuming that the person on the other end of the conversation is living in the same hour she is. There is no performance in it. It is simply the habit of a career spent talking to people scattered across a map, and it does a quiet piece of work at the top of every conversation by putting the other person at ease before anything of substance begins.

Candidates notice these things, even when they cannot name them. The tone of a first exchange sets the tone of everything after it, and warmth extended before it has been earned tends to be repaid. In an industry that spends a great deal of energy on funnels and conversion rates, the durable advantage often turns out to be much simpler: being pleasant, being clear, and being genuinely willing to meet someone where they are.

A Zoom Gal in a Fragmented World

"I'm a Zoom gal," Loggins says, with the cheerful directness of someone who has decided that pretending otherwise would waste everyone's time. It is a small confession that lands as refreshing candor. Modern talent acquisition professionals are expected to be fluent across an ever-expanding set of platforms, moving between one company's video tool and another's chat client and a third's calendar system, sometimes several times in a single morning. Most people quietly have a favorite. Few say so out loud.

That willingness to be plain about her preferences, while remaining completely accommodating about everyone else's, is characteristic. She flexes where flexing costs nothing and says what she thinks where it saves time. The result is a professional who is easy to work with and difficult to misread.

Recognized Before, and Again

This is not the first year Loggins has been put forward for recognition in her field. She was nominated the previous year by a separate organization honoring talent professionals, and she keeps an informed eye on the wider ecosystem of groups doing similar work, including the Higher organization, which also recognizes people in talent. She spells it out when she mentions it, H-I-G-H-E-R, because she knows how easily the names in this space blur together.

That awareness is itself a signal. Practitioners who treat recruiting as a temporary stop do not pay attention to who is trying to elevate the craft or why. People who consider talent acquisition a discipline, with standards and peers worth learning from, do. Being nominated more than once, by more than one body, is the clearest measure available of how Loggins is regarded by the people who understand the work from the inside.

The Unglamorous Virtues

Talent acquisition does not reward showmanship for long. It rewards a narrow and largely invisible set of habits: preparation, punctuality, follow through, a memory for detail, and the patience to keep an early start when the other side of the conversation cannot do it any other way. None of it photographs well. All of it compounds. Over a long career it produces the only currency that matters in this profession, which is a reputation that arrives ahead of you.

Loggins is also frequently on the move, with stretches of travel folded into the rhythm of her year, and she manages the work around them without drama. She is quick to thank people. She signs off by wishing them a good weekend, and means it. In a business built on first impressions, she has spent a career making the last impression just as good, which may be the most underrated skill in hiring and is unmistakably hers.