In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Taylor Nelson, Talent Manager at Filevine, the legal AI platform that grew from 230 to over 900 employees in the two and a half years since he joined as recruiter number three. Taylor started out hiring 50 people a week in high-volume staffing, and that agency DNA still shapes how his team of nine runs today.

Taylor walks through the shift from operator to manager: letting go of the protective, commission-driven island mindset, moving from responsible for me to responsible for we, and the line from his own manager that stuck: you don't get points for doing it all yourself. His team fills every role in under 30 business days against an industry standard of 40 to 60, runs default aggressive communication with hiring managers, and fills out an intake sheet before any job is posted.

He also shows the data spine behind the growth: recording himself doing 26 minutes of onboarding admin per hire to justify a recruiting coordinator who now saves each recruiter three hours a week, forecasting headcount with finance (270 hires projected this year, 300 done by late July), and what he would do differently, from hiring that coordinator on day one to unblocking technical hiring faster. Plus the question every recruiter now faces: telling the candidates who use AI as a resource from the ones using it as a crutch.

Timecodes

01:18 Welcome and Taylor's background

02:00 Psychology degree to 50 hires a week in agency staffing

03:53 Recruiter number three at Filevine, now a team of nine

04:59 From me to we: the first-time manager shift

08:48 Agency habits worth keeping: 30-day fills and default aggressive

11:27 Building the case for more headcount with data

14:25 The coordinator math: 26 minutes per hire, three hours back per recruiter

15:58 Workforce planning with finance: 270 projected, 300 by July

18:16 What he would do differently

20:45 Intake sheets and the prioritization template

21:39 Manager habits: blocked time and specific sourcing sprints

23:53 Candidates using AI: resource or crutch

27:19 Three takeaways for first-time managers

30:09 The balcony and the dance

33:05 Where to find Taylor

___________________________

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/

Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/

___________________________

Connect with Taylor Nelson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylornelsonhr/

Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/

___________________________

RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with John Keenan, Director of International Talent Acquisition at Gong, the revenue AI company, where he leads recruiting across EMEA and APAC from Dublin. He has spent nearly 20 years in TA, from agency recruiting to LinkedIn, Pluralsight and now Gong, and he is also an executive coach.

John's rule for AI in recruiting is to start with the pain point, not the tool. He walks through how he runs his week through Claude as an operating system, connectors and MCPs feeding a weekly-planning agent off a now.md file, why ATS data integrity now decides the quality of every insight, and the RAPID decision framework he uses to give hiring managers clear ownership. He and Adriaan get into the moment AI-generated content started irritating everyone, hiring for AI literacy, and where AI interviewers actually fit: useful for junior and volume screening, off the table for senior hiring.

Timecodes

01:09 Welcome and John's background

02:17 What Gong does: revenue AI, 1,400 people

03:14 Don't start with the technology, start with the pain points

05:17 Claude as an operating system: connectors, MCPs, a weekly agent

07:14 Building the planning agent and the human stack

09:05 Why ATS data integrity now decides everything

10:03 Rolling Claude out to the team: licenses, training, AI for coaches

12:34 The AI-generated proposal that irritated everyone

14:07 An agent for mid-year reviews from 1:1 recordings

15:39 AI literacy as a hiring signal

16:18 Fake and AI-polished candidates: is inbound a bottleneck?

18:03 The RAPID framework: clarity on who decides

20:07 AI for bias mitigation and interview consistency

22:03 Will AI interviewers replace recruiters?

24:54 The mobile-phone news clip, and what normalises

25:45 Making time to think and build with AI

27:04 Where to find John

___________________________

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/

Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/

___________________________

Connect with John Keenan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkeenanlinkedin/

Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/

___________________________

RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Syed Ali Abbas, Global Vice President of People for Business Units at HelloFresh Group. He has led HR at AT&T and PacNet Group, invests in early-stage HR startups, and does stand-up comedy.

Most companies ask how AI can make HR more efficient. Abbas asks a different question: how does AI change the business, therefore the organisation, therefore HR? He covers what that means for HRBPs, talent acquisition and L&D, why the companies that cut deepest hired people back six months later, and how HelloFresh combined AI, robotics and supply chain software so packing productivity doubled without replacing anyone. One pilot centre now offers 350 meal options instead of 50.

Timecodes

00:00 Cold open

01:36 Welcome and Abbas's background

02:35 A year of stand-up, and roasting HR from the inside

06:29 The question most companies ask about AI, and the better one

07:18 FOMO, token maxing, and "what's the plan and what's the payoff?"

