Log on to LinkedIn on any given day and you’ll see a number of folks opining on what ATS to buy, AI transformation, the never ending case for L&D, and new vendors emerging into the expanding market seemingly out of nowhere.1

But once you tune your feed a bit and see beyond the memes, bad resume advice, and the same viral tropes, you’ll discover a corner of the recruiting internet that’s full of data, intelligence, and provoking, helpful perspective forged from years in the industry, with a renewing curiosity for this wonderful world of work we call HR tech.

That’s where the analysts hang out, and well, publish, of course. Because that’s what they do. And George Larocque is one of the greats. Before I share more about George, let me say that he is a really big deal in the world of HR Tech. And one of the kindest folks you’ll ever come across. Lately I’ve been reflecting on what it means to be a steward of the industry, and George models that. If you’ve found yourself in Vegas at a conference, most notably, HR Tech, you’ve probably seen George’s smiling face as he’s ushered through the Mandalay Bay. Hands down, George is one of the busiest in the game. And he’s always been generous to me in those hallway “hellos” that feel like a blur. So George, thank you for taking me and this next generation under your wing through your thought leadership and time, and getting to know us. Despite how opinionated we [I] may be.

George is the founder and principal analyst of WorkTech, an advisory and market intelligence firm focused on HR technology and the future of work. He has spent more than 25 years across the HCM industry as a talent acquisition and HR practitioner, technology executive, market analyst, advisor, and investor. His work sits at the intersection of HR technology, venture capital, M&A, go-to-market strategy, and the changing economics of work. Through WorkTech, George advises technology providers, founders, investors, and HR leaders while tracking the market forces shaping more than 65 categories of work technology. He also leads the HR Tech Investor Experience and PitchFest. (Told you he was busy.)

George came on the show to talk about what’s going on in the industry, beyond the hype cycle of AI, and current market conditions.2 And we got real into it. Like why HR is pressured to buy AI right now, and how the stakes of implementing it into their workflows are higher compared to the rest of the company. Because HR has more risk to mitigate, more data to protect, and their work arguably sits in closer proximity to ethics and integrity. While boards and CEOs are issuing top-down mandates for AI implementations into every corner of workflow optimization, there are a few open-ended questions [court cases] that will determine the future of balancing human work with AI. Spoiler alert: It should not include referring to AI as “AI employees”. Let’s just…not. Okay? The human condition is measured far beyond delivering value to stakeholders, so let’s not degrade the human experience through anthropomorphism.3

How HR will value human skills will be determined in the coming years, and shockingly out of nowhere, Ernst & Young dropped an incentive compensation structure rewarding “human skills” to the tune of $100 million in human bonuses.4 Now I know HR folks have a lot going on, but that one seems like it’s going to throw a wrench in individual substantiation, specifically when HR hasn’t closed the loop only on ensuring equal pay for equal work5, which I’d argue is a much larger priority than cozying up the next shiny object…AI.

George and I also spoke about the economics of AI-powered software, and my perspective has evolved a bit since our recording, mostly because of the new investment in hardware by frontier labs.6 For a while my talk track has been that token costs are currently subsidized, and I’ve made the comparison to ride share apps, and if the other shoe drops and token costs sky rocket, HR will find themselves between a req and a hard place when they can’t afford their AI-powered stack. That’s been a loose COGS analogy, that I’m shelving as complexity around token cost grows, because we’re seeing a fascinating trend with unit economics within frontier labs input/output costs.7 So this is the last time you’ll hear that ride share riff from me for a while. Didn’t want to edit it out. Instead I’m willing to publicly share a loud opinion, and pivot when it might be wrong or half baked. That’s the fun part of building [learning] in public, which I embrace. Everyone likes being right, but I actually love when I’m wrong. Changing one’s mind is an act of humility, and a privilege. Not everyone can do that, publicly. (So humble right?) My curiosity now lies with what this token price dispersion means for HR budgets when there is no established market price for inference. AI tokens may feel like a commodity in the way the everyday tech worker consumes them, but the market has yet to codify them as such.

And on the other side of the coin, with some data to back it up, is that while token cost has dropped, it’s usage that’s driving the gold rush. Enter Jevon’s Paradox. Lower cost = more consumption. And while we talk a lot about the AI gold rush, it’s actually a market inversion. Tokens are getting cheaper, but our applications [vendors] are using more of them to sell us workflows that function well and good without AI. Plus with data, and methodology, and peer reviewed research! Has the industry lost it’s mind because it sells tickets to events!? Okay I’ll chill, I love an event and will be at 8 of them in 9 weeks this fall. Plus the AI vendors are my friends, so build on.

So now I’m off the whole ride share talk track, but staying with vehicles for this next observation. Hear me out…

Right now many HR teams are treating AI adoption as their top priority and token costs are seen as a means to an end, much like gasoline in transportation.8 If someone were operating a business with fuel as a line item, it would be analyzed, modeled, and invested in with appropriate operational oversight. Therefore, token consumption for vibe coded software or chatbot memoization caching, are largely seen as the same. But gasoline is a commodity with competitive pricing. With token costs, we’re only scratching the surface. AI has a common unit of billing, but inference itself is not yet a commodity. Pricing across commonly used models has incredible disparity, and demand for consumption is increasing dramatically. Which brings us back to hype. And the case for AI in HR is being hyped to the nth degree across the industry. From tweets, to podcasts, to conferences. Speaking of conferences….

So when we see behavior like AI token consumption being celebrated (in tech there are literal company leaderboards being bragged about) whether through public praise, conference invites, career promotions, or board seats, it’s important to ask ourselves….at what cost?

The idea of token costs and the question of whether they will rise or fall over time is where George leads the discussion of seeing the early signs of outcome-based pricing in HR tech. Remember, our unit of measurement in HR is outcomes. We also spoke in depth on consolidation across the HR tech market, and why the technology itself may no longer be enough to create a competitive moat. Tell us how it is, George!

The most cause for pause I have around AI hype having been an early adopter working at an ethical AI HR tech startup that was acquired right after the launch of ChatGPT, advising other AI startups on their product and GTM strategies, and speaking weekly with product, engineering, and founders in AI, it’s this. We haven’t seen enough meaningful case studies. Like true case studies of impact, that dictate future strategies and advancement in operations within the field. Here are some good ones.9

To an extent, the conference agendas and sound waves are still cranking the hype track instead of moderating thoughtful dialogue around the most complex technology transformation we’ll experience in our lifetime. Or just positioning customers to discuss their work without the hyperbole. That’d be cool, too.

The most common use case for AI in HR right now might actually be sharing AI opinions as campaign strategy for someone’s next job search. Here’s a stat you know…the average Fortune 500 CHRO tenure is 4.7 years.10 Which means a lot of CHROs are focused on talking about cool work, instead of doing cool work. Cool, cool, cool, cool, not cool. But wait, there’s more. If you read that statistic and thought, “Isn’t median more accurate than average? Couldn’t longer CHRO tenure in that data set actually pull the average up?” Then yes, you too have discovered that CHROs are probably spending even less time on work and even more time talking about work in their 18 quarters of output. And since some executive searches could take up to 90 days, I’d even dock them for the quarter they were interviewing. (But I don’t want to be harder on them than I already am.)

It takes a lot to be a great CHRO. But whatever happened to that whole great power<>great responsibility thing? Can we get to resolution on DEI, equal pay, remote work, skills based hiring, quality of hire, internal mobility, and modern training for L&D before we jump the shark to becoming AI transformation leaders? I get that now’s the time to capitalize, but I’m skeptical if the field has earned the right to meet this moment. The HR industry content track has largely regressed to AI virtue signaling, at reality television show levels of drama. Like who can garner the most attention through owned, earned, and paid distribution channels. The discourse on AI has largely turned into a giant game of leapfrog in business casual. Like who can develop a passive income stream off the side of the desk through monetized speaking gigs or advisory roles, instead of focusing on the work that’s piling up on their plate.

The incentive structure within the industry is off. And the award for hype is more hype. That’s usually how feedback loops work. Meanwhile, the ROI of AI has yet to be proven at scale. Recruiting is probably the closest to calculating AI ROI, and even that’s tricky to lock in with universal definition. But some of the sourcing platforms are there, today. This is why I like staying in my recruiting lane, but willing to poke a few holes in the work in other areas of the org chart.

