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.

Follow and subscribe to her newsletter here.

Timestamps

3:00 - Why Elena is focused on building better talent functions
5:00 - Why hiring manager partnership is the foundation of recruiting
7:00 - The problem with the term hiring manager
10:00 - Using team design before kickoff meetings
13:00 - Founder led hiring vs structured hiring at scale
15:00 - What founders want from talent leaders early on
18:00 - The debate around quality of hire
22:00 - Who should own accountability for hiring outcomes
26:00 - Time in stage, speed, and useful recruiting metrics
31:00 - AI hype, 10x talent expectations, and staying grounded

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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.

I was stoked to talk with Johannes about AI recruiting and HR to ask him about how he optimizes implementations, and how leaders should be thinking about change management, data privacy, and how we preserve humanity in the world of work.
We also got into what the future looks like for management, and if organizations are ready for what’s coming.

Even cooler is that I just got back from UNLEASH in Las Vegas where I turned the corner in the expo hall and nearly bumped into Johannes, quite literally. Neither of us knew each other were going, and it brought to life a phrase I’ve repeated many times on stage and on the show…recruiting has taught me that the world is a lot smaller than we think. Johannes, you’re the man!

Subscribe to FullStack HR and follow Johannes on LinkedIn.

Timestamps

3:00 Building AI agents in HR and keeping up with the pace of change
5:00 Why most AI implementations fail inside organizations
7:00 The reality of employees using personal LLMs vs company-approved tools
9:00 GDPR, data security, and why communication matters more than policy
11:00 The risks of humanizing AI and naming agents
13:00 Accountability problems when AI acts like an employee
15:00 The future of HR roles and why tech fluency is becoming mandatory
17:00 Could AI replace managers or make them better?
19:00 What people really think about AI managers vs human managers
23:00 Hiring philosophy and the idea that better hiring reduces HR overhead
25:00 Using AI to augment leadership instead of replacing it
29:00 What great managers actually do well in an AI world
31:00 AI adoption differences between the US and Europe
34:00 Job market shifts, work culture, and changing expectations
37:00 Lessons from building teams and the importance of curiosity
39:00 Why human connection matters more as technology advances
41:00 The origin and growth of the Full Stack HR newsletter

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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.

Tyler is now transitioning into a Talent Engineer role and building recruiting tools full time. His perspective sits at the intersection of recruiting operations, automation, and the evolving relationship between recruiters and technology.

He and I caught up to talk about:

• What recruiting actually looks like across startups and large tech companies

• Why agency recruiting creates strong operational instincts

• And the emerging role of the Talent Engineer

I appreciate Tyler’s perspective on how recruiters can evolve into more technical problem solvers, while maintaining the human connection that ultimately drives hiring decisions. Thanks for talking the time to sit down and talk Recruiting, Tyler, rooting for you!

Connect with Tyler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-knell/

Timestamps

3:00 Tyler’s journey entering recruiting, and why speaking publicly about the industry matters
5:00 Startup vs. big tech recruiting and breaking the myth that recruiters cannot operate in both environments
10:00 Boomeranging back to Okta and the importance of strong recruiting leadership and talent density
12:00 Nonprofit experience, empathy in recruiting, and why humility shapes better hiring outcomes
14:00 The origin of HireScribe and why Tyler started building tools for recruiters
18:00 Offline AI tools, privacy concerns, and why recruiters should own their data
20:00 Lessons from agency recruiting including urgency, discipline, and time management
22:00 Operational differences between startup recruiting and large scale hiring organizations
23:00 Defining the talent engineer mindset and solving hiring problems through systems thinking
24:00 Why human connection will remain central to hiring even as automation increases
27:00 AI capturing organizational decision making and the next layer of recruiting data
29:00 How AI may challenge traditional ideas of what makes a good hire
32:00 Proof of work hiring models and the potential shift away from resumes and job descriptions
35:00 Entrepreneurship, portfolio careers, and the decentralization of work
37:00 The limits of labor market data and why practitioners must interpret hiring trends carefully
40:00 Recruiters as arbiters of truth aligning hiring teams around data and judgment

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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 talked about what it actually takes to build a talent machine inside a venture studio model, how to design structured and competency based hiring processes without over-engineering them, and why growth without intention creates fragile organizations. Maggie also shared her perspective on recruiter layoffs, the shift toward measured hiring, the role of personal brand in building long term leverage, and her philosophy of the reverse sell where recruiters focus on surfacing risks rather than overselling opportunities.

