Talk Talent To Me

Hosted by Rob Stevenson: Recruiting, Employer Branding, and Career Growth Expert.

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423

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Aug 2026

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About the show

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.

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60 recent

August 28, 202624 min

Inside the CHRO Role with Takkion's Marie Wardenski

Show Notes: Rob goes in-person for this one, recording live at Takkion HQ in Denver with CHRO Marie Wardenski. Takkion is a major player in clean energy with around 2,000 employees, 85% of whom are traveling wind technicians who never have the option to work from home, which makes the people function both critical and complex. Marie brings 20 years of HR experience across higher education, chemical distribution, oil and gas, and now renewables, and she has a lot to say about how HR earns its seat at the table, why the "policy police" reputation existed and how it gets dismantled, and what it actually takes to ascend to a CHRO role. This one is grounded, candid, and full of practical wisdom for anyone trying to build a career in people leadership. Key Takeaways: HR metrics only land with senior leadership when they are already framed in terms of business goals, not HR goals The policy police reputation was earned, and dismantling it requires HR to be proactive, not reactive, and visibly tied to strategic outcomes If you have a computer problem, you call IT. If you have a people problem, you call HR. Every problem is ultimately a people problem Being in office requires just as much intentionality as being remote. Physical proximity does not automatically create collaboration Business acumen is not optional for senior HR leaders. You will need to build it deliberately outside of your day-to-day work Understand the business you are in. HR can work in any industry, but the leaders who rise are the ones who become genuine thought partners to operations, not just subject matter experts in their own function Links: Marie on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production

August 25, 202627 min

Insatiable Curiosity & Talent Transformation with Selena Yuan

Selena is the Executive Director and Global Head of Talent Management at Cytokinetics, and brings a global perspective shaped by her upbringing in Beijing, a career that has wound through consulting, M&A integration at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, and culture transformation at Gilead. The conversation covers how to lead people through business transformation rather than just announce it, why 360 feedback only works when the recipient is ready to receive it, the architect versus contractor framework for thinking about senior leadership, and why HR needs to stop defending legacy processes and start asking harder questions about whether they still work. This one is for HR and talent leaders who want to think more provocatively about the function and their own role in it. 🔑 Key Takeaways 360 feedback only works when the recipient is genuinely ready to receive it. Rolling it out org-wide without a readiness check is a waste of everyone's time. Feedback meant to vent and feedback meant to help are not the same thing and should not be weighed the same way. The architect sets the vision and the blueprint. The contractor executes the room. Organizations in transformation need leaders who can hold both, not just one. The 70-20-10 learning model says 70% of development happens on the job, yet most L&D budgets still go to the 10% classroom training bucket. Ask why before defending it. 🔗 Links Selena on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production

July 29, 202632 min

33,000 Applications and Counting: Navigating the AI Hiring Surge with Katie Rakusin of Merit America

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 move, and how a real four-day work week gets built and protected at scale. Katie also makes a strong case for why human judgment should be the last thing you automate, and what early-career TA pros need to hear about staying relevant in a market that keeps changing underneath them. Katie on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production Key takeaways Stop trying to detect AI in applications. The detective work is exhausting, biased, and misses great candidates It's not "did you use AI?" It's "can you defend and own what's on the page?" AI can surface and prioritize candidates, but a human must make every decision on whether someone moves forward. Surfacing is not the same as deciding. A four-day work week only works if leadership actually models it. Write your rubric before you turn on any AI screening tool, or you will just be scaling your existing biases across thousands of candidates.