Recruiters focus on the simplest things. And in life, those are usually the best ideas. We’ve all heard the phrase, “sales fixes everything” when it comes to the P&L. Well the same can be said for recruiting, “better hiring fixes everything.” HR can clamor all they want about seats at tables and becoming AI transformation officers, but I’m not buying it. Recruiting is the stop gap. Always has been. And you can recruit without AI. You still know how to recruit without AI, right? So let’s get back to basics.

This conversation with George was awesome. He fields a bit of my skepticism with a calm, friendly perspective, grounded in having watched multiple iterations of recruiting and HR technology hype cycles come and go. The cool part is now we’re all implementing and running analysis of AI together. Kumbaya baby! With George in the studio, I was eager to ask him questions about what tech companies should actually buy, how vendors will continue to make money, where human judgment in hiring still matters, and what happens as the HR tech market begins to shake out. His response? “You ask really good questions, Brandon.” So I guess that means I’m doing my job…until AI takes it.

»Follow George on LinkedIn

Timestamps

00:00 Meet George LaRocque of WorkTech
03:28 State of AI in HR Tech
06:14 Compliance, Regulatory Environment, & Employment Law
09:24 Why Hiring Isn’t Broken
11:19 The ROI of AI
14:53 AI and SaaS Pricing
18:16 Token Pricing and the True Costs of Software
22:48 Vibe coding vs. the CHRO
26:58 “No one ever got fired for buying AI”
32:00 IPOs and M&A in HR Tech
34:35 How HR Buys Tech
40:29 How AI Will Bring Back Human Expertise

Did you vote in the poll?

If so, thank you! If not, you can scroll up and vote. Or scroll down and submit your pitch to speak at SHRM Talent 2027 in Denver. I’m throwing a party with friends, too if you’e coming to the high country. So now's a good time to hit me up and join the growing shortlist of the new generation of talent leaders who have already committed. DM me for the intel of whose gonna be there. It’s a banger of a crew. Deadline to submit is September 18th 5 PM ET so get on it! (I don’t make the rules, folks, that’s HR’s job.)

»Call for Speaker Presentations for SHRM Talent.

Looking for a fall conference to attend?

I’m thrilled to be joining forces with Workday for “The Future of Frontline Summit” where 600+ Senior Leaders across HR, HR IT, and Operations across frontline industries will gather before Workday Rising.

Frontline workers make up 80% of the global workforce, and Workday is putting them front and center. By bringing Paradox and their Workforce Management tech together, they are hosting the Future of Frontline Summit on October 12th at Resorts World Las Vegas.

I’ll be there because frontline hiring is where I got my start in the recruiting industry, and technology like Paradox empowers the hiring process for frontline managers. This is the innovation the industry needs right now. I’ll be recording from the floor, so be sure to tune in to the stories I’m stoked to share. Attending? Be sure to say hi. I’ll be the guy with the camera.

When: Monday, October 12 | 10:30 AM - 4:00 PM

Where: Resorts World, Las Vegas (Right before Workday Rising)

»Register here

According to Colby Kennedy Nesbitt, Ph.D., Senior Manager, Employee Listening at Netflix. 1

She came on the show to talk about a few things, including but not limited to me going off on:

• The fatal flaw of interviews

• Why Quality of Hire is a joke

• The only metric that matters

• That skills based hiring isn’t a thing

• And why companies need to stop copying FAANG People processes

Buckle up, because Colby is hella smart and I appreciate her candor while working within one of the most famous cultures in the world. She used to work at Lattice which is cool, too. A People Analyst working at the People Analytics company.

What I appreciate about Colby is that she’s not precious about the job title she holds, and the company she keeps. She’s pushing the edge of philosophical discourse on the future of a field that’s kinda hard to pin down. People Analytics folks work hard, but when I see them in my LinkedIn feed I sometimes wonder…what is the work that they’re actually talking about doing? So if you too want to know who the CHRO trusts more than you, and how the work they’re doing behind the scenes influences your job directly without ever interacting with them, then come along for the ride.

Recruiters often operate in a silo from People Analytics, but it’s the People Analytics folks that have the attention and ear of the C-Suite. This came up in my previous conversation with Cole Napper, and remains a focus for conversations I’m having with folks that have multiple more degrees than I do. I actually don’t know where my diploma is, but I can say, I barely earned a degree in English…as a first language. The press pass as a journalist and semester clubbing in Australia were worth it though.

If recruiters want to move to becoming strategic talent advisors, they’re going to have to start acting and talking strategically.2 And part of being seen as strategic by the person who will give you a promotion to a job title that sounds like it does more strategic work [talking & thinking] vs. tactical work [doing & sorta thinking] is saying the word “strategy” a lot. You’re also going to need to communicate about your work like a product manager and spend time you don’t want to in your week doing activities that seem self-promoting. It’s okay, though, because in Corporate, self-promotion is referred to as “memo culture”. Also “managing up” is a phrase ancillary to “data-driven” that’s critical to completing strategic work, or at least being perceived as someone who is strategic. Hope this helps as you consider resigning from your job as a Recruiter to become a Strategic Talent Advisor.

The reality is that People Analytics ICs are probs a few steps ahead on this compared to their counterparts in recruiting roles. Recruiters are pretty busy doing recruiting things to have time to talk about the work they’re doing. I get it, it’s hard to do when you’re juggling 20 reqs and closing a candidate at 10:43 PM ET when the candidate in SF just finished dinner with their family and your CHRO says you can only offer mid-band on a 50th percentile role when the devs hired in 2021 are earning 75th percentile with a 11% yields compounding on their $25K signing bonuses. (You did invest your signing bonuses from 2021, right?)
The exception is the baller recruiter in an old SourceCon tee shirt scraping GitHub and going 5:1 on yield ratios for FDEs laughing when they get a DM from an SDR from an AI sourcing platform that’s been in the industry for 37 days. Those folks are untouchable. Let me know if you want intros.

But there’s actually a bridge of that skills gap between recruiting and people analytics that comes from mutually understanding the core work each group in the HR org chart does from first principles thinking. I get shivers even typing the words “HR org chart”…gross.3

The more recruiters are aware of the work People Analytics is doing, and how it’s impacting their mandate top down, the better equipped they’ll become to leapfrog their peers into higher paying roles. (“Make the money, don’t let the money make you.”)4 And the cool part about that which we’re seeing is those higher paying roles up the org chart in recruiting are remaining tactical. Look at industry legend, Erin Wilson of Rox. The middle management layer is collapsing because of the efficiencies and innovation from organizations implementing AI. 5 Or people just realized they were wasting money paying people to talk about the work recruiters were doing? The best recruiters I know don’t need to be managed.

I’m holding off on my opinions on I/O Psychology for now. But as someone who reads essays for leisure, I have a ton to share. If you too enjoy reading things and using your brain to think critically about the work you’re doing so that you remain relevant in your career and don’t become obsolete because you’re not taking responsibility for your own professional development, I highly recommend reading Colby’s writings. If you don’t read long form content, may I ask why?

»Follow Colby on LinkedIn

»Subscribe to Colby’s newsletter, Variance Explained

Colby, THANK YOU for coming on the show and listening to me rant. And now I guess reading me rant, too. You rock. Keep up the great work.

Timestamps

00:00 Colby Nesbitt on why people analytics needs to reinvent itself
05:00 Why quality of hire may be measuring the wrong thing
09:00 Revenue per employee and the shift from headcount growth to business value
12:00 Why interviews measure ability better than day-to-day motivation
16:00 Tenure, candidate assessment, and why experience is more than a number
20:00 Skills-based hiring, motivation, and looking beyond traditional talent signals
22:00 Why copying Netflix, Google, or another company’s culture isn’t a strategy
29:00 Job hopping, institutional memory, and the changing employment contract
35:00 AI, motivation, and whether we expect too much meaning from our jobs
40:00 Why data can’t replace intuition, judgment, and the human experience
43:00 Why the future of recruiting may look more like executive search

Looking for a best fall conference to attend?