Connect with Maggie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggie-bedro/

Timestamps

2:17 From venture studio to Bedrock Talent building zero ramp recruiting for early stage founders

5:03 Scaling Redesign Health from 3 startups to 60 plus and building the talent function from scratch

6:18 Hiring the right recruiters first talent density culture and structured competency based process

11:01 The shift in health tech hiring from tech enabled services to AI native engineering teams

13:04 What building a talent machine actually looks like experimentation hustle and constant iteration

14:33 Interview fatigue take homes and how to design a process that balances rigor with candidate experience

19:46 Personal brand as career insurance why inbounds and zero expectation networking compound over time

23:09 Recruiter layoffs and the lesson growth without intention is fragile

34:51 Recruiting is not sales the reverse sell and why great recruiters highlight the risks first

42:01 AI sourcing tools versus real world relationships why touching grass still wins in 2026

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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.

If you’re in recruiting and care about:
• Speed that actually improves
• Data you can defend in exec meetings
• Recruiter capacity that isn’t duct-taped together
• Trust from leadership

I’d love to have you join a webinar I’m moderating on March 5th at 12 p.m. ET

I’m sitting down with Luke Switkowski, Katie Wagner, and Jeremy A. Lyons for a live conversation on RecOps.
Register here.

We talked about demystifying cleared recruiting, building candidate trust through personal brand, and the advice for why recruiters shouldn’t let applicants take themselves out of the game. Stephanie shared what it looks like to manage hundreds of applicants in hours, how ATS knockout questions really work, and why rejection is rarely personal. We also covered scheduling engineers who work inside SCIF environments, the growing risks of candidate fraud and bad actors, and how AI can help recruiters focus on fewer, higher quality conversations rooted in. respect. At the center of it all was her belief that recruiting is human work, and that even in classified spaces, empathy, clarity, and integrity still win.

Thanks for coming on the show, Stephanie! Connect with Stephanie here.

Timestamps

00:00 A recruiter changed my life

02:30 What cleared recruiting actually means

04:50 Changing lives through recruiting

05:35 Why cleared hiring is so opaque

07:50 Building a creator brand in a restricted space

11:00 Candidate trust and personal reputation

14:00 Recruiting as hospitality and marketing

16:00 AI, signal, and fewer better conversations

19:15 Applicants vs candidates and high volume roles

20:15 200 applicants in 90 minutes and ATS myths

22:15 Bringing humanity to automated rejections

24:10 Do not take yourself out of the game

27:00 15 rejections before Amazon

29:00 Your social footprint matters

30:35 Scheduling cleared engineers in SCIF environments

32:35 Candidate fraud and security threats

34:40 Keep going one step at a time

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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.

If you’re in recruiting and care about:
• Speed that actually improves
• Data you can defend in exec meetings
• Recruiter capacity that isn’t duct-taped together
• Trust from leadership

I’d love to have you join a webinar I’m moderating on March 5th at 12 p.m. ET

I’m sitting down with Luke Switkowski, Katie Wagner, and Jeremy A. Lyons for a live conversation on RecOps.
Register here.

Daniella came on the show to talk about what it really means to raise the bar while hiring 50, 100, or 200 people at a time, why speed without rigor compounds mediocrity, and how to audit and rebuild recruiting foundations inside scaling companies. Daniella shared her approach to documentation, ATS hygiene, scorecards, and retrospective analysis, along with her philosophy on “strong yes” versus “soft yes” feedback, hiring tradeoffs across time, quality, and cost, and whether personality assessments have a place in modern hiring. The conversation centered on building a recruiting machine that balances data and judgment while keeping the human element intact.

Thanks for coming on the show, Daniella! You can connect with her here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellabodansky/

Timestamps

00:00 Setting the tone and why recruiting is still a craft

03:00 From clinical research to in house startup recruiting

07:00 What to assess first when joining a scaling company

09:00 Speed versus rigor and why the bar has to go up

13:00 Hiring operators who can handle ambiguity and build from first principles

15:00 Quality of hire and the 30 and 90 day rehire test

19:00 Building an operations recruiting hub with documentation and dashboards

22:00 What makes a strong hiring manager partnership

26:00 Time, quality, and cost as hiring tradeoffs

29:00 Strong yes versus soft yes and eliminating vague feedback

31:00 Personality assessments, bias, and human judgment in hiring

37:00 Scaling recruiting infrastructure from early stage to global growth

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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.

If you’re in recruiting and care about:
• Speed that actually improves
• Data you can defend in exec meetings
• Recruiter capacity that isn’t duct-taped together
• Trust from leadership

I’d love to have you join a webinar I’m moderating on March 5th at 12 p.m. ET

I’m sitting down with Luke Switkowski, Katie Wagner, and Jeremy A. Lyons for a live conversation on RecOps.

Register here.