July 24, 202627 min

Included Health CPO Jim O'Gorman

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 healthcare context, why employees quietly using ChatGPT for health questions is a real risk employers are ignoring, and why the companies that laid people off in the name of AI efficiency are the ones now quietly backtracking. For HR, TA, and total rewards leaders, this one is a genuine perspective shift. Key takeaways Healthcare is table stakes today but will soon be a true talent differentiator Health deserts in rural America mean virtual care is not a perk, it is the only path to timely, quality care for millions of employees. Recruiters routinely glaze over benefits in the offer conversation and are leaving a major differentiator on the table. Employees are already using ChatGPT for health decisions every night. Employers who ignore this are not protecting anyone. AI adoption is an evolution, not a revolution. The companies that treated it as the latter and cut headcount are the ones now backtracking. Do many different things early in your career. The broader your exposure before you specialize, the smarter and more strategic an HR leader you become. Links Jim on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production

June 30, 202643 min

LinkedIn's First CHRO Steve Cadigan on AI Mistakes & Opportunities

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 moment, and shares what Prudential is doing with skills mapping that every organization should pay attention to. He also gets personal about why he walked away from the C-suite, what it actually takes to build a culture where experimentation is safe, and why the human skills of communication, conflict resolution, and influence matter more right now than any AI tool. If you lead people, hire people, or advise organizations on talent, this one is essential. Key Takeaways: Most recruiting AI is solving a volume problem, not a quality one, and the candidate experience is paying the price. Cutting entry-level roles to save costs is a three-year recovery problem in the making. Prudential maps every new hire's skills to every job in the company on day one. Steve thinks every organization should be doing this. The consulting firms AI was supposed to replace are now being hired to manage AI adoption, because the real challenge is cultural, not technical. AI tools were built by tech companies and handed to the rest of us half-formed. We are the foster parents now. Conflict resolution, clear communication, and influence are the skills that win right now, more than any AI tool. Links Steve on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production

June 26, 202633 min

Freewheel Chief Global People Officer Quentin SaLay

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 conversation digs into who owns career development, why network leadership across companies matters more than most HR functions realize, and the concrete steps Quentin is taking right now to audit skills gaps and redesign workflows with AI. This is essential listening for any HR or TA leader thinking about org design, leadership development, or how to get ahead of the next skills shift before it becomes a crisis. Key takeaways The three box solution for future-proofing talent: Maintain the present, abandon the past, and build the future, all at once. Quentin breaks down how to identify the sacred cows holding your org back and the skills your business will need three to five years out. A real-world cautionary tale on resisted upskilling: During the rise of software-defined networking, network engineers who refused to learn Python and software development were eventually exited from the company. Quentin unpacks the identity risk and lack of "what's in it for me" framing that drove the resistance. Talent is not an HR lever, it's the lever: Quentin makes the case that systems, products, and strategy all execute through people, which means leadership development and org design belong to every leader, not just HR. Career ownership is a partnership, but the employee is the true owner: Companies are responsible for providing pathways, learning, and development programs. Employees are responsible for deciding what they actually want and pursuing it with intention. Skip the echo chamber, call your peers: Quentin pushes leaders to look outward across companies and industries rather than only inward, since the biggest blind spots often come from assuming everyone is solving the same problem the same way. A practical AI playbook, not a moonshot: Quentin's approach starts small: audit skills gaps, redesign one workflow with AI rather than trying to transform everything at once, and reinvest the time savings into building more strategic capabilities across the team. Links Quentin on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production

May 29, 202631 min

Conviction, Crank, and Craft with Rox Talent Lead Erin Wilson

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 he has built inside Claude and Slack to run a world-class talent function as a team of one. If you want a ground-level view of where recruiting is headed and what separates the operators who thrive from the ones who get left behind, this episode delivers. Key takeaways Screen for conviction and crank, not just credentials: Rox evaluates every candidate on two dimensions: do they genuinely want to be on this mission, and can they move fast and execute collaboratively? Pattern recognition and cross-functional fluency matter more than any single technical skill. AI can identify talent. It cannot build the relationship: Erin uses AI heavily for sourcing and archetype decomposition, but writes his own outreach, records personal video pitches with zero AI, and is hitting 60 to 66 percent response rates. The delivery is still human. Build where your stakeholders already live: Erin solved the eternal problem of getting hiring teams to log feedback into an ATS by routing everything through Slack. No behavior change required, and the ATS stays clean automatically. The best workflow is the one people actually use. The recruiter's real job is coaching hiring managers: As a team of one supporting 150 people, Erin's leverage comes from turning every hiring lead into a capable recruiter for their team. Scheduling and admin are automated so he can spend his time on the reps that actually build that capability. Continuous feedback loops beat static dashboards: Erin's Slack channels function as live learning loops, ingesting recruiter observations, candidate signals, and hiring team feedback in real time. His AI is never starting cold because it is always being fed fresh context. Speed and sustainability are not opposites: Erin is one of the fastest-moving recruiters in the market and is also present with his four kids every evening. The agents handle the admin while he is offline. Moving fast does not have to mean being always on. Erin on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production

