High Volume Hiring

Dwane Lay joins cohosts Jeanette Leeds and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site for a special episode recorded in Nashville, Tennessee at RecFest USA 2025.

Dwane is the Chief Innovation Officer at GBS Worldwide and author of Lean HR. He discussed the key differences between hiring at scale and recruiting for one-off, specialized roles, offering practical insights for employers managing both.

Dwane explained why most organizations don’t need more applicants - they need the right ones - and how to use data, incentives, and authentic employer branding to make that happen. He also shared how GBS applies IO psychology and AI-driven tools to help employers attract, engage, and retain talent at scale.

Employers looking to improve efficiency and create stronger candidate alignment will find Dwane’s perspective both actionable and refreshingly direct.

Today's guest on the High Volume Hiring Podcast is Dustin Leszcynski of Burlington Stores Inc, formerly known as Burlington Coat Factory. With more than 1,200 locations, it is the third largest off-price a/k/a discount retailer. Dustin as the Director of Talent Acquisition - Early Careers, oversees the hiring of some 300 interns and other early career employees a year for their corporate office. The thousands of hourly employees in their stores are hired through a separate team. 

Cohosts Jeanette Leeds and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site talk with Dustin about how Burlington Stores balances its needs related to the scale at  which it hires with its desire to hire the best candidates. That means providing a candidate-friendly process, even when it seems like the whole world is changing every day. For just about any organization hiring at scale, the challenges of rapidly changing technology, economic conditions, political considerations, and more are immense. 

You'll hear from Dustin how Burlington Stores is not just aware of the uncertain times, but is thoughtfully approaching them. Whether you're a candidate searching for a great new career, or an employer looking for best practices from a leading organization, you're going to want to look at Burlington Stores.

Today's episode of the High Volume Hiring Podcast is quite the milestone: our 100th episode. Wow. Some 90 percent of podcasts end after only one or two episodes and 90 percent by the 20th. Only one percent get past the 21st episode. So, yeah, 100 is quite the accomplishment.

Join us for a super fun, upbeat, informative episode. Together with cohosts Jeanette Leeds and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site, our guest, Javeed Khan ️ (جافيد خان) Khan, talks about his background in high volume recruitment with IBM, Mastercard, and KPMG and how those experiences led him to starting up agentic AI provider, tidyhire.

We talk about how high volume hiring is evolving, personalization at scale as Matt Alder talks about it, and the three focus areas for every TA professional.

On today's episode of the High Volume Hiring Podcast, Justin Olin of Upwage talks with us about the importance of caring at scale...and cohost Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site spends a little too much time talking about Wayne Gretzky.

Our other cohost, Jeanette Leeds, learns from Justin that Upwage's assessments are used by some of the world's largest organizations to help them better identify competencies, which are more predictive of workplace performance than job titles that you had with past employers, particularly for those who are early in their careers, applying for high-volume roles, or both.

As we close, we talk with Justin about where assessments should live in the hiring process. Should we just assess finalists? All applicants? Before allowing candidates to apply? He says none of the above, and where he says it should live might surprise you.

On today's episode of the High Volume Hiring Podcast, Steve Cadigan of Cadigan Talent Ventures joins us to talk about artificial intelligence.

Instead of either being all for it or all against it, Steve made it clear that he favors its use if done properly for the employer and candidate. Unfortunately, it often isn't. Sometimes, the errors will prove hard to fix. Other times, they'll be easy.

Cohosts Jeanette Leeds and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site also talked with Steve about his concerns about how some employers are choosing to use AI today such as focusing on cutting costs instead of the bigger opportunity of making current employees more productive.

It isn't every day that we get to talk with someone who helped to build an incredibly valuable product while at LinkedIn or who helped bring the talents of great teachers to millions while at Khan Academy or who is helping to massively improve how early career hiring is done. But, that day is today. Today's guest on the High Volume Hiring Podcast is Jeremy Schifeling of The Job Insiders. Together with cohosts Jeanette Leeds and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site, we talk about how schools, employers, and candidates are using AI and how they should be using it.

For the past couple of years, listeners to the High Volume Hiring Podcast have heard cohosts Jeanette Leeds and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site talk many times about artificial intelligence. What is it? Is it really impacting talent acquisition? What's coming? 

Today's guest, Mike Wolford of Lex Duo, joins us to talk about an aspect that we've barely covered: agentic AI. We can't think of a better person to talk about what it is, what it can do today, what it will be able to do tomorrow, and what TA should do to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks. After all, Mike's the guy who literally wrote the books on AI's use in recruiting and AI-driven workforce analytics, talent intelligence, and predictive hiring strategies.

In addition to talking in plain English about what TA can and should use agentic AI for, we also dig into the business aspects, such as how to communicate its use to candidates. Too many organizations are using AI and yet afraid or ashamed to admit it. Instead, we should be proud of embracing technology and transparency sharing how we do so.

On today's episode of the High Volume Hiring Podcast, Gino Ferrand, the CEO and founder of TECLA, joins us to talk about how midmarket and large organizations continue to hire engineering talent at scale that is remote and nearshore, or even offshore. 

Software development and other engineering work almost all went fully remote in early 2000 but, since then, employer after employer have encouraged or even forced many of those workers back to in-person work in the offices of the employers. Some workers need to come into the office a few times a month, others a few times a week, and others every day. Interestingly, that hasn't seemed to impact how those same organizations view their international contractors.

Cohosts Jeanette Leeds and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site also talked with Gino about some of the biggest failures and successes by these organizations. We didn't expect it, but Gino essentially said that they're both related to the same part of the hiring process.

Today's guest on the High Volume Hiring Podcast is Sam Fitzroy, co-founder and CEO of Dalia. Some of our listeners may also know Sam from his work at was then a little start-up called Indeed and, later, TheMuse.

Cohosts Jeanette Leeds and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site talk with Sam about the markedly different conversion rates employers see from candidates who come from organic (free) sources such as Google, Bing, and ChatGPT versus from sponsored (paid) sources such as job boards like Indeed, LinkedIn, and College Recruiter. 

We also talk about how it is important to treat those candidates differently. For example, Dalia's data showed that it didn't help better candidates from sponsored sources into applicants or hires, but it had a massive, beneficial impact on those from organic sources. So, for most clients, Dalia will recommend jobs and request emails and mobile numbers from candidates who are about to exit without applying if those candidates came from organic, but not sponsored, sources.

Today's employers, particularly those hiring at scale, need an "all of the above" strategy, where they don't rely just on job boards, or just on SEO, or just on a better ATS experience. And products like Dalia fit very nicely into creating a better ATS experience for candidates without taking anything away from the recruiter experience.

For decades, employers have used more and more technology that is more and more sophisticated to allow them to sift through more and more job applications. But there's been a fundamental change in the playing field: candidates are now using similar technology to allow them to apply to more and more jobs.

Cohosts Jeanette Leeds and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site welcome to the High Volume Hiring Podcast our guest, Andrew Gadomski of Aspen Analytics. He discussed how these competing tools interact, why candidates are using tech to apply to jobs, and how employers should respond.

Oh, and you won't want to miss Andrew's brilliant idea for how Hilton and Marriott Hotels might, in a way that surprised us, be a big part of the solution.