Brooke and I cover diagnosing broken hiring systems, eliminating unnecessary agency spend, injecting smart friction into the funnel, and why clarity beats complexity in modern recruiting. Brooke shares lessons from scaling high-volume teams, rebuilding employer brand after leadership turnover, and the difference between internal TA and fractional impact.
It feels like Brooke is one of those friends from the internet who has been a positive supporter in the comments, and quick to engage. Whether on LinkedIn, in the community at events, or industry webinar chats. So if you don’t already follow Brooke, be sure to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brookewheeler/

Timestamps:

00:00 Meet Brooke Wheeler: From agency roots to VP of TA to fractional advisor

02:00 The Atlanta recruiter community, RecFest, and why showing up still matters

05:00 Conferences as career leverage: Investing in yourself in a low-budget function

08:15 Internal TA vs. Fractional TA: Rapid diagnosis, trust-building, and seeing the full system

11:00 The rise of fractional recruiting and why agency experience is a superpower

12:30 The exploding ATS and HR tech landscape: More tools, more noise, more opportunity

15:30 Eliminating agency spend without burning bridges: Containing chaos and building partnerships

18:30 Why recruiting should have a bigger seat at the executive table

20:15 Diagnosing a “hot mess” hiring process: Start with structure, remove bottlenecks

23:00 One-size-fits-all hiring is broken: Speed, touch, and process must flex by role

25:00 Do candidates really hate interview rounds? Communication vs. round count

26:30 AI interviews, one-way video, and candidate sentiment in 2026

27:45 Behavioral vs. skills-based hiring: What actually predicts performance?

30:00 High-volume hiring done right: Deadlines, clarity, and disciplined execution

32:00 – Injecting friction back into the funnel in the age of AI applications

34:00 Radical clarity in job descriptions: Stop hiding the real job

35:45 Rebuilding employer brand after layoffs and leadership turnover

38:15 RecOps, AI adoption, and the overwhelm of modern recruiting tech

39:45 Who Brooke helps best and how to work with Restoration Talent Solutions

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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.

I sat down with Martel Howard to talk about sourcing the way it actually shows up in the work and some of the latest tooling. Martel is a technical sourcing specialist who thinks about profiles in the sense of character arcs which is pretty cool interpretation of keyword search.

We got into:

• Why curiosity is still the most valuable skill in sourcing

• Why it is not enough to read text on a resume

• How some of the best hires come from reading the gray.

He shared how:

• Building candidate personas creates institutional memory so teams are not starting from zero on every req

• How sourcing done well can dramatically improve pass through rates at the top of funnel.

We also spent time on Boolean, AI tools, and what changes as sourcing becomes more about talent intelligence.

Martel and I agree that AI is helpful, but only if you understand the foundations first. We talked about A/B testing search strategies, pulling silver medalists from the ATS, writing outreach that actually gets replies, and why sourcing is shifting toward a more strategic advisory role. The through line was simple. Data is easy to share, insight is harder to apply, and the real value of a sourcer is knowing how to use that insight to evolve the search.

And since “sourcer” remains undefined by spellcheck, here’s a reminder to sign the petition to get it added to the dictionary.

Timestamps

2:00 Martel’s background and why he gravitated toward technical sourcing
4:00 Rejection, resilience, and why recruiting is supposed to be hard
5:00 Building candidate personas and institutional sourcing memory
7:00 How Martel defines the sourcer ↔ recruiter handoff
9:00 What roles are getting the most traction right now
9:45 Why Boolean is still the foundation of great sourcing
12:00 Why Martel prefers outbound sourcing vs full-cycle recruiting
13:50 Curiosity as the most valuable sourcing skill
14:30 Reading resumes as character arcs and finding signal in the gray
17:00 A-B testing tools, Booleans, and search strategies
18:00 Martel’s hardest search and how an old JD changed everything
23:00 The future of sourcing as talent intelligence and strategic advisory

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.

In this conversation, Chris and I dig into what it actually means to be a sourcer in 2026. Not the “junior recruiter” version. The career sourcer who lives in the data, builds pipelines from zero to one, and earns a seat at the table by consistently delivering qualified submissions. And I live for this.

We spoke about man versus machine, why Boolean and X-ray search still matter, how to A/B test sourcing tools and outreach, and why response rate and pass-through rate are more meaningful than raw activity metrics. Chris also shares how community, free learning, and investing in yourself have shaped his career, plus what pulled him into advising Lex Duo and helping build tools for recruiters from folks who are doing the work.

If you care about precision sourcing, thoughtful outreach, and building pipelines that actually convert, it’d mean the world if you gave it a watch and shared with a recruiter friend.

Thanks so much for coming on the show, Chris. You’re a bright spot in the industry!

