Cory Anderson

An Operator Who Learned the Business From Every Angle

Anderson's career began in customer service and operations management before shifting to sales. Straight out of college he entered the training and development program at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, an environment that turned out managers the way other companies turn out spreadsheets. There he learned how to manage people, how to develop internal talent, and got his first exposure to hiring. From Enterprise he moved into outside sales at Paychex and then Cintas, two more organizations known for rigorous training programs.

"I had some really strong training and development programs from early on in my career," he says, and the compounding effect is visible in how he leads now. Those years taught him how to train other people, how to help them grow, how to take care of customers, and how to sell. Every one of those muscles turned out to be load-bearing in staffing.

A former Enterprise manager eventually recruited him to Ameri-Force. Anderson joined on the operations side, serving as the communicator with the client, owning delivery, and overseeing growth in the company's manufacturing division, which at the time was a new industry for the firm. He sat squarely between the client and the recruiters, which meant learning to translate in both directions and building a working understanding of what recruiters actually need to succeed. He advanced to Director of Operations, then was moved over to lead sales and recruiting together. The talent development piece, he says, has come more into play than ever. "It's been a lot of fun to manage this team."

Humans Doing Human Things

At the SIA conference in Austin last March, Anderson counted roughly two out of every three vendors pitching AI. He watched the room split into two camps: those who fear AI will take jobs, and those planting a flag against it out of pure resistance. He thinks both are wrong.

The middle ground he advocates is disciplined rather than mushy. Ameri-Force's CEO wrote an article on humans doing human things, a theme that also surfaced at SIA, and it has become the company's operating mantra. Three responsibilities stay human. Judgment: gather every fact you can, but a person makes the decision. Connection: the ability to relate to a candidate, which Anderson considers the single most important quality in his recruiters. And closing: moving the process forward, whether that is a candidate accepting a job or a customer signing a contract. Everything else is fair game. "Can AI take things off our plate so that our humans can handle these three things more intentionally and more consistently?" That is the question he applies to every tool.

He practices what he prescribes. Claude runs in the background on his machine sourcing potential prospects while he works, and AI is always on across his leadership team. His own conversion came from something entirely unglamorous: sitting down to compose an internal email in exactly the right format, then realizing a model could produce it in a fraction of the time. That first draft saved him fifteen minutes of writing and re-editing, and he never went back.

The Long Game in Staffing

Asked what he tells people entering the industry, Anderson reaches for a line from a frequent contributor to the American Staffing Association: whether you are going to be in this industry for 10 years, 20 years or 30 years, you are going to have success here.

Anderson has quoted it to his own team more than once. His read is that hiring needs are not going away, that the retirement data alone guarantees demand, and that a recruiting career remains a durable and well-compensated one. There will be retoolings and adjustments, he concedes, and he expects them. But he sees particular momentum in shipbuilding, one of Ameri-Force's core markets and an industry showing real growth and real potential.

It is a characteristically grounded position from a leader who came to recruiting sideways, learned it from the people who knew it best, and now spends his days making sure they have room to do the parts of the work only humans can do.