09:31 What the reframe means for HRBPs, talent acquisition, and L&D

13:08 Inside HelloFresh: anonymous AI self-assessment and partner workshops

15:02 Tool access, the IT and legal review team, training the leaders first

17:36 HelloFresh in context: 20,000 people, a 400-person people team

18:14 Incremental mindset vs exponential mindset

20:37 Why the companies that cut deepest hired people back six months later

22:14 "Technically I'm pretty basic": Abbas on his own AI journey

23:56 The four-hour Claude workforce planning experiment

26:34 Peak hype, the trough of disillusionment, and not panicking

32:19 The installed base problem, and why people are the hardest part

34:21 Pull factors and push factors in a transformation

35:44 AI, robotics and 350 meals: inside the HelloFresh production centre

40:32 How to reach Abbas

___________________________

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/

Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/

___________________________

Connect with Syed Ali Abbas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/syedaliabbashr/

Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/

___________________________

RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Karim Gharsallah, Head of Talent Acquisition at BDR Thermea, the 7,000-person European manufacturer of boilers and heat pumps. Karim opened their prep call with three words: "Adriaan, I hate AI."

The nuance is what makes this episode. Karim does not hate the technology, he hates what it is doing to how we communicate: every LinkedIn post with the same structure, personality fading out, and companies believing a tool will fix problems they have not defined. His line for it: a tool is not a strategy. Meanwhile he uses Claude every day, for the deep work of building the business case for a centralized TA function and for structured interview guides, and BDR Thermea's policy has just moved from "no AI" to public-information-only.

He walks through the Recruitment Blueprint he is building: why companies that start by hiring recruiters end up with inconsistent processes, unclear ownership and agencies everywhere; taking ten steps back to define what recruitment should be; governance and hiring guides first; a baseline across seven countries; intelligent alignment instead of centralization for its own sake; the Ulrich model; and a flexible mix of roughly 60-70% in-house with RPOs and agencies for the rest.

Karim and Adriaan also get into the move from scale-ups (VanMoof, and Recruitee where he was Global Head of TA) to a 7,000-person corporate: decision speed, pacing yourself, and why every company thinks it is uniquely complicated while having exactly the same hiring problems.

Timecodes

01:09 Welcome and Karim's background

02:54 "Adriaan, I hate AI": the nuance behind it

04:39 Where Karim actually uses AI, and why he switched to Claude

05:22 BDR Thermea's AI policy: from "no AI" to public-information-only

06:38 AI use cases for a head of TA

07:46 Karim turns the table: AI fatigue

09:41 How Matchr is doubling down on AI

10:40 Rebuilding a website with AI instead of a 20,000 euro project

12:49 The Recruitment Blueprint: take ten steps back

14:21 BDR Thermea: 7,000 people, decentralized by acquisition

16:50 Centralize or not: intelligent alignment

18:30 The Ulrich model and building the baseline

20:57 "Every company thinks they're uniquely complicated"

21:49 From scale-up to corporate: the speed of decisions

23:24 AI principles before AI tools

25:26 Where to follow Karim

___________________________

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/

Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/

___________________________

Connect with Karim Gharsallah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karimgharsallah/

Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/

___________________________

RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Tracy St.Dic, Global Head of Talent at Zapier, the fully remote automation company of nearly 1,000 people across 42 countries. Before Zapier she was Senior Vice President of Recruitment at Teach For America, responsible for the largest and most diverse teacher pipeline in the US.

Zapier assesses every hire, for every role, against an AI fluency rubric, now on version two because the internal team upskilled past version one within a year. Tracy breaks down its four components, why she measures the slope and not the snapshot (how fast people learn hard things), and what their AI recruiter found at the top of the funnel: 70 to 80% noise in technical pipelines, hidden gems among the auto-rejected, and candidate opt-in that grew from roughly a third to 81%. Plus where to start if your team is not AI native yet: deterministic automation and protected build time.