I’m thrilled to be joining forces with Workday for “The Future of Frontline Summit” where 600+ Senior Leaders across HR, HR IT, and Operations across frontline industries will gather before Workday Rising.

Frontline workers make up 80% of the global workforce, and Workday is putting them front and center. By bringing Paradox and their Workforce Management tech together, they are hosting the Future of Frontline Summit on October 12th at Resorts World Las Vegas.

I’ll be there because frontline hiring is where I got my start in the recruiting industry, and technology like Paradox empowers the hiring process for frontline managers. This is the innovation the industry needs right now. I’ll be recording from the floor, so be sure to tune in to the stories I’m stoked to share. Attending? Be sure to say hi. I’ll be the guy with the camera.

When: Monday, October 12 | 10:30 AM - 4:00 PM

Where: Resorts World, Las Vegas (Right before Workday Rising)

»Register here

So when vector databases and constructing talent graphs entered the mainstream a few years back, and “AI” sourcing vendors emerged promising shortlists as a cheaper alternative to LinkedIn Recruiter (or cheaper than hiring a technical sourcer to comb GitHub, or executive researcher to map a market and build a pipeline, see also: the work of recruiting) recruiters got frothy. Rightfully so. For less than $300 a month you can source talent without having to X-Ray Google or Bing. (Remember when X-Ray was proclaimed dead because of a change in caching?) Remember how we used to run searches in Google vs. Bing and wonder why the same query returned a different index? Anyone? Anyone? I know you’re out there, too. The point is this…we’re talking about sourcing! To put it simply, recruiting got cool. Again. (Yes, Steve Levy, I’m looking at you.)

And when it comes to talent graphs and technical sourcing, there’s none cooler than Bryan Lee. Bryan and I caught up recently to talk about the incredible work he’s doing around sourcing, and I had an absolute blast. Bryan’s recruited for the best tech companies in the world, and what he’s doing now is immersed in the work itself. He’s built talent strategies at Sequoia Capital, Uber, Apple, and Google. He spoke about blending the art & science of sourcing, vibe coding recruiting tools, and the ever persistent debate of build vs. buy when it comes to recruiting tech.

In speaking with Bryan, my perspective was validated.

Recruiting software is cheap.
Sourcing software is even cheaper.

How Cheap? Cheaper than a pair of Jordans. (That’s actually a line I used on stage at RecFest last year while conducting a Q&A with the founder of an AI sourcing platform to a packed circus tent of recruiters eager to do the ai sourcing.) Which is apropos. Because recruiting is a bit of a circus right now. And that’s being generous.

The true cost is not yet actualized. (We’re living in subsidized token cost days, like when it was dirt cheap to hire an Uber to drive you across SF.)

And finally:

No sourcing tool will make you a better recruiter.
You still have to run incredible outreach that converts. (Aim for a 20-30% response rate if you don’t want AI to replace you.)

My proof from an insane quarter hiring for a startup:

Anyways, now that I’ve checked myself before I req myself, let’s go back to the sneaker comment. Bryan and I talked about our love for hype sneakers on the show, too. And I shared how I actually got into recruiting [sourcing] because I was a sneaker reseller on forums in the 2000s, running searches for product serial numbers in databases of e-commerce websites. (If that’s not skills based hiring I don’t know what is.) Tune in to see what heat he pulls out mid show. And please feel free to tell me what I’m wrong about when it comes to doing your job as a recruiter.

It’s sourcing.

(Just in case that wasn’t clear.)

»Follow Bryan on LinkedIn

Timestamps

00:00 Brian Lee on the future of sourcing, AI, automation, and building Subgraph
05:00 Why startup recruiting forces recruiters to solve problems end to end
10:00 Building a faster sourcing workflow from JD to interview-ready candidates
15:00 Talent engineering, vibe coding, and build-vs-buy
20:00 Automating recruiting workflows and LinkedIn outreach
25:00 Sourcing beyond Boolean search, LinkedIn, and traditional talent databases
30:00 How talent intelligence makes recruiters better advisors to hiring managers
35:00 Measuring recruiting technology by outcomes, efficiency, and actual hires
40:00 Why there’s no single “right” recruiting workflow or technology stack
45:00 Why AI recruiting products will struggle to solve every recruiter’s workflow
50:00 Talent networks and talent rediscovery

Looking for a best fall conference to attend?

I’m thrilled to be joining forces with Workday for “The Future of Frontline Summit” where 600+ Senior Leaders across HR, HR IT, and Operations across frontline industries will gather before Workday Rising.

Frontline workers make up 80% of the global workforce, and Workday is putting them front and center. By bringing Paradox and their Workforce Management tech together, they are hosting the Future of Frontline Summit on October 12th at Resorts World Las Vegas.

I’ll be there because frontline hiring is where I got my start in the recruiting industry, and technology like Paradox empowers the hiring process for frontline managers. This is the innovation the industry needs right now. I’ll be recording from the floor, so be sure to tune in to the stories I’m stoked to share. Attending? Be sure to say hi. I’ll be the guy with the camera.

When: Monday, October 12 | 10:30 AM - 4:00 PM

Where: Resorts World, Las Vegas (Right before Workday Rising)

»Register here

Molly is Head of Global Talent Acquisition Enablement at Sage, where she delivers programs and services that optimize productivity and elevate recruiting effectiveness, empowering recruiters to work smarter and hire better. Yeah. I think all recruiters could use a little enablement these days.

She came on the show to talk about a few hot topics. Like:

• Why we think this is the hardest time to be a recruiter

• How the fundamentals and right accountability metrics can get the best work out of them

• Why all teams could use an enablement function with the rapid advancement of AI and more mature RecOps postures

• The problem with tool bloat and the endless “what’s your stack” obsession

• And perhaps what I’m most excited about, LinkedIn Hiring Assistant. (raucous applause)

Oh yeah, I also went off on Quality of Hire. Lol, typical. hair toss

Follow Molly on LinkedIn.

And here’s a link to the talk I gave at that conference on Vibe Hiring, which has some serious hot takes (including additional rants on Quality of Hire if debunking industry trash is also your thing.) Check it out if you’re inclined. Special thanks to Tim Sackett for including me alongside industry experts like Molly Sly and for letting me run my mouth from the mic.

Timestamps

00:50 What recruiter enablement actually means
03:47 Why this may be the hardest time to be a recruiter
05:12 Recruiting fundamentals, accountability, and delivering outcomes
06:10 How recruiters need to adapt as the profession changes
10:01 Why new recruiting technology needs enablement to drive adoption
12:34 Recruiting’s tool bloat problem and vendor overpromising
14:41 Sourcing, LinkedIn Recruiter, and the evolution of the recruiter
17:14 Using AI to give overloaded recruiters more sourcing capacity
18:11 How recruiting teams can experiment with and learn new AI tools
19:50 Measuring the impact of TA enablement
22:55 Why Quality of Hire shouldn’t belong to recruiting
27:04 Sage’s experience implementing LinkedIn Hiring Assistant
30:01 Where LinkedIn Hiring Assistant can outperform manual sourcing
31:34 Better shortlists, lower yield ratios, and AI recruiting ROI
32:27 The impact of LinkedIn Hiring Assistant on outreach conversion
33:33 Using AI to help recruiters focus on human connection

Looking for a best fall conference to attend?

I’m thrilled to be joining forces with Workday for “The Future of Frontline Summit” where 600+ Senior Leaders across HR, HR IT, and Operations across frontline industries will gather before Workday Rising.

Frontline workers make up 80% of the global workforce, and Workday is putting them front and center. By bringing Paradox and their Workforce Management tech together, they are hosting the Future of Frontline Summit on October 12th at Resorts World Las Vegas.

I’ll be there because frontline hiring is where I got my start in the recruiting industry, and technology like Paradox empowers the hiring process for frontline managers. This is the innovation the industry needs right now. I’ll be recording from the floor, so be sure to tune in to the stories I’m stoked to share. Attending? Be sure to say hi. I’ll be the guy with the camera.