Connect with Chris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-carver94/

Show Notes

00:00 – Meet Chris “Aquaman” Carver and what he’s working on today
02:30 – What Chris sources at BECU (software, data, AI, and tech roles)
03:45 – What it means to be a sourcer in 2026
04:55 – Why sourcers are not “junior recruiters”
06:15 – Where the handoff happens between sourcer and recruiter
08:10 – Building pipelines in two weeks and earning a seat at the table
09:10 – The metrics that actually matter: submissions and pass-through rate
10:00 – Finding candidates who don’t have strong digital profiles
11:05 – Tools Chris trusts and why SeekOut, HireEZ, PIN, and Lex Duo stand out
12:10 – AI for research vs. humans for conversion
12:58 – Why A/B testing sourcing tools is non-negotiable
14:20 – Chris’s outreach sequencing and radical transparency in first messages
15:50 – How X-ray search has changed and why it’s still critical
18:05 – Giving back to the sourcing community through free webinars
21:05 – How reselling sneakers prepared Chris for sourcing
22:00 – Why some recruiters are intimidated by sourcing and how to get past it
25:00 – The future of AI sourcing is really about email deliverability
27:30 – What Chris reports up to leadership today
33:15 – Advice for recruiters who want to specialize in sourcing
35:10 – How Chris got involved with Lex Duo and Prospect Pro
38:30 – The “sourcer should be in the dictionary” petition
Sign here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScw8A0zAhUqKtSy_Z8m4R9zFSanINxvPolbNo-CbrIRXIRNlA/viewform?usp=header
38:40 – How to connect with Chris and get involved in his webinars

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.

Michael leads Global TA Ops and Sourcing at US Renal Care, where hiring outcomes are inseparable from retention, onboarding, and day-one readiness. This work is high-volume, high-stakes hiring in healthcare, where burnout is real, turnover is expensive, and process decisions show up fast in patient care and business continuity.

I’ve followed Michael’s writing through his Talent Transformer blog for a while, and he’s been someone I’ve wanted on the show because he doesn’t talk about RecOps like a tooling problem. He talks about it like an operating system. He’s led through mergers, unified fractured processes, worked with executives who need answers and spent years translating recruiting data into something leaders actually understand. This conversation went deep, fast.

Throughout the episode, we spend a lot of time on retention, and why most teams treat it as an HR problem when it’s actually a recruiting design problem that starts before day one. Michael breaks down why the first 45 days matter more than most TA metrics, how onboarding is one of the most underutilized levers in RecOps, and why explaining the why to hiring managers is the real test of operational maturity.

We also get into the parts of recruiting operations that don’t get enough airtime, like:

• Why RecOps needs to own the experience, not just the process

• Why stakeholder impact should come before system changes

• Why recruiters should stay connected through the first paycheck and beyond

• Why retention data tells a better story than time to fill

• Why earning a seat at the table starts with learning the business, not buying more tools

Michael also shares how he’s using AI practically, not to replace people, but to build dashboards, scorecards, and internal tools that help RecOps leaders move faster and speak the language of finance, operations, and leadership.

If you care about post-hire outcomes, real retention, and what RecOps should actually own in 2026, this episode is worth your time.

Thanks for coming on the show, Michael. This one hit exactly where the industry needs to be looking. See you in San Diego at TA Week!

Connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dallasmichaelgoldberg/

Timestamps
00:00 Why retention is the real recruiting metric
02:00 Michael’s background and operating in high-turnover environments
04:30 Unifying processes after acquisitions without breaking trust
06:45 Explaining the why to hiring managers
08:30 Onboarding as a retention lever
10:15 The first 45 days and why they matter
12:30 What recruiters should own post-hire
14:45 Checking in through the first paycheck
17:00 RecOps, data, and telling the right story to leadership
19:00 Building dashboards without waiting on engineering
21:00 AI as a force multiplier for RecOps
23:30 Learning the business to earn a seat at the table
26:00 Why empathy and operations have to coexist
28:30 What great RecOps leaders do differently in 2026

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.

Planning your 2026 recruiting events?
TalentSphere Summit is worth checking out, especially if the usual conference circuit isn’t doing it for you anymore.

Hosted by Talent Collective, it’s a two-day, in-person working summit designed around how recruiting actually operates today.
About AI in recruiting, talent intelligence, candidate fraud, and the systems teams are trying to make work in practice.

What I like:

Less stage content, more practitioner-led workshops, playbooks, and training sessions
Solution sessions and customer stories without glossy demos
Space to connect, reflect, and recharge with your TA homies

It’s structured more like a retreat than a traditional industry event, which honestly feels overdue.

Savannah, GA | Feb 9–11, 2026

Vibe Out → Use my code BJEFFS for $200 off.

https://talentcollective.zohobackstage.com/TalentSphereSummit#/

Erin is currently leading talent at Rox, an agentic CRM backed by Sequoia, GV, and General Catalyst, where he’s building hiring alongside product and engineering teams that are moving fast and making real tradeoffs. Before that, he worked directly with startup executives as a principal, stepping into moments where hiring wasn’t theoretical. It was mission-critical.