May 27, 202639 min

Crisp SVP People Ops Joe Bast

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, and he does not hold back. From managing up to a CEO, to the slow erasure of entry-level talent pipelines, to why your critical talent should want for nothing, this episode is a masterclass for any HR or TA leader trying to do the job at the highest level. Key Takeaways If the CEO keeps checking in, you do not have their trust: Joe's framework for earning executive confidence is simple: demonstrate competence, state your outcome, get quick wins, and let your results do the talking. Frequent check-ins are a warning sign, not a perk. AI is not making mediocre talent better: B or C players with AI produce more output faster, but the quality problem does not go away. Joe makes the case that tolerating AI slop is on leaders as much as the people generating it. AI is eliminating the entry-level pipeline: When sourcing and screening roles are automated, junior talent never gets the reps they need to become senior. This is a five-to-eight year talent development crisis already in motion. Retention means something different now: Joe traces the evolution from voluntary vs. involuntary, to regrettable vs. non-regrettable, to what he argues is the only metric that matters: retention of critical talent. Everything else is noise, or actively harmful to hold onto. Your critical talent should want for nothing: High base, strong benefits, generous PTO. The only thing you want your best people thinking about is the work. If they are worrying about healthcare or comp, you have already lost focus where it counts most. Getting hired still comes down to who you know: With AI flooding inbound pipelines, referrals are the fastest path to a new role. Joe's playbook: activate your network immediately, ask who they know, and stack LinkedIn recommendations from every job you leave. Links Joe on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production

May 22, 202635 min

Re-Thinking Retention with Langan CHRO Donovan Mattole

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 takeaways Hire business leaders into HR: Top field leaders and MBAs with no HR background can elevate an HRBP team faster than traditional hiring. Business credibility is teachable on the HR side; leadership instincts are harder to develop from scratch. TA and retention are one strategy: Filling the top of the funnel while losing people out the back is a losing game. Breaking down silos between TA, L&D, and rewards is what closes the gap. Teamship over hierarchy: Donovan replaced a siloed COE structure with peer accountability across the full HR team. The result is a function that operates as one unit rather than five separate groups reporting up. The long-career argument is back: Employee ownership, long-term incentives, and genuine development investment can make staying at one company the smarter financial move, even for employees who have been told job-hopping pays more. HR lives in the gray: A real-world parental leave disclosure scenario illustrates how the best HR decisions require legal knowledge, business judgment, and employee empathy all at once. Black and white answers rarely exist. Never lose the human in HR: Donovan's advice for aspiring CHROs is simple: learn the business, but never let that come at the cost of kindness, empathy, and being a genuine employee advocate. Links Donovan on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production

April 30, 202626 min

Building a Future-Proof People Agenda with Lisa Skinner Källström

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 moves into broader territory around the future of the people function: how HR can stop fighting for a seat at the table and just earn it, why the people agenda must be woven into the business strategy, and how AI is an opportunity for HR to finally demonstrate its highest-value work. Whether you're a CPO navigating an org transformation or an HR leader wondering how to stay relevant in an AI-accelerated world, this episode offers a grounded, practical perspective from someone who has lived it. Key Takeaways Knowing when a mission is complete Consulting and fractional work as a career move The people agenda is not separate from business strategy Psychological safety and the "always-on" work culture AI as a liberator, not a threat Staying relevant means running toward change Links Lisa on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production