When: Monday, October 12 | 10:30 AM - 4:00 PM

Where: Resorts World, Las Vegas (Right before Workday Rising)

»Register here

But the conversation about AI and “bias” in recruiting deserves more precision. There’s a lot left to be decided in the courts around automated decision systems (ADS) yet, log on any given day, and there’s a strong disconnect between candidates and companies, even practitioners are over opinionated and under informed.1

AI bias and illegal discrimination are not the same thing, and the legal standards governing employment decisions didn’t suddenly disappear because software became more sophisticated. Governance has existed for decades. We’ve just hit some growing pains. And if anything, AI gives us an opportunity to interrogate how decisions are made, measure their outcomes, and build more accountability into processes that have always contained human judgment and human bias.

So let’s be honest right quick, recruiting has never been bias-free. And bias is not inherently negative or positive. It’s simply, bias. You’re a recruiter, you have them.
Humans make subjective decisions about resumes, schools, career gaps, communication styles, “culture fit,” and who simply feels like the strongest candidate. Assessments, video interviewing, sourcing algorithms, and other tools have all deserved scrutiny. And there are lessons learned from past digital transformations that hopefully the industry gets right this time. So yes, AI deserves scrutiny too. And no, one person isn’t going to decide that for a near $50BN industry with a 10% CAGR, that’s forecasted to nearly double by mid 2030s.2

So when we talk about the balance of the humanity with AI in recruiting, let me ask you this… Do you know a human recruiter that can produce an auditable explanation for every person they didn't call in a requisition?

Well AI can. And will. And it will be used in the courts. And it will be way simpler, more cost effective to do so. Which companies will be relieved to use and leverage. Which in turn empowers candidates. (Does that qualify as a virtuous cycle?) AI has the potential to make criteria, scoring, evidence, and outcomes more visible and measurable, all while empowering candidates to have a better chance at getting hired. Just to be a little more overt, Voice AI stands to be the great equalizer.

What can we all agree on? Okay fine a softball…the top of the hiring funnel is broken! Applications per company are up 129% since 2023. 62% of recruiters say application volume has increased in just the last year. More than half review fewer than half of the applications they receive. And only 21% are very confident their systems aren’t filtering out qualified candidates. At the same time, 74% of candidates now use AI in their job search. And 93% of applicants never make it to an interview. (Many of whom are qualified.)3

So don’t tell me AI at the top of the funnel isn’t a valid solution already working for companies. Just look at zapier!4 What if, instead of deciding who deserves a conversation based primarily on a resume, you could actually give more candidates a conversation? Pretty cool.

What is important to get right about AI in hiring is that human recruiters are still making the decision, and handling all dispositions. With the dawn of Ai interviewers going mainstream and Greenhouse’s own Voice AI, I’m excited to see the problem be solved for both recruiters and candidates, alike. Because more empowerment on both sides of hiring is needed right now. And it’s better than the alternative…a recruiter deciding who to call out of thousands applicants in a req based on submission filtering, vibes, or their blood sugar.

AI interviewers are just one of the topics we dove into on this season of The Recruiting Roadshow. There’s so much more. Season Two took me to New York City. And the city didn’t disappoint. We had an absolute blast. But I’ll be honest for a second, NYC is not an easy city to produce a video series in. Long flight, hauling a 70 pound Pelican from airport to cab to the busy city sidewalks. It’s pretty wild. And hot. And NYC objectively smells terrible. For a Colorado guy having filmed part of Season One literally on a beach, I knew we’d be in for a change of scenery. But that’s the cool part of doing the Roadshow. Getting out into the world, seeing the country, and connecting with recruiters. I loved getting to hang out with recruiters on their turf. These are folks who live and work in NYC or were in town during the trip, because it’s such a different experience than a lot of folks that live elsewhere. Sure SF, Chicago, DC all have some hustle, but nowhere near what it’s like to live and work in NYC.

This is the part of the story where I tell you how not easy it is to create high quality video content for LinkedIn. Right now recruiting content is having a moment. (Super cool! Rising tide lifts all boats. I know and support pretty much everyone doing recruiting content right now.) But I’ll let you in on a secret. It is not for the faint of heart. It might look easy as you scroll over a vertical day in the life post on LinkedIn, or when you see a multi season, episodic long form recruiting show filmed in person in a professional studio by a documentarian that looks cool compared to other content. But it’s hard work. So for this trip to NYC we put our money where our mouth is and packed out a four day shoot to pull off these incredible conversations in midtown Manhattan. For you. And for me. Which will make sense when you watch some of these conversations, and the significance of these relationships in my life. Hands down, the guests were incredible. And the opportunity to spend time in person with the recruiting community is always worth the investment. As we heard in Season One from Cailean Bailey, it’s all about the return on relationships. I still think about that every day. So thank you to all the guests on the NYC leg of Season Two:

Andrew Delabar, Clifton Jadoo II, Erin Walsh-Beguin, Stefanie Fackrell, Adrian Russo, and Kelsey Biggs. Please go follow them all and tell them I sent you.

And if you’re not a “Strong Yes” on cool recruiting content, it’s not to late to join us for The Recruiting Roadshow.

»Watch Season Two

See you on the road! ✌️

Cameron and I met on LinkedIn, like a lot of my recruiting friends, and I’ve been clapping along to pretty much everything he posts, long before I invited him on the show.

• We got into a few big ideas:
  
  That recruiting is all about judgment, not simply candidate retrieval. The job of a recruiter is understanding what problem a founder is actually trying to solve, challenging the prescribed solution when necessary, and earning enough trust to advise them.

• Why we need to keep the process simple and candidate-centered. RecOps and technology should support the hire, and are cool and all. But it’s critical recruiters don’t force the right candidate to conform to an overly engineered process. That’s…wasteful.

• The sobering reality that AI still struggles with human context. For example we broke down scheduling, being the linchpin to agentic recruiting. The reality is recruiting happens inside people’s lives. Calendars, motivations, relationships, changing circumstances, trust and judgment contain context that isn’t neatly available to an agent. Especially in startups. Sure, maybe in big tech a candidate wants a FAANG job bad enough to acquiesce to the scheduling delays that come with massive corporate machines, where the stakes are pretty low for everyone, but that’s not how startup recruiters operate.

• Specialization creates value for founders. Cameron shared deliberately how he chose to stay in early-stage GTM recruiting because repetition builds pattern recognition, credibility and a much better “BS meter.” And the fact that personal authenticity is a recruiting skill.

• The fact that reps create great recruiters. Yeah we talked tooling, but tools change. And learning to source, call people, manage hiring managers, get rejected and keep going builds the underlying craft. That’s really the key. Cameron breaks down some funnel math and that recruiters need to look at whether they actually generated enough activity at the top of the funnel to earn the right to complain. For example, a great recruiter needs to know how many outreaches produce conversations, how many conversations produce submissions, how many submissions produce interviews, and how many interviews produce placements.

If you’re in a recruiting department, you can adopt all the AI you want, and study the best RecOps orchestration. But it really just comes down to putting in the work. That’s the craft of being a great recruiter. Don’t try and tell me [us] otherwise.

Thanks for coming on the show, Cameron. You’re the man.
»Connect with Cameron on LinkedIn.

Timestamps

00:00 - Meet Cameron Murray, Founder of Venture Talent
01:55 - Why early-stage startup recruiting
03:50 - What startup recruiters actually do
08:00 - How do you earn a founder’s trust?
10:10 - What does an early-stage recruiting process actually need?
13:05 - Why AI still can’t solve recruiting scheduling
17:05 - Why specialize in go-to-market recruiting?
22:15 - The “vibe check”: authenticity, trust, and candidate relationships
28:00 - What advice would you give the next generation of recruiters?
31:45 - Learning recruiting with a yellow legal pad
35:05 - What actually makes a great recruiter?
37:15 - Why optimism might be a recruiter’s greatest skill
41:00 - What’s it really like running your own recruiting agency?
43:20 - How LinkedIn became Cameron’s #1 source of new business
46:30 - Why being yourself actually helps you win clients
48:40 - Why young recruiters still need to “earn their stripes”
49:10 - Cameron’s final advice for recruiters and hiring managers

Looking for a fall conference to attend?

I’m thrilled to be joining forces with Paradox for “The Future of Frontline Summit” where 600+ Senior Leaders across HR, HR IT, and Operations across frontline industries will gather before Workday Rising.

