There aren’t many recruiting leaders who will 4x a company, support multiple acquisitions, roll out AI across the entire hiring funnel, and still run their own reqs. But that is exactly who Nick Larche is.
I met Nick early in my recruiting career at one of his HR UndergroundX meetups in Denver. Back then I was a young recruiter trying to figure out how to break into tech, and Nick was one of the only practitioners building real community. He created rooms where new recruiters actually felt welcome. Those nights changed my trajectory.
This episode brings all of that full circle. It might be one of the most grounded and honest conversations we have had on the show. And to do it on the balcony over looking the mountains in our community made it even that more special. So here’s what we talked about. (You can scroll through the headers if you want.)
The Rise of a Builder
Nick has been recruiting for 11 years, and six of those have been inside a single private equity backed software company, Unanet, which is almost unheard of in today’s market. Over that period he lived through everything the headlines have thrown at us: the COVID swing, the Great Resignation, hiring freezes, boomerang candidates, job hugging, and whatever new term the media invents next.
The fundamentals stayed the same. Build. Adapt. Ship. Improve. Repeat.
When he joined Unanet, the company had just taken on growth capital and needed to hire 65 people. It was the biggest hiring push in company history. There was no training, no job architecture, no consistency across teams, no process maturity. And he said yes.
That first year was exactly what you think it was. He chopped his own wood and carried his own water. No ego. No shortcuts. Just execution. He’s also very literally the kind of guy who chops wood, living in the mountains in Colorado with a pack of dogs and a righteous beard to prove it.
Eventually he built the foundation: job architecture, sourcing function, interview calibration, standardized training, M&A integration frameworks, and all the invisible infrastructure that actually makes scaling possible.
And he did it while working reqs.
Why Leaders Should Still Run Reqs
One of my favorite moments in conversations with Nick is the importance of talent leaders working reqs. And he explains why he still takes on searches today, even as a VP.
Tl;dr - You cannot lead recruiters if you have forgotten what their job feels like.
Teams lose trust when the leaders above them empathize in theory but have not run a pipeline review in years. Nick stays close. When his recruiter went on maternity leave, he ran all go to market reqs himself. He enjoyed the work.
If you have ever had a leader who could not run a real pipeline review, you know exactly why this matters. I talk about this all the time. I just don’t trust people who talk about recruiting who don’t work reqs. It’s too easy to be an expert on hiring these days. Why wouldn’t you want to get information from people doing the work? It’s pretty simple. And very obvious. Yet we see time and time again people on stages talking about work they haven’t done, haven’t done in years, are too scared to do. Let’s be honest, the consulting money isn’t that good.
The Reality of Hiring at Scale: A Role With 3,600 Applicants
Nick shared a story about a role that pulled in 3,600 applicants in less than two weeks.
Three thousand six hundred.
No recruiter can evaluate that many applicants in two weeks. It is not possible.
This is where AI actually matters. Not as hype. Not as theory. As operational reality.
Smart application review surfaced a qualified candidate who applied two days earlier and moved them to interview immediately. That is the job. Speed to the right person.
AI should accelerate access to the right candidates. It should not replace recruiters. It should not erase the human element. It should remove waste.
Nick uses AI everywhere it fits: sourcing, application review, transcription, interviewer coaching, operational hygiene, and candidate experience improvements. But he is honest about where the tech is still immature.
Interview Transcription: The Real Unlock
The real value of transcription is not note taking. It is accountability.
Recruiters get blamed for post hire outcomes even though we never see what happens inside hiring manager interviews. Transcription brings that into the light.
Talk ratios. Longest monologue. Patterns of interruptions. Coaching opportunities. And it aggregates across interview loops.
Nick is piloting a tool that sends hiring managers a weekly highlight reel showing moments where they interrupt candidates. It is simple and it works.
This is the future of AI in recruiting. Manager enablement, not recruiter replacement.
Candidate Fraud and Identity Verification
Candidate fraud is exploding. Fake resumes. Fake profiles. Fake interviewees. Nick believes that in a few years, one in four applicants could be fraudulent.
This is not only a problem for employers. It is a problem for real candidates who get scammed by fake recruiters pretending to extend offers.
We get ID checked for a $500 tool rental at Home Depot, but verifying identity for a job interview is suddenly controversial.
This is why the Greenhouse and Clear partnership matters. Other ATS companies will follow. Identity checkpoints before interview and before offer will become normal. Recruiters cannot waste time on fraudulent candidates while teams shrink and volume explodes.
Friction is good in the right places.
The Returnship Story
Nick shared one of the best sourcing stories of the season.
Unanet has a returnship program for people who have been out of the workforce for 12 months or more. Nick personally sourced a former educator and stay at home mom. She was not active. She did not have a polished profile. She was not applying to anything.
He found her by searching the acronym '“SAHM”. She interviewed. She crushed it. She has been a star.
This is why sourcing matters. This is why recruiting is still a relationship business. Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart. Nick is doing the work that matters for real people in the community. High paying job in tech for a remote company for someone out of work. I’m humbled in the presence of greatness. And Nick’s smile is absolutely contagious and motivating to go out an make a difference in the world through hiring.
The Metrics That Still Matter
Nick’s north star metric is offer acceptance rate. He has kept it at 92 percent for five years.
If you get that number right, it means everything upstream is working. The process worked. The pitch landed. Expectations aligned. The candidate experience held up.
He also focuses heavily on conversion metrics and interviewer experience. Great processes create great decisions.
Recruiting should not feel chaotic. It should feel guided.
What Recruiters Can Do to Get Better By Monday
Nick’s advice is simple. Experiment. Fail nine times. Keep the one thing that works. Double down.
And talk to people. Talk to hiring managers. Talk to candidates. Talk to peers. Recruiting is contact work. You get better in the arena.
Why This Episode Matters
AI will change recruiting. But it will not replace the fundamentals. And the people who understand both, the art and the science, will shape the next era of this industry.
Nick is proof. Not because he is a VP. Because he still works the reqs.
Thanks for coming on the show and allowing me to reflect on how special you truly are to this recruiting world, to the internet, the team you lead, and how you’ve helped me grow. Thank you, Nick. Thank you.
Episode 010 of Building the Talent Machine is out now 🔊
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