I’ve been wanting to have Erin on the show since we met on the internet over the summer. He’s been on every side of the table. He’s scaled recruiting firms and built proprietary platforms. He’s owned people tech and internal mobility at Yahoo, where systems, compliance, and scale actually matter. He’s recruited through hypergrowth, acquisitions, layoffs, and resets. And he’s done the work himself, not just designed it. Plus his name comes up in circles I’ve been running with, so it was about time. And for me honestly this conversation blew my expectations out of the water. You’ll see why at the end.

Throughout the episode we talk about why most recruiting teams still aren’t using AI in any meaningful way years into the hype cycle, and why that’s not a failure of recruiters but a signal that the problems haven’t been framed correctly. Erin breaks down the difference between sourcing and recruiting, and why understanding the business is still the most under-leveraged skill in the function. We get into why AI doesn’t replace recruiters so much as it compresses headcount, and why confusing those two ideas has created a lot of unnecessary fear in the market.

We also get into the parts of recruiting that don’t show up in dashboards, like:

• Why being in standups with hiring teams matters.

• Why trust sits with recruiters more than almost any other role.

• Why symmetry of information is the real unlock in hiring.

• Why video outreach works not because it’s novel, but because it restores context and humanity.

• And why so many teams are still solving the same problems they were solving a decade ago, just with shinier tools.

If you care about craft, signal, and outcomes in recruiting right now, give it a listen and send this to a recruiter friend.

If you’ve ever felt skeptical of the AI hype, frustrated by broken ops, or convinced that recruiting is more art than automation, there’s a lot to learn from how Erin thinks about the work. And I agree on a ton of it.

Thanks for coming on the show, Erin. This is truly one of those fast friendships. You’re the man.

Connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/techmatchmaker/

(Hah! I just saw the custom LinkedIn url “Tech Match Maker” well played, dude.)

Timestamps
00:00 Why the AI replacement question keeps missing the point in recruiting
02:00 Erin’s background and why she’s skeptical of recruiting hype cycles
04:45 Where innovation in recruiting actually starts and why pain, not tools, drives change
06:15 Why most recruiting teams still aren’t using AI two years in
07:25 Does AI replace recruiters or just reduce headcount
08:40 The danger of personifying AI and why “AI agents” miss the mark
10:30 Recruiter identity, value, and the difference between amplifying work and replacing people
11:35 Sourcing vs recruiting and why understanding the business is the real unlock
13:00 Why recruiters need to be in standups, not stuck downstream of decisions
14:45 Where recruiters actually develop craft: reps, pressure, and execution
16:30 Learning the business and becoming a true partner to hiring managers
18:00 Why great recruiters focus on symmetry of information, not volume
18:45 Using simple tools like video outreach to create real signal and better responses
20:10 What candidates actually want from recruiters right now
21:45 Why making candidates feel special still matters more than automation
23:00 How fast, decisive hiring beats dragged-out processes
24:30 Recruiting trust vs HR trust and why recruiters sit closer to the truth
26:00 Why recruiting is undervalued inside most org charts
27:30 How layoffs created more experienced, battle-tested recruiters
29:00 Recruiters as internal consultants, not resume servers
31:00 Broken recruiting business models and the flattening of service quality
33:00 A vision for recruiter-to-recruiter collaboration over competition
35:00 Why the future of recruiting is simpler, more human, and less hype

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.

Planning your 2026 recruiting events?

TalentSphere Summit is worth checking out, especially if the usual conference circuit isn’t doing it for you anymore.

Hosted by Talent Collective, it’s a two-day, in-person working summit designed around how recruiting actually operates today.

about AI in recruiting, talent intelligence, candidate fraud, and the systems teams are trying to make work in practice.

What I like:

• Less stage content, more practitioner-led workshops, playbooks, and training sessions

• Solution sessions, customer success stories, without glossy demos

• Space to connect, reflect, and recharge with your TA homies

It’s structured more like a retreat than a traditional industry event, which honestly feels overdue.

Savannah, GA | Feb 9–11, 2026

Vibe Out → Use my code BJEFFS for $200 off.

https://talentcollective.zohobackstage.com/TalentSphereSummit#/

Erin is currently leading talent at Rox, an agentic CRM backed by Sequoia, GV, and General Catalyst, where he’s building hiring alongside product and engineering teams that are moving fast and making real tradeoffs. Before that, he worked directly with startup executives as a principal, stepping into moments where hiring wasn’t theoretical. It was mission-critical.

I’ve been wanting to have Erin on the show since we met on the internet over the summer. He’s been on every side of the table. He’s scaled recruiting firms and built proprietary platforms. He’s owned people tech and internal mobility at Yahoo, where systems, compliance, and scale actually matter. He’s recruited through hypergrowth, acquisitions, layoffs, and resets. And he’s done the work himself, not just designed it. Plus his name comes up in circles I’ve been running with, so it was about time. And for me honestly this conversation blew my expectations out of the water. You’ll see why at the end.