Frontline workers make up 80% of the global workforce, and Workday is putting them front and center. By bringing Paradox and their Workforce Management tech together, they are hosting the Future of Frontline Summit on October 12th at Resorts World Las Vegas. I’ll be there because frontline hiring is where I got my start in the recruiting industry, and technology like Paradox empowers the hiring process for frontline managers. This is true innovation the industry needs right now. I’ll be recording from the floor, so be sure to tune in to the stories I’m stoked to share.

When: Monday, October 12 | 10:30 AM - 4:00 PM

Where: Resorts World, Las Vegas (Right before Workday Rising)

»Register here

And when it comes to interesting problems, here's a crazy stat for you....
1 in 4 recruiters say they catch candidate deception multiple times per month.1

That's insane. One in four recruiters have to deal with candidate fraud in some capacity. Whether it’s lowercase fraud like embellishment, or capital Fraud, like nation state actors infiltrating companies.2
Yes, nation-state actors infiltrating companies through the recruitment process to deceive well-meaning recruiters, steal company data, extract payroll dollars, and worse, threaten national security. If you’re a recruiter, the stakes are higher than ever. This isn’t the feet up in slippers recruiting from a luxury apartment during ZIRP, where every company was ripping six-figure offers to anyone with a decent company or school logo on their resume. It’s time to sit up straighter, hold ourselves to high standards of operational excellence, and earn the seat at the table we’re at.
Not the next one. Not the one we think is more important. Stop thinking about an invisible feeling of what it would be like to be around the table the executive team gathers around. If you have an open requisition today, there is no seat more important to be at than the one you are in right now. What an incredible responsibility to the businesses we service and opportunity to make an impact?

This is exactly why I'm answering the phone for my recruiter friends when they call. So they have a sounding board. A friend who will show up. Quite literally.

Season Two of The Greenhouse Recruiting Roadshow took us to Boston where I caught up with two amazing talent acquisition minds.

In Episode 03 I spoke with Beth Marceau. Beth is truly remarkable. Her energy is contagious and she’s genuinely someone you want to work a req with. She’s quietly operating a successful fractional recruitment agency and championing RecOps excellence. Be sure to say hi to Beth on LinkedIn where she documents her journey and has some strong takes. (Her post about inbound went viral.)

In Episode 04, Laurie David, an incredible talent leader at the Fedcap Group, brought sharp analysis and pointed perspective of the state of recruiting. Her candor is what you want at the executive table, making decisions for process design, while focusing on what matters…developing recruiter fundamentals. She pays it forward as a founding member of the Talent Collective Boston chapter. Connect with Laurie.

Both conversations focus on sourcing. Which if we fast forward through all of this “AI in recruiting” talk will be how recruiters are measured. The effectiveness of their submits. If we rewind, this has actually been the value of recruiting all along. We just get distracted at times by those problems keeping us up at night. Just focus on finding the next great candidate.
Because if you cant open a req and fill a pipeline within two weeks with three candidates the HM would hire, you might not have a place in recruiting for very much longer. That’s a hill I’ll die on, because for years recruiting got easy. Now it’s time to elevate our impact. And with Building the Talent Machine, I’m all in on upskilling and uplifting the recruiting industry, one conversation at a time.

If you're not a "Strong Yes" on cool recruiting content, it's not to late to get caught up.

»Watch Season Two

See you on the road! ✌️

MIT Sloan defines agentic as, “a class of AI [that] integrates with other software systems to complete tasks independently or with minimal human supervision.”1 How this relates to recruiting is interesting, because if you recall walking the conference expo halls over the last few years, you’ll have heard claims of agentic AI that may have been a bit premature. To no fault of these companies own, (I guess?). There’s incredible pressure to build a product with AI that can pass a sniff test in a demo environment, bring that product to market with discerning branding (could do a whole post on branding and messaging fails), partner with analysts, and unlock product-market fit. To which Brad Feld of Foundry reminds us, “Every time you work on something new, whether it’s a new feature, a new product, or a new product line, recognize that you are searching for incremental product/market fit. The search is a continuous and never ending quest. Don’t confuse illusion with reality.”2

Unfortunately, for many failed recruiting vendors we’ve seen come and go in this AI race the last few years, product-market fit has been viewed as a milestone by young founders. It’s not something you “get to”. This has all occurred while the traditional saas model for products at the top of the funnel (enriching personal data for outreach and CRM functions) has been absolutely decimated. There’s been a collapse. And “agentic” has felt a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure in recruiting product marketing and lofty founder conference presentations, at the expense of the buyer.

Until now.

Loxo just announced the launch of Next Generation Loxo and its Agentic Workforce. They’re pushing the envelope, and it’s stuffed with receipts.

For the last few years, I’ve been following the industry closely and working with founders to understand how they’re actually building agentic AI for us. Plus asking where AI should or shouldn’t sit in recruiting process design. What stands out with Loxo’s release comparatively, is how clearly they’ve drawn that line vs. vendors who claim to have agentic AI, adding the phrase to their marketing sites as soon as the word appeared in our techno vernacular in late 2024.

So let’s break this release down a bit and talk about Loxo’s agent workforce. I spoke with Matt Chambers, CEO, in depth. What I learned is this:

• Every Loxo agent is proprietary, pre-trained on the craft, tested, and governed before it ever gets anywhere near company data or recruiting workflows.

• Loxo’s agents can take a search from hiring manager intake through sourcing strategy, market mapping, candidate evaluation, and a ranked shortlist. Then the recruiter decides who to pursue.

This actually matters more than most recruiting tech buyers might not be paying attention to. There’s a ton of work between opening a req and getting to a quality shortlist. Go ask your friendly, neighborhood RecOps professional. And from first principles thinking in recruiting, the highest value a recruiter can deliver is the shortlist.

Here’s a look at what you need to know:

AI has an opportunity to fundamentally change recruiter productivity, and what’s unique about this release is how Loxo chose to design the product by making AI autonomy optional. Their proprietary agents are pre-trained on recruiting, work alongside recruiters in Loxo, to what they refer to as “a dial” the recruiter can control, whether delegating a single step, or running the whole search agentically. Basically, with Loxo, you can run a search autonomously through the shortlist. And ultimately, that’s how recruiters and recruiting software will be measured. The quality of the handful of candidates a recruiter submits. Yes, handful. Don’t expect recruiters to be submitting 15-20 candidates to a hiring manager. That’s wasteful. Expect to hear a lot more about yield ratios in the coming conference cycles.

The other part of this release which is absolutely massive, is the release of the Agent Impact Center, which quantifies ROI. Yup. Showing the work completed, and hours of labor absorbed by AI, which does in fact matter. The variables within recruiting are Time, Quality, Quantity, and Cost, so yes, quantifying labor hours saved is significant. We’re past the AI adoption phase and the industry has moved on to quantifying how AI is producing meaningful work output. With Loxo, you can use their executive dashboard to filter by agent, user, or time period to see the full picture across the team, drill down to a single recruiter, a specific agent, or a defined window of time to understand where AI usage is compounding and where it isn’t. Because let’s be honest. You don’t need AI to recruit. You can very well recruit with a piece of paper, a phone, and some data enrichment. This is the beauty of recruiting. It’s understanding the needs of each search to quickly deliver the shortlist to a hiring manager, assess accurately, and convert efficiently. Loxo’s Agent Impact Center is a huge first step toward evolving the conversation around the ROI of AI in recruiting. I’m here for it.

But of course, we can’t talk about AI recruiting without addressing the who. With so many vendors moving into the recruiting software space because of massive total addressable market (TAM), no wonder venture capital is targeting work tech and investing in young engineering prodigies to go build something on the back of frontier lab APIs. For HR, some estimates forecast a 10% Compound Annual Growth Rate by 2031.3 Which is huge. Whenever I read these figures, all I see is innovation, new products, better features.