Timecodes

01:04 Welcome and Tracy's background

02:17 Zapier in context: 1,000 people, 42 countries, fully remote

04:00 The 2023 "code red" that started AI fluency at Zapier

07:25 Inside the rubric: mindset, strategy, building, accountability

10:38 Four assessment points in the hiring process

11:49 The slope, not the snapshot

15:14 The AI recruiter at the top of the funnel

18:59 What candidates actually think of AI interviews

22:03 The AI surfaces, the recruiter decides

24:15 Rebuilding the hiring process for an AI-enabled world

27:40 What happens to the recruiter role

29:40 Where TA leaders should start: automation first

32:59 Build days: how the team upskills every three weeks

36:00 Where to follow Tracy

___________________________

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/

Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/

___________________________

Connect with Tracy St.Dic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-stdic/

Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/

___________________________

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Zapier's AI fluency rubric (v2), by Tracy: https://zapier.com/blog/raising-ai-fluency-bar-in-hiring/

___________________________

RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Marcus Pask, a talent acquisition leader with 20 years in the field who is now helping AI infrastructure company Nebius scale from 300 to 3,000 people in 18 months.

Marcus started on an agency desk at 18, worked with investment banks at Hays, ran go-to-market hiring at Expedia, then joined Miro at around 200 people and helped scale it to 2,500 while leading global tech recruitment. Today he is a fractional TA consultant at Nebius, the engine room behind the AI boom, building the data centers that companies like Meta and Microsoft run on.

He explains why this growth is different: it is tied to contracts that are already signed, not projected revenue. He walks through the hiring problem nobody talks about, the builders, electricians and specialists who put data centers up in remote locations, who are not on LinkedIn and are now at a premium. And he shares how Nebius brings talent acquisition into the conversation early with talent maps, relocation incentives and rotating build teams.

Marcus and Adriaan also get into why neither of them is worried about AI replacing recruiters any time soon, how automation is shifting coordinators toward TA operations, and how both Nebius and Matchr are adopting AI with the right guardrails and context.

Timecodes

01:07 Welcome and Marcus's 20 years in talent acquisition

03:40 Leaving Miro, career coaching, and joining Nebius

07:30 Lessons from starting a podcast

13:30 MIT, robots, and exponential growth

15:43 What Nebius is: the engine room behind the AI boom

17:24 Why growth is tied to signed contracts, not projections

19:13 Hiring for data centers in the middle of nowhere

23:30 Will AI take recruiters' jobs?

29:26 From coordinators to TA operators

34:53 Using AI at Nebius and Matchr with the right context

48:21 How the Matchr and Nebius partnership came about

51:40 Where to find Marcus

___________________________

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/

Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/

___________________________

Connect with Marcus Pask: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuspask/

Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/

___________________________

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Talent Unplugged Across the Pond, Marcus's podcast with co-host Megan: https://www.youtube.com/@talentunpluggedacrossthepond

Shaping Your Path, Marcus's job search and career coaching: https://shapingyourpath.com

___________________________

RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Wesley Gilbert, Head of Talent Acquisition at Manychat. Wesley's career has been built inside some of the most talked-about scale stories in tech: Google, four years at Uber as EMEA hyperscaled from 2,000 to 20,000 people, then four years at On Running, where he led global TA as the company grew from 300 to 3,000 employees and built the retail business from zero to around a thousand.

Wesley walks through how On Running's founders refused to copy the Nike and Adidas playbook and instead built a two-tier hiring strategy: high-potential talent who would grow up inside the culture, and senior leaders pulled from tech, FMCG and luxury who shared the brand's passion but brought outside-industry thinking. He explains how the team broke down the company's values into an assessment model, why interview rounds were intentionally longer, how MetaView and structured debriefs raised interview quality at scale, and where On's approach differed from Uber's competency-first, talent-density model.

Wesley also talks about the move to Manychat, where AI, the creator economy and a more competency-driven culture have shaped how he is rebuilding the TA function. He shares the leadership lessons that took him longest to learn: stepping back from being the expert in the room, the 'big rocks' framework his CEO at On gave him, and how to build a leadership team you can lean on when your function scales past what one person can hold.

Timecodes

00:59 Welcome and Wesley's background: Google, Uber, On Running, ManyChat

02:22 Thriving in high-intensity, build-from-scratch environments

03:54 Joining On Running at 300 people: a Swiss startup with a culture-first vision

06:18 Why On refused to copy Nike and Adidas, and the two-tier hiring strategy

08:58 The three risks of hypergrowth: quality, culture and diversity

10:08 Scaling from 300 to 3,000: how to convince talent before the brand was known

11:05 Defining what "top talent" actually means and turning values into an assessment model

18:17 Why On's process had six to seven rounds, and the experience day in Zurich

20:43 What Uber did differently: competency over culture, and country-by-country startups

23:56 Joining ManyChat and what the platform does for content creators

27:20 Standardising and professionalising the ManyChat recruitment process

30:12 Lessons in hindsight: positioning TA as a strategic function, not an executional one

32:39 Learning to delegate, build a leadership team and stop being the expert in everything

35:24 The 'big rocks' framework Wesley's CEO Martin shared with him at On

37:35 Adriaan on his own move from day-to-day operator to founder on the balcony

42:16 Where to connect with Wesley

___________________________

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/

Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/

___________________________

Connect with Wesley Gilbert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wezgilbert/

Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/

___________________________

RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

What does AI actually change inside the people function?