Throughout the episode we talk about why most recruiting teams still aren’t using AI in any meaningful way years into the hype cycle, and why that’s not a failure of recruiters but a signal that the problems haven’t been framed correctly. Erin breaks down the difference between sourcing and recruiting, and why understanding the business is still the most under-leveraged skill in the function. We get into why AI doesn’t replace recruiters so much as it compresses headcount, and why confusing those two ideas has created a lot of unnecessary fear in the market.

We also get into the parts of recruiting that don’t show up in dashboards, like:

• Why being in standups with hiring teams matters.

• Why trust sits with recruiters more than almost any other role.

• Why symmetry of information is the real unlock in hiring.

• Why video outreach works not because it’s novel, but because it restores context and humanity.

• And why so many teams are still solving the same problems they were solving a decade ago, just with shinier tools.

If you care about craft, signal, and outcomes in recruiting right now, give it a listen and send this to a recruiter friend.

If you’ve ever felt skeptical of the AI hype, frustrated by broken ops, or convinced that recruiting is more art than automation, there’s a lot to learn from how Erin thinks about the work. And I agree on a ton of it.

Thanks for coming on the show, Erin. This is truly one of those fast friendships. You’re the man.

Connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/techmatchmaker/

(Hah! I just saw the custom LinkedIn url “Tech Match Maker” well played, dude.)

Timestamps
00:00 Why the AI replacement question keeps missing the point in recruiting
02:00 Erin’s background and why she’s skeptical of recruiting hype cycles
04:45 Where innovation in recruiting actually starts and why pain, not tools, drives change
06:15 Why most recruiting teams still aren’t using AI two years in
07:25 Does AI replace recruiters or just reduce headcount
08:40 The danger of personifying AI and why “AI agents” miss the mark
10:30 Recruiter identity, value, and the difference between amplifying work and replacing people
11:35 Sourcing vs recruiting and why understanding the business is the real unlock
13:00 Why recruiters need to be in standups, not stuck downstream of decisions
14:45 Where recruiters actually develop craft: reps, pressure, and execution
16:30 Learning the business and becoming a true partner to hiring managers
18:00 Why great recruiters focus on symmetry of information, not volume
18:45 Using simple tools like video outreach to create real signal and better responses
20:10 What candidates actually want from recruiters right now
21:45 Why making candidates feel special still matters more than automation
23:00 How fast, decisive hiring beats dragged-out processes
24:30 Recruiting trust vs HR trust and why recruiters sit closer to the truth
26:00 Why recruiting is undervalued inside most org charts
27:30 How layoffs created more experienced, battle-tested recruiters
29:00 Recruiters as internal consultants, not resume servers
31:00 Broken recruiting business models and the flattening of service quality
33:00 A vision for recruiter-to-recruiter collaboration over competition
35:00 Why the future of recruiting is simpler, more human, and less hype

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.

Planning your 2026 recruiting events?

TalentSphere Summit is worth checking out, especially if the usual conference circuit isn’t doing it for you anymore.

Hosted by Talent Collective, it’s a two-day, in-person working summit designed around how recruiting actually operates today.

about AI in recruiting, talent intelligence, candidate fraud, and the systems teams are trying to make work in practice.

What I like:

• Less stage content, more practitioner-led workshops, playbooks, and training sessions

• Solution sessions, customer success stories, without glossy demos

• Space to connect, reflect, and recharge with your TA homies

It’s structured more like a retreat than a traditional industry event, which honestly feels overdue.

Savannah, GA | Feb 9–11, 2026

Vibe Out → Use my code BJEFFS for $200 off.

https://talentcollective.zohobackstage.com/TalentSphereSummit#/

They need proof.

That was the starting point with Grayscale.

When Ty Abernethy, CEO of Grayscale came to us, the ask was very specific.
They wanted to document real customer stories in a way that felt serious, credible, and respectful of the complexity of high-volume hiring.

Their buyers are practitioners running massive hiring operations. They don’t want to be sold to. They want to hear from people doing the work.

The brief looked like this:

1. Film real customers, not scripted testimonials

2. Use a true documentarian Q&A format

3. Studio-shot, professional, centered on the subject

4. No influencer energy, no talking heads selling software

5. Let the customer tell the story in their own words

My role was behind the camera, not on it. Asking the questions. Creating space. Letting the conversation unfold the way it would if two operators were talking shop without a marketing team in the room.

We filmed five customers. Each one became a five-minute standalone story.

One example is a conversation with Stephanie Berg, who supports hiring for a retail organization with more than 35,000 employees and over 50,000 hires a year.

Her story wasn’t about features. It was about scale, pressure, and constraints.

Lean teams. Massive hiring volume. Frontline, professional, and medical roles all moving through the same system. The reality that one or two people often coordinate hiring for hundreds of roles across locations.

In that context, Grayscale shows up as infrastructure.