But for talent acquisition leaders and recruiting agency owners it can be a bit dizzying to keep up. Fundamentally, buyers trust people building in HR who have experience. Hands down. Buyers in HR don’t want to talk to someone in their 20s making hyperbolic claims about their recruiting tech when they have little to no recruiting placement experience, nor the benefit of time to integrate labor market patterns into the product. Yes, this is where the role of advisors comes in, however, that’s not the same as a founder having this innate knowledge, as they’re dedicated to building the product full-time. Crowd sourcing experience to understand the nuance of shortlist indexing isn’t the move to trust in rec tech. Experience matters. Filling reqs matters. Peel back all the marketing, events, referrals, and the only thing standing is the product? That’s where the true builders will prevail. Because let’s be honest, recruiters aren’t afraid to address what I just said head on. Our literal job is putting our money where our mouth is. If sourcing tech founders think they can sell a recruiting agency owner that easily they should not be building need to have tech. There’s plenty of “nice-to-have” hr tech that gets sold (and acquired) that way. The beauty of measuring recruiting software head to head vs. comparison pages on a marketing site (or just taking a recruiter’s word for it because they liked their swag at a conference) is that it’s cheap. Just go A/B test your AI sourcing tool and compare the shortlists. It’s that easy. Anyone can build a talent graph that indexes Software Engineers from Google in San Francisco. (That’s literally the search every sourcing vendor demos by the way.) So to quote, Ilia Cheishvili, CTO at Loxo, “Let’s go for real.”

Matt Chambers and Ilia Cheishvili have spent 14 years building recruiting technology, and Loxo has grown to 150 employees following their growth investment in 2025 from Tritium Partners.4 Plus they’re training their own models. So there’s that. With this release they’re unveiling their own deep-learning talent graph of more than 850 million professionals, more than 50 proprietary recruiting algorithms, and one unified system of record. Plus the AI Agent Impact Center to understand the ROI of AI that recruiting leaders have been desperately trying to prove.
Tl;dr: Loxo has founder-market fit.

Wrapping up, I’m left with a thought I think nearly every day…it’s never been a better time to be in recruiting. And this release elevated Talent Intelligence as a category and puts it’s own stamp on it. Glad to see Loxo putting recruiters to work. Will be eager to hear what you think about it.

»Check out Next Generation Loxo and stay tuned on LinkedIn to see more of Building the Talent Machine’s coverage of this release.

And as simple as it is, I get to talk to people for a living. How cool?

So a very special thank you to the team at Building the Talent Machine that powers this: Lucas, Carmen, Eric. You’re the best. Thank you for helping me live this dream. Life’s too short not to.

Thank you to my big modern family for supporting a life of entrepreneurship on the road.

And to Carin, Daniel, Trenton, Josue, Bridget and the team at Greenhouse, we’re just getting started….

»Watch Season Two

→ How do companies actually realize the value of their AI investments after the implementation is over?

We got into why AI adoption is fundamentally a management challenge, the uncomfortable “neutral zone” between rollout and real adoption, building recruiting teams through organizational change, evaluating HR technology beyond the demo, and why every company needs a different approach to AI depending on its people, processes, and goals. We also spent some time debating build vs. buy when everyone and their grandma is vibe coding something for recruiting.

There are a lot of conversations happening right now about AI in recruiting, so we focused on how investment in tech always depends on the people responsible for implementing it.

Thanks for coming on the show Becky!

Connect here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccacfagan/

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Becky Fagan and why AI adoption starts with managers.

02:30 Why AI implementation succeeds or fails based on leadership.

05:00 The “neutral zone” between rollout and real adoption.

10:45 How to lead recruiters through AI-driven change.

15:20 Choosing recruiting technology that actually fits your organization.

19:45 Managing teams of humans alongside AI agents.

23:00 Why HR struggles to finish transformation initiatives.

28:30 Build vs. buy: making smarter technology investments.

34:30 A defense of Workday and why boring infrastructure wins.

38:45 Becky’s blueprint for stepping into a Head of Talent role.

Hear from incredible RecOps and Talent leaders in Denver, Boston, and New York City.

Julianne Streff, Principal Recruiter, BW Bacon Group https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliannestreff/

Katie Wagner, Founding Partner, Talent by Design Collective https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiejwagner/

Beth Marceau, CEO, Fractional Recruiting Co. https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-marceau/

Laurie David, VP, Talent Acquisition, The Fedcap Group https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurie-david-talent/

Clifton Jadoo II, Staff Technical Recruiter, Robinhood https://www.linkedin.com/in/cliffjadoo/

Andrew Delabar, Recruiting Operations, Hudson River Trading https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-d-351b10172/

Stefanie Fackrell, Founder, dysruptiveHR https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefaniefackrell-hr-rebel/

Erin Walsh-Beguin, Sr. Director, Global TA Ops & EB, GoDaddy https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-walsh-beguin-3329563/

Adrian Russo, VP, Talent, Swish Analytics https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianrusso82/

Kelsey Biggs, VP, Global TA, Gong https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelseybiggs/

Season Two drops next week. 🌱

A very special thank you to Carin Van Vurren and Daniel Chait for always investing in relationships in this industry. Learn more at: https://www.greenhouse.com/

Most recruiting content lives in one of three buckets:

1. Tactical: ”How do I source engineers?”

2. Emotional: ”Recruiting is hard right now.”

3. Vendor-driven: ”Here’s the new feature.”

Peter operates at a completely different altitude. He sits inside Carta, which means he has visibility into how 60,000+ private companies actually behave. For recruiting leaders, that’s gold.

This is also where I disclose I’m a bit of a comp nerd. Which might come as a surprise if you know how I talk about how I like to recruit. But the reality is, there’s depth behind it.

The story is this, when I got my first recruiting job it was for a post-IPO company in a pretty traditional HR department. The recruiters sat in office on the same floor with HR, and team meetings were the greater 25 person team. We were pretty understaffed at times which meant I got punted a lot of special projects the average recruiter doesn’t get exposure too, let alone say “yes” to. My manager saw my potential, and put a ton of work on my plate with very high expectations. Looking back, a lot was pressure testing. But I will be very honest. I got this job because I was a millennial who knew how to use Facebook and I was handed the keys to the kingdom on platforms to help the company execute their digital transformation.

This is the advice portion for anyone earlier career. Say yes to doing things other people don’t want to do. That’s how you get ahead. I was showing up in office 5 days a week, hanging out late bumping into the CEO at 6:30 PM, asking a ton of questions and being likable for being curious, helpful, and visible. Plus I just got sh*t done in scrappy ways. I had a chip on my shoulder and something to prove.

Comp was one of those special projects and when equal pay for equal work legislation rolled out, I had been behind the scenes running compensation research and analysis for more than 100 geographic regions, nationally. For a publicly traded company. In my 20s barely having earned a degree in English (as a first language). This might not be a big deal, but for me it was. I fell into recruiting and learned a lot of the additional HR skills to be well rounded that eventually prepared me to go on to lead a People AND Talent function at TLDR, one of the world’s most recognized tech newsletters. It was projects like these and always finding ways to make an impact in the strategic side of recruitment for private equity software and startup companies.

And when I started interacting with other recruiters, I learned that not everyone was afforded these opportunities for skills development and exposure to broader impact within HR. I’m not saying you have to find a company that has hybrid roles and special projects outside the traditional scope of recruiting to be a good recruiter. Lots of folks who came up in FAANG are good recruiters. My path was just different, and led me to where we are now. Which is to say it led me to you! So thanks for reading and following Building the Talent Machine.

So enjoy this episode with Peter. I won’t spoil any of it with takeaways, you won’t want to miss this. Peter’s own journey is pretty rad. I hope you pick up on it.

And thanks for having us out to Carta’s HQ to record in the library, Peter, you do incredible work. Keep it up!

Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjameswalker/

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Shout out to our sponsor, Rooster.

Rooster is a native interview scheduling platform built inside Workday Recruiting that eliminates back-and-forth and gives recruiters and candidates a clean self-scheduling experience. If you want fewer scheduling errors, faster coordination, and a smoother candidate experience, visit rooster.us to book a demo.

We got into founder hiring mistakes, personal brand, recruiting as advisory work, AI tooling, layoffs, compensation resets, candidate experience, and the emotional reality of spending your career somewhere between business strategy and human decision making. And of course, we chopped it up on if recruiting is sales.

