Today we’d like to introduce you to Nasser.
Hi Nasser, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My path has been anything but linear — this is probably my third or fourth career — and looking back, that “windy” journey is exactly what prepared me to build a business.
I started my career in the Middle East studying hospitality, and early on I learned what great service really means: anticipating needs, staying calm under pressure, and caring about the experience on the other side of the table.
In 2006, I moved to Canada to work as a chef for a restaurant group. Not long after, the company went bankrupt — which forced me to pivot quickly. I went back to school, completed a post-graduate program in hospitality, and rebuilt my career in hotel operations. Over the years, I worked with major brands including Fairmont, Hyatt, Hilton, and Westin.
While working full-time as a Director of Food & Beverage at the Westin Edmonton, I earned my EMBA from Cornell University — a dream I carried with me from my days living in Jordan — and it took nearly 17 years to make it real. That season of my life shaped me: balancing a demanding leadership role with school taught me discipline, structure, and resilience, and it sharpened how I think about building and running high-performing teams day after day.
From there, I made an unconventional jump into tech — transitioning straight into a Senior Product Manager role at Amazon in Seattle. From there, I worked with multiple startups and wrapped up that chapter at Warner Bros. Discovery. Across hospitality and tech, the common thread was building teams, solving problems, and delivering results in fast-moving environments.
Even while my career was progressing, I always had the desire to build something of my own. I eventually realized there would never be a “perfect time” to start a business — you either keep planning or you commit. So I pulled the trigger. I evaluated roughly a dozen business concepts and kept coming back to staffing because it sits at the intersection of what I care about most: people, performance, and business outcomes.
My partner had 10+ years of staffing experience, and we decided a franchise model made sense because I valued proven systems and support while still building something locally. We evaluated multiple staffing franchises and chose Spherion because it offered the strongest brand credibility, world-class operational support, and the flexibility to build deep relationships in our local market while running the business with high standards.
As we started growing, I noticed a real gap between what recruiting agencies often deliver and what clients actually need to make confident hiring decisions. I don’t believe in the phrase “trust me” — to me, “trust me” means “show me.” That’s one of the reasons I built RiSE, a proprietary recruiting and candidate-evaluation system used exclusively by our Atlanta office. RiSE helps us highlight a candidate’s real, role-relevant skills with clear evidence, create more consistent evaluations, and bridge the gap between resumes, interviews, and what the hiring manager needs to see to say “yes.”
Today, we’re building Spherion Greater Atlanta with a simple goal: raise the standard for hiring in our community through strong relationships, disciplined execution, and smarter systems.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not at all — and I don’t think anything worth building ever is.
My dad used to say I’m one of the luckiest and unluckiest people he’s met. I always get where I need to go, but never in a straight line — I usually have to take the long way. I joke that I don’t buy lottery tickets because I’ll never win the big prize. But I do believe I’ll earn my “big win” by building something real through consistency and hard work.
From a business standpoint, the timing has been a challenge. The economy has been rocky since we opened in late 2023, and hiring demand has been uneven — some sectors slowed down while others stayed competitive. That volatility forced us to be disciplined with budgets, stay flexible, and focus on the right clients and roles instead of chasing everything.
The biggest hurdle early on was credibility. I learned quickly that companies don’t trust businesses — they trust people. In staffing, you’re asking a company to rely on you for one of the most important parts of their operation: their team. We had to earn that trust from scratch through responsiveness, honesty, and results — and by building our reputation in the community one client partnership and relationship at a time. Once that trust started compounding, the business began to grow — still not in a straight line, but forward.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Spherion Greater Atlanta?
Spherion Staffing Greater Atlanta helps companies hire across direct placements, temporary contractors, and temp-to-hire models, but what we really do is solve the “quality problem” in hiring: too many resumes, not enough clarity, and multiple expensive mismatches.
We specialize in roles where hiring managers can’t afford to get it wrong — especially engineering, project management, accounting/finance, and operational leadership, along with growing support for temp and temp-to-hire teams across warehouses, facilities, and call centers. Our approach is consultative and structured: we don’t just take an order; we qualify the role, align on expectations, and build a recruiting plan that matches the current and very real market.
What sets us apart is how we combine high-touch service with a modern internal system we built called RiSE. RiSE is our quality engine- it helps us evaluate candidates more consistently and present stronger, clearer submissions to clients. Instead of relying on “gut feel” or generic screening, we use RiSE to:
– Standardize screening so every candidate is evaluated against the same requirements
– Analyze resumes and interview notes/transcripts to identify strengths, gaps, and risk areas early
– Create cleaner candidate summaries that highlight the most relevant evidence as well as our recruiters’ interview questions (not fluff)
– Improve match accuracy so clients spend less time interviewing and more time hiring the right person
We’re most proud that our brand is becoming known for precision and accountability. We’d rather submit fewer candidates with stronger alignment than flood a client with options. We’re direct about what’s realistic, we communicate fast, and we treat hiring like a business-critical process — because it is.
What I want readers to know is simple: we’re building a staffing firm that raises the bar on quality. Our goal is to make hiring easier for companies and more fair for candidates by using better structure, better communication, and better tools– and RiSE is a big part of how we keep improving that standard.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
AI is reshaping recruiting and staffing over the next 5 to 10 years- not just how we source candidates, but how companies define roles and how people build careers. The biggest shift is that we’ll all need to take reskilling more seriously- for ourselves, for our teams, and for the workforce overall, because the pace of change is accelerating.
At the same time, we’re seeing a growing shortage of specialized skilled talent, and I don’t just mean technicians. I mean hard-to-replace experience like construction project managers with niche backgrounds- steel fabrication, estimating, and other specialized operational leadership roles. We’ve built a lot of talent pipelines in IT and general tech, but in construction and engineering there’s a real gap, and it’s getting more visible as projects become more complex.
A third trend is what’s happening at the senior end of tech. As companies adopt AI and rethink org structures, we’re seeing more experienced leaders displaced or reshuffled. That will change what hiring looks like, what skills get valued, and how talent moves between industries.
The one thing I’m certain about is this: change is here and it’s moving fast. The companies that win will be the ones that adapt early- investing in skills, moving faster in hiring, and using technology to improve decisions without losing the human judgment piece. Here in the regional Atlanta area, myself and my Spherion team is ready to support this change + growth.
Contact Info:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nassernammari/
- Other: nassernammari@spherion.com