Automation that helps candidates take the next step without being chased. Notifications that move people to interviews and onboarding faster. A system that lets a small team do the work of a much larger one.

But what stood out most wasn’t the technology.

It was the partnership.

Stephanie talked about how Grayscale listened when the product didn’t yet match high-volume reality. How feedback turned into roadmap changes. How the team invested resources to make the platform work for organizations hiring at real scale. That willingness to adapt mattered as much as the automation itself.

By the end of the conversation, the outcome spoke for itself. Tens of thousands of hires completed across more than a thousand locations in a single year.

Why work with Building the Talent Machine for custom content?

Our job was not to polish that story.

It was to stay out of the way.

This is why we took a documentary approach. No voiceover. No on-screen persuasion. No forced soundbites. Just a professional environment where practitioners could explain what changed, why it mattered, and how it actually worked in their world.

That’s the lane we keep coming back to with HR tech vendors who sell to serious operators.

How we approached this campaign:

1. High production quality that signals respect for the buyer

2. A format that centers the customer, not the brand

3. A distribution channel that reaches real practitioners

4. A story that sounds like the hallway conversations buyers already trust

Grayscale didn’t need to manufacture credibility. They already had it in their customers.

They just needed a way to document it properly.

That’s what we built together.

Why work with Building the Talent Machine for custom content?

I’ve been on the vendor side. I’ve run marketing campaigns to recruiting buyers with small budgets, produced webinars, hosted events, identified partnerships, launched gifting campaigns, and operated more brand pages on social than I’d care to admit. I’ve helped build an agency and a community from zero. And I know how hard it is to cut through when every recruiter’s feed is flooded with tools promising to fix everything.

That’s why I only work with partners I know, like, and trust.

This is the model we keep coming back to for HR tech vendors who want to reach buyers without burning trust.

Our model explained:

1. High quality production

2. Credible on-air talent

3. Distribution to the right audience

As a partnership. And we move quickly.

Because the vendors that win long-term are the ones that respect recruiters enough to meet them where they are, tell the truth about the problem, and show their work.

That’s what we built with Grayscale. And that’s why we’re Building the Talent Machine.

What you need is a hype man. That’s where I come in.

One pattern has been impossible to ignore.

HR tech vendors are struggling to reach recruiting buyers in a way that feels credible, human, and useful. Not louder. Not more ads. Just clearer signal.

That’s the problem David Head came to us with.

David is the founder and CEO of Endorsed, and like a lot of founders in this space, he wasn’t trying to “do content.” He was trying to solve a very specific go-to-market challenge.

How do you introduce a serious product to recruiters in a way that actually earns trust?

The brief was straightforward:

1. Reach real recruiting buyers, not vanity impressions

2. Show the product in context, not in a sales demo

3. Use a credible on-air voice that understands the job

4. Deliver production quality that reflects the seriousness of the problem

5. Create a clear, simple CTA recruiters can act on immediately

The challenge was not awareness and credibility.

Candidate fraud has quietly become one of the most painful, time-wasting problems inside recruiting teams. Fake resumes. Fake identities. Fake work histories. Teams burning hours just trying to confirm whether an applicant is real before they even get to skills or fit.

This is the kind of problem recruiters talk about in private, not something they want sold to them with buzzwords.

So we approached this like a case study, not a campaign.

We built content around the real conversations recruiters are already having.
We focused on showing how the product works inside an actual workflow.

We kept the story anchored in the recruiter’s day, not the vendor’s roadmap.

Most importantly, we made sure the voice telling the story was someone recruiters already trust, me, Brandon.

That part matters more than most vendors want to admit.

Why work with Building the Talent Machine for custom content?

I’ve been on the vendor side. I’ve run marketing campaigns to recruiting buyers with small budgets, produced webinars, hosted events, identified partnerships, launched gifting campaigns, and operated more brand pages on social than I’d care to admit. I’ve helped build an agency and a community from zero. And I know how hard it is to cut through when every recruiter’s feed is flooded with tools promising to fix everything.

That’s why I only work with partners I know, like, and trust.

Endorsed didn’t need a louder message. They needed a clearer one.

The result was simple, high-signal content that did three things well:

1. It framed the problem in the language recruiters already use

2. It showed the product solving that problem in real time

3. It gave viewers a clear next step without pressure

No fluff. No hype. Just a product solving a real issue, explained by someone who understands the job on the platform recruiters built, LinkedIn.

This is the model we keep coming back to for HR tech vendors who want to reach buyers without burning trust.

Our model explained:

1. High quality production

2. Credible on-air talent

3. Distribution to the right audience

Not as a campaign. As a partnership. And we move quickly.

Because the vendors that win long-term are the ones that respect recruiters enough to meet them where they are, tell the truth about the problem, and show their work.

That’s what we built with Endorsed. And that’s why we’re Building the Talent Machine.