There are few folks in this industry I respect more than Nate. His reputation speaks for itself. Seriously. Ask anyone. Founders, hiring managers, candidates, internet fans. His personal brand and ability to build community is absolutely legendary. No one works harder on both sides of the hiring relationships than Nate. And I also straight up respect his hustle as a business owner.

Going out on your own as a recruiter isn’t for the faint of heart. But Nate has been able to successfully build a playbook that scales the way he likes to work with companies. On his terms.

Nate’s also been there for me over the last few years, supporting my professional and personal journey. So thank you for your friendship, Nate. You’re one of a kind.

Enjoy the conversation with Nate, it’s a longer one, but we had a ton to catch up on.

Connect with Nate: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nwylie/

__

Timestamps

3:00 Building a personal brand in recruiting, staying independent, and why creativity matters more than people think

8:00 Founder hiring mistakes, candidate trust, and why transparency wins with top talent

16:00 AI hiring expectations, unrealistic job requirements, and the widening gap between what companies want and what exists

20:00 Layoffs, compensation resets, and the emotional reality of career pivots in today’s market

26:00 Recruiter burnout, layoffs in talent acquisition, and carrying the weight of hiring decisions

29:00 Why recruiting stays emotional after 15 years and how rejection impacts recruiters too

32:00 Using AI to improve stakeholder management, soften communication, and become a stronger advisor

38:00 Interview processes, candidate experience, and how founders unintentionally lose great people

43:00 Talent engineering, recruiting operations, and whether recruiters need to become systems builders

48:00 AI tools, hiring workflows, and the tension between sophisticated systems and simple recruiting fundamentals

52:00 The future of sourcing, AI-powered talent mapping, and what recruiters would actually pay for

1:20:00 Is recruiting sales? Nate unpacks the similarities, where the comparison breaks down, and why recruiting may be harder because the product can always walk away

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Shout out to our sponsor, Rooster.

Rooster is a native interview scheduling platform built inside Workday Recruiting that eliminates back-and-forth and gives recruiters and candidates a clean self-scheduling experience. If you want fewer scheduling errors, faster coordination, and a smoother candidate experience, visit rooster.us to book a demo.

We also talk about startup hiring patterns, bias in talent mapping (a recent trope I’ve been on lately) fractional work (did stuff there, too), creator life (sup sup), online authenticity (one does not simply act authentic online), and why companies often wait too long to invest in people strategy (oops?).

Madison shares lessons from building an audience of more than 150K followers, writing publicly for over a decade, and navigating the realities of being a visible woman online. The conversation is ultimately about one thing: leadership starts with being human first. Something I’m all in on right now with AI dominating conversations and the constant hype cycle.

Connect with Madison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bluehairedunicorn/

A few thoughts from the conversation:

Performance management should never be a surprise. Feedback works best as an ongoing conversation, not a twice-yearly event. You should know your top performers and they should know how you feel about their performance. Like all the time. No, the paycheck is not the thank you. Split off your merit increases while you’re at it. Okay here’s where I’m challenging my own thinking. I’ve long been a big believer in the Pareto Principle. (80% of value comes from 20% of your people). With Revenue Per Employee being the new cool top line metric, and arguably the only one that matters for HR teams before they’re eliminated, and diminishing headcount in tech companies, I’m actually curious if Pareto holds up in the future of work where everyone will be responsible for delivering value and there will be nowhere for under performers to hide. Most of HR projects around L&D and training are about getting under performers to acceptable anyways. Only time will tell on Pareto, but for now it’s a good reminder for HR teams to double down on engaging the 20% and letting go of the pipe dream of the remaining 80% getting anywhere close to their level of output.

Here’s an interesting part of the convo, startups often build people systems reactively. Waiting until things break creates trust gaps that are difficult to repair. But that’s the old model of startups. Where we’re headed is uncharted territory. There’s two camps here. Build early, or scale quickly and do HR right later. Let’s be real for a beat. HR has allowed PEOs to outsource the most business critical functions of traditional HR in favor of learning and development, engagement, and culture projects. These are often initiatives that cost the company time and money, that bring satisfaction and fulfillment to the HR but aren’t often very tangible, scalable, long lasting, with ROI that is very, very hard to prove, let alone repeat. We’re dealing with human beings, remember? Humans are unique, their output and performance is unique. HR can’t take credit for that. But they do. And love to tell you about it at conferences (Le sigh.) L&D and culture projects are often long term visions. But the average CHRO’s tenure is about 4 years. So that disconnect speaks for itself. In startups you probably don’t need HR early. In fact the future household tech companies will likely be 100 people. This is where Pareto Principle crumbles, because everyone will be incredible value creators operating in pi-shaped skillsets. There simply won’t be a need for L&D, because hiring will solve that problem (as it always has).

This is the part of the post where I tell you I’m not a monster. And I’m totally fine being wrong. In the conversation with Madison, we spoke about how the best leaders model vulnerability, create psychological safety, and recognize that people do not leave their lives at the door when they come to work. I can be totally wrong about my anti-L&D trope. I’m a sourcer. I’m fundamentally biased to want to go out and solve the problem of performance with the skillset I have developed for a decade. If there’s an HR rep who has receipts for their projects that led to higher RPE and got an under performer to cracked I’m all ears. No disrespect to my HR startup folks. You allow in house recruiting to be possible since they’re the one’s willing to pick up the phone and deliver the next great hire. What better accountability than loving to do that in these uncertain times?

All love,

Brando

Timestamps

3:00 Human capital, startup burnout, and why treating people transactionally fails over time
8:00 Leadership, vulnerability, and why managers need to humanize themselves first 12:00 Playfulness, performance metrics, and understanding the realities behind human performance
16:00 Rethinking performance management and why feedback should never be a surprise
20:00 Advocating for people while balancing business priorities
22:00 Startup scaling problems, reactive HR, and accidental bad management
26:00 Human motivation, identity outside of work, and what actually makes people successful
30:00 Founder mistakes, talent density, bias in hiring, and building better teams 34:00 AI, intuition, creator life, and building an audience through authenticity
39:00 Representation, empathy, online visibility, and Madison’s advice for creators

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Shout out to our sponsor, Rooster.

Rooster is a native interview scheduling platform built inside Workday Recruiting that eliminates back-and-forth and gives recruiters and candidates a clean self-scheduling experience. If you want fewer scheduling errors, faster coordination, and a smoother candidate experience, visit rooster.us to book a demo.

LA has always had a sunny spot in my heart, so to roll up in the Hills to film
The Greenhouse Recruiting Roadshow was truly special.

Last year I quit my job to focus on Building the Talent Machine full time. And what’s been revealed through this process is how strong the human element in recruiting truly is.

For this series, I set out to talk to recruiters about the problems keeping them up at night. Things like AI, candidate fraud, identity verification, employer brand, sourcing, and more.

And the problems that recruiters are facing are moving faster than even where they were just a few months ago. A year ago candidate fraud was being discussed behind closed doors and hallway conversations at conferences. Now it’s front and center because identity verification has become so critical.

That’s why dedicating my energy to having these conversations with recruiting leaders on camera is more important now than ever. So that the industry better understands the strains that are facing recruiting processes and systems. And the cool part? How vendors are building for us, recruiters.

Digital transformation has always been part of the conversation in HR. Over the past decade as a practitioner, I’ve worked on several waves of innovation, from mobile-optimized ATS implementations and candidate texting, to one-way video interviewing and equal pay initiatives. I’ve also worked on the vendor side, for ethical AI behavioral science software, an employee compliance training and eLearning platform, and helped launch a tech-enabled exec search agency. I strongly believe that we’re entering into the Golden Age of recruiting. And while recruiters have been put through the wringer in the last few years, it’s the perseverance from those who are dedicated to the craft that inspires me.

Which is why I’m more energized than ever to get out into the real world to share these stories with you, because these recruiters are some of the most passionate people I’ve ever met and folks I’m privileged to call my friends.

So check out the latest episodes of The Greenhouse Recruiting Roadshow with some of LA’s best recruiting leaders as we talk about the problems that are keeping us up at night.