In this episode of The Leaders in Talent Podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Shlomit Gruman-Navot, a four-time Chief People Officer and transformation executive with 25 years of experience across tech, SaaS, consumer platforms, and banking.

Shlomit shares what changed when she went deep into AI, why this is not just a technology shift but a human transformation, and how leaders should rethink work, judgment, operating models, and AI fluency across the organization.

Timestamps

01:23 Guest introduction: who is Shlomit Gruman-Navot

02:49 Why Shlomit went deep into AI

03:36 From leading teams to leading AI agents

06:22 How her AI journey actually started

10:11 Where AI is already making an impact in HR

12:18 How to redesign work and drive change inside organizations

15:45 Why HR is uniquely positioned to lead AI transformation

18:26 Advice for CHROs and HR leaders who are too busy to experiment

21:39 Agents vs agentic AI explained simply

24:45 Will AI eliminate junior HR and analyst roles?

29:07 How talent leaders should deal with AI overwhelm

30:48 Shlomit’s new community around making AI work at work

___________________________

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/

Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/

____________

Connect with Shlomit Gruman-Navot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shlomit-gruman-navot/

Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/

___________________________

RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

___________________________

Need a Recruitment Support? Embed Matchr’s expert recruiters directly into your team. Seamless integration for immediate impact on your hiring process.

Learn more: https://matchr.io

In this episode of Leaders in Talent, Elizabeth Weilburg (Senior Talent Leader at Coinbase) shares how she intentionally designs her career toward becoming a Chief People Officer. We discuss ambition, mentorship, saying hard things, career ownership, and how to align personal growth with real business impact.

If you're in HR, Talent, or People leadership and thinking long term about your career, this episode is for you.

Timecodes:

01:17 – Introduction: Lizzie’s move from Citadel to Coinbase

02:38 – Why openly saying “I want to become a CPO” matters

07:07 – Learning by observing great leaders early in your career

09:04 – Becoming more outspoken and intentional about ambition

10:16 – Mentorship in action: Learning to “say the hard thing”

13:37 – Taking up space and building leadership presence

15:32 – Why helping with career progression defines great managers

18:11 – Creating real career paths inside growing organizations

19:31 – Why companies should be net exporters of great talent

21:16 – How Lizzie runs career development conversations today

22:58 – Building talent expertise as part of a long-term CPO path

24:51 – Organic mentorship vs formal mentorship programs

26:43 – Networking intentionally (and why it matters more than you think)

28:17 – How to pitch your own role inside a company

30:31 – Creating opportunities by spotting unmet business needs

31:36 – Aligning ambition with business value

___________________________

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/

Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/

____________

Connect with Elizabeth Weilburg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-weilburg-45527955/

Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/

___________________________

RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

___________________________

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In this episode, Martijn Feikens, Head of Global Talent Operations at ING, shares how talent operations actually work inside a large, regulated, global organization.

We talk about scale, complexity, stakeholder management, decision-making in matrix structures, and why people remain the only asset that does not depreciate.

Timestamps:

02:10 Martijn’s role and global scope

04:40 Why global banks are complex organizations

07:30 Consensus culture and decision-making challenges

11:50 Employer brand as a strategic lever

13:40 Technology, regulation, and risk aversion

16:05 How to decide what is worth pursuing

18:10 Stakeholder management at scale

22:30 Why simplicity matters in leadership communication

26:30 Designing for scale, delivering with care

28:10 The five OKRs guiding Talent Operations

29:50 Leadership conversations at senior level

31:40 Why slow does not mean ineffective

33:30 Learning stakeholder management over time

35:40 Global standards versus local needs

36:40 Looking ahead to 2026

38:10 Why people are the only asset that doesn’t depreciate

___________________________

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/

Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/

____________

Connect with Martijn Feikens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martijnfeikens/

Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/

___________________________

RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

___________________________

Need a Recruitment Support? Embed Matchr’s expert recruiters directly into your team. Seamless integration for immediate impact on your hiring process.

Learn more: https://matchr.io