What you need is a hype man. That’s where I come in.

Tommy Hansen has built the talent machine at Juniper Square, where he’s led recruiting through rapid growth and cultural transformation. Over the years, Tommy has scaled global hiring, built a values-driven talent function from the ground up, and helped shape Juniper Square’s mission to make private markets more accessible. He also serves as Chair of the company’s Pride ERG, creating safe, authentic spaces for LGBTQIA+ employees while driving inclusion across the business.

In this conversation, Tommy and I get into what modern recruiting actually looks like when you’re building inside a high-growth tech company and trying to keep quality, speed, and candidate experience moving in the same direction. We talk about how AI is changing the work past sourcing, why the smartest teams are investing in RecOps as an operating system, and what it takes to develop recruiters who can keep up with the next era of hiring.

Tommy’s perspective is needed right now and he’s someone in the industry I respect a ton. (Literally go ask anyone, he’s legit as they come.) And right now with so much dialogue on tooling and the headlines about AI litigation, the teams who win will not be the ones who stack the most tools. They’ll be the ones who design better workflows, build real accountability into the interview process, and protect the human side of hiring even as automation increases. We also spend time on the practical reality of AI interviewers, what it solves, what it risks, and how to roll it out without creating a worse candidate experience in the name of efficiency.

If you’re a recruiter, RecOps leader, or TA owner wondering what “future-ready” actually means, this episode is a grounded look at where things are headed and what you can start building now. Mad respect to Tommy.

Connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommy-hansen-a3497626/

Timestamps
03:20 - What it looks like to build a talent function through growth and change
07:10 - AI in recruiting is moving past sourcing and into screening and decision-making
12:05 - AI interviewers: where they help, where they can backfire, and how to roll them out thoughtfully
18:40 - RecOps as talent engineering and why workflows matter more than tool count
24:15 - Developing recruiters with business acumen, not just task specialization
30:30 - Interview quality, hiring manager accountability, and what interview intelligence unlocks
37:10 - Candidate experience in an era of high volume and AI-generated noise
42:50 - What Tommy would do differently with AI adoption and internal enablement
47:30 - The skills that will matter most for recruiters over the next few years

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.

Quick note: I appreciate you being here and supporting Building the Talent Machine. If this one sparked ideas for how your team should evolve your recruiting workflows, share it with a recruiting leader or RecOps partner who’s building for the next cycle. And let me know in a quick email reply what you’re working on these days.

Tommy Hansen has built the talent machine at Juniper Square, where he’s led recruiting through rapid growth and cultural transformation. Over the years, Tommy has scaled global hiring, built a values-driven talent function from the ground up, and helped shape Juniper Square’s mission to make private markets more accessible. He also serves as Chair of the company’s Pride ERG, creating safe, authentic spaces for LGBTQIA+ employees while driving inclusion across the business.

In this conversation, Tommy and I get into what modern recruiting actually looks like when you’re building inside a high-growth tech company and trying to keep quality, speed, and candidate experience moving in the same direction. We talk about how AI is changing the work past sourcing, why the smartest teams are investing in RecOps as an operating system, and what it takes to develop recruiters who can keep up with the next era of hiring.

Tommy’s perspective is needed right now and he’s someone in the industry I respect a ton. (Literally go ask anyone, he’s legit as they come.) And right now with so much dialogue on tooling and the headlines about AI litigation, the teams who win will not be the ones who stack the most tools. They’ll be the ones who design better workflows, build real accountability into the interview process, and protect the human side of hiring even as automation increases. We also spend time on the practical reality of AI interviewers, what it solves, what it risks, and how to roll it out without creating a worse candidate experience in the name of efficiency.

If you’re a recruiter, RecOps leader, or TA owner wondering what “future-ready” actually means, this episode is a grounded look at where things are headed and what you can start building now. Mad respect to Tommy.

Connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommy-hansen-a3497626/

Timestamps
03:20 - What it looks like to build a talent function through growth and change
07:10 - AI in recruiting is moving past sourcing and into screening and decision-making
12:05 - AI interviewers: where they help, where they can backfire, and how to roll them out thoughtfully
18:40 - RecOps as talent engineering and why workflows matter more than tool count
24:15 - Developing recruiters with business acumen, not just task specialization
30:30 - Interview quality, hiring manager accountability, and what interview intelligence unlocks
37:10 - Candidate experience in an era of high volume and AI-generated noise
42:50 - What Tommy would do differently with AI adoption and internal enablement
47:30 - The skills that will matter most for recruiters over the next few years

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.

Quick note: I appreciate you being here and supporting Building the Talent Machine. If this one sparked ideas for how your team should evolve your recruiting workflows, share it with a recruiting leader or RecOps partner who’s building for the next cycle. And let me know in a quick email reply what you’re working on these days.

-Brandon