»Watch here

Featured Guests

Jeremy A. Lyons, Co-Founder @ RecOps Collective

Jessica Sims-Gousse, Talent Operations Manager

Nicole Cibella, SVP Talent & Engagement @ Lincoln Property Company

Tracy St.Dic, Global Head of Talent @ Zapier

Thank you Greenhouse for making this dream a reality.
See you at Open for Ops in NYC and SF!

We covered how metrics, such as reschedule rates and time to schedule, can reveal deeper organizational issues beyond tooling. And also touched on the limits of automation in candidate interactions, the role of recruiting operations as a discipline, and how incremental process improvements can influence hiring outcomes over time.

Rooster is positioned as an infrastructure layer that integrates with existing systems to automate scheduling logistics and surface data on process breakdowns. It eliminates back-and-forth and gives recruiters and candidates a clean self-scheduling experience.

Follow Luke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-switkowski/

Timestamps

00:00 Why scheduling is the linchpin of recruiting and where processes typically break

05:00 The real cost of scheduling complexity including reschedules and coordination overhead

10:00 Enterprise scheduling challenges and why complex hiring workflows need dedicated systems

15:00 Increasing process complexity from video interviews and added recruiting technology

20:00 Using scheduling data to uncover breakdowns and drive accountability in hiring teams

25:00 How automation shifts coordinator and recruiter roles and improves team efficiency

30:00 Hidden costs of manual scheduling and the downstream impact on hiring outcomes

35:00 Solving global scheduling challenges including time zones and candidate experience

40:00 Limits of AI in recruiting workflows and where automation falls short

45:00 Why fully automated scheduling breaks without context and introduces friction

50:00 The role of human judgment in complex hiring and candidate coordination

55:00 Balancing automation with flexibility across different interview types and teams

60:00 How scheduling impacts hiring velocity for high-priority and executive roles

65:00 Aligning recruiting processes with business outcomes through better systems

70:00 Future of recruiting operations and the role of infrastructure like scheduling systems

If you want fewer scheduling errors, faster coordination, and a smoother candidate experience visit rooster.us to book a demo.

Thanks for tuning in!

This series has been top of mind for me for a few years now, and there’s no better time to pack up and hit the road to talk about it all with my friends, new and old.

After spending 10 years recruiting and storytelling for public, private equity, and startup companies, with the last few years working exclusively in the HR tech industry, the mission is clear…to upskill and uplift the recruiting industry, one conversation at a time.

Season 1 where I travel from San Francisco to San Diego to Los Angeles is releasing now.

See you on the road✌️

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Huge thank you to my friends at Greenhouse for partnering on this series and always believing in my passion for recruiting.

Anyways, on with the notes.

Brian runs Rework Group, and is absolutely crushing it right now after taking the leap from W-2 land. When people ask who the best tech recruiter in the world is, people often say “Brian Fink”. He’s built incredible engineering organizations and has taught hundreds of recruiters how to source. He jumped on the mic to unpack what sourcing looks like right now and where recruiting is actually heading. We get into inbound versus outbound recruiting, how tooling is changing the function, and why most teams are over-indexing on systems instead of developing real recruiting skill. Brian brings a practitioner perspective shaped by years of hands-on sourcing, operator experience, and teaching the craft. He’s a legend. Don’t do yourself the disservice by ignoring Brian.

Here’s where Brian and I align…

1. Recruiting operates like sales, but with a more complex buyer and longer decision cycle.

2. Sourcing is evolving, not disappearing, and the edge comes from creativity and signal detection.

3. Most companies still underinvest in recruiting because attribution is weak, even though talent outcomes drive the business.

4. The teams that win are the ones who prioritize direct outreach, understand candidate motivation, and build real conviction instead of relying on inbound pipelines. And the only way to build conviction is through the confidence that comes from doing the work.

Brian’s also a phenomenal writer and motivational leader. You can follow him on Substack and FinkedIn. Thanks for being you Brian. You’re the best.

Timestamps

3:00 Mentorship, paying it forward, and respect across the hiring ecosystem
6:00 The state of sourcing and how tooling is reshaping the function
9:00 Inbound vs outbound and what actually qualifies as recruiting
12:00 Candidate fraud, identity verification, and risk in the funnel
15:00 Creative sourcing and why motivation matters more than background
18:00 Market shifts, layoffs, and changing candidate expectations
22:00 Funnel math, conversion rates, and recruiting as a sales motion
25:00 Attribution gaps and why recruiting is treated like a cost center
28:00 Talent density, analog recruiting, and competitive advantage
31:00 What great recruiters actually do across the full lifecycle
33:00 AI removing transactional work and raising the bar on human skill
35:00 Sourcing strategies, sleuthing, and finding signal in non-obvious places
38:00 GitHub, Medium, and alternative surfaces for identifying talent
40:00 Evaluating engineers through signals, not credentials
41:00 Outreach channels, sequencing, and founder-led messaging
43:00 Multi-channel engagement, tooling maturity, and what’s coming next

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Shout out to our sponsor, Rooster.

Rooster is a native interview scheduling platform built inside Workday Recruiting that eliminates back-and-forth and gives recruiters and candidates a clean self-scheduling experience.If you want fewer scheduling errors, faster coordination, and a smoother candidate experience, visit rooster.us to book a demo.

He represents a group of recruiting operators who helped shape modern recruiting through experimentation, curiosity, and knowledge sharing. Steve is also a friend and mentor to many. He truly embodies, the “Uncle Steve” persona which many of us lovingly call him. The first time I ever spoke with Steve, he left the conversation with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that brought me to tears. Steve has always advocated for equity and inclusion in hiring, while being one of the frontier voices for how technology advancements impacts marginalized groups. And because Steve is truly one of the most memorable people I’ve ever met, he followed that up by putting me in a headlock the first time we met in person. (He contains multitudes. And we love him for it.)

I see Steve probably five or so times a year at events, and speak with him weekly, so it’s always a treat to hit record and have a few pointed questions for the maestro. I grew up in recruiting learning from people like Steve, and his famous blog which tech recruiters of a certain generation worshipped. Believe it or not, Steve influenced the industry long before this concept of “influencers". Because at the end of the day, what matters is credibility from doing the work. And we spoke about what it takes to be credible with hiring managers and candidates, how recruiters actually learn a domain, and why most of the core challenges in recruiting have not changed. And of course, we talked about AI sourcing tech and talent engineering.

If you need a few takeaways, know this:

Recruiting requires real expertise.
You have to understand the role, the business, and performance expectations at a deep level to be effective. Oh yeah, and understand human behavior.

Most tools are just improving access to data and workflow. You’ll have to listen to the show to find out what Steve and I think of all these AI sourcing tools and “talent engineering”. But here’s the Tl;dr on AI sourcing…If a recruiting tech founder hasn’t done the work themself, how could they possibly build a tool for recruiters?

Counterpoint: Can these young founders who’ve never had a job learn through doing, much like recruiters themselves? I’ll let you decide.

Performance in recruiting comes down to behavior.
Curiosity, humility, and direct interaction with people separates strong recruiters from average ones. The work still centers on understanding humans and making informed decisions, not relying on automation.

Hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Follow Steve here.

Timestamps
05:00 - Knowledge sharing and mentorship in recruiting
07:00 - Evaluating new tools and defining real problems
08:30 - Why recruiting is harder than it looks
10:00 - Ego, failure, and learning through experience
11:00 - Becoming credible with hiring managers
12:00 - Founders building recruiting tools without experience
15:00 - AI as a shift but not a replacement for humans
19:00 - Messaging and getting candidate responses
22:00 - Compassion and understanding human behavior
24:00 - Pushing back on hiring managers and defining real requirements
26:00 - Talent density, flawed sourcing assumptions, and lack of performance data
27:00 - Getting out from behind the screen and meeting candidates in person
29:00 - Going above and beyond to close candidates
30:00 - Conference tactics and how to approach real conversations
33:00 - Patience, humility, and long-term development
34:00 - Giving back, mentorship, and closing the loop with candidates and clients

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Shout out to our sponsor, Rooster.

Rooster is a native interview scheduling platform built inside Workday Recruiting that eliminates back-and-forth and gives recruiters and candidates a clean self-scheduling experience.If you want fewer scheduling errors, faster coordination, and a smoother candidate experience, visit rooster.us to book a demo.