Starring recruiting leadership from everywhere under the talent acquisition sun, Talk Talent To Me is a fast-paced rough-and-tumble tour through the strategies, metrics, techniques, and trends shaping the recruitment industry. Brought to you by your pals at LHH.
Katie Rakusin, Director of Talent Acquisition at Merit America. has seen the AI hiring surge hit in real time: 33,000 applications in five months, 10,000 in May alone, and yes, the bots have officially arrived. The conversation covers how her team is restructuring its entire hiring process around the assumption that candidates are using AI, why stopping bot detection might actually be the smarter…
Jim has held senior people roles at Hulu and Quibi, but he'll tell you this job is different: the stakes are higher. The episode digs into why employer-sponsored healthcare is broken, how health deserts across rural America make virtual care a necessity, and why recruiters are leaving one of the most powerful differentiators in any offer completely undersold. Jim also weighs in on AI in the…
Steve Cadigan, the first CHRO of LinkedIn and one of the most candid voices in the talent space, discusses where AI is genuinely helping organizations and where it is quietly doing damage. Steve challenges the assumption that replacing humans with AI is a strategy, makes the case that entry-level talent is the most AI-fluent generation in history and companies are cutting them at exactly the wrong…
Quentin shares what it actually means to future-proof a workforce, introducing his the three box framework for simultaneously maintaining the present, abandoning the past, and building the future, and walks through a real case study from the SDN era when network engineers resisted upskilling into software roles, with consequences that still inform how he approaches change management today. The…
Show Notes Rob reunites with Erin Wilson, Talent Lead at Rox and a returning champion from the very first episode of Talk Talent to Me. Erin breaks down the two things Rocks screens for in every conversation, conviction and crank, explains why he still writes his own outreach by hand despite being one of the most AI-enabled recruiters working today, and walks through the exact tools and workflows…
Rob welcomes back Joe Bast, now SVP of People Operations at Crisp, for a wide-ranging conversation that covers what it really takes to operate at the executive level, why AI is not the equalizer most people think it is, and how the definition of retention needs a complete overhaul. Joe brings 25 years of hard-won perspective on building high-performing people functions at growth-stage companies,…
Donovan shares how he deliberately hires business leaders into HR, why TA and retention must operate as a single strategy, and how he's making the case to Millennial and Gen Z employees that staying at one company for a full career can be the best financial decision they make. If you lead a team or manage talent at any level, this episode is full of frameworks you can apply immediately. Key…
Lisa is a seasoned CHRO with over 20 years in HR to explore what it looks like to intentionally pause, reflect, and reimagine your next career chapter. Lisa shares how she recognized the natural end of a mission-driven CHRO role, why she's now considering a move into consultancy and fractional work, and what that says about how senior HR professionals are rethinking their careers. The conversation…
Rachel Duran has spent nearly 15 years building her career at the intersection of marketing and talent acquisition, moving through ad agencies, RPOs, and major tech companies. Rob and Rachel cover how the flood of AI-generated applications is forcing a fundamental rethink of what "success" looks like in recruiting marketing, why the candidate experience has to meet consumer-grade expectations, and…
Kevin breaks down how HR leaders can drive real business impact by aligning talent strategy directly to company goals, with a focus on scaling coaching as a lever for workforce performance and development. He shares how listening to employee feedback and preparing for the next phase of growth led his team to invest in coaching at scale, enabled by new technology that makes it accessible beyond…
