In this RecFest 2025 special, Nitin Sharma and co-host Sean Kennedy sit down with Rebecca Collis, founder of GearUp Talent, to explore how recruitment is shifting in a world obsessed with efficiency, AI, and quick fixes.

Becca shares her personal journey — from redundancy to launching her own fractional TA consultancy — and explains why scale-ups (300–500 employees) and HR tech vendors desperately need a rethink. She dives into:

• Why senior TA leaders are struggling to find perm roles and why fractional work is on the rise.
• The vendor blind spot: how RecTech providers keep solving problems recruiters don’t actually have.
• Efficiency vs. productivity in recruitment — and why chasing the wrong one dehumanises the hiring process.
• The outdated CV, AI in candidate selection, and what better “Tinder-style” shortlisting tools could look like.
• Salary mismatches, return-to-office battles, and how companies undervalue talent until it’s too late.
• Why the future belongs to flexible, freelance, and fractional experts, not unicorn hires.

Recorded live at RecFest 2025, this is a candid and unfiltered conversation about the broken parts of recruitment — and how bold leaders like Becca are building new solutions.

Who this episode is for:

• Recruitment & TA leaders navigating today’s volatile job market.
• Founders of scale-ups hitting the “300 employee wall.”
• HR Tech / RecTech vendors who want to build tools TA actually needs.
• Recruiters curious about fractional work as a career path.
• Anyone sick of bandwagon RTO policies and broken hiring processes.

🔗 Connect with Rebecca Collis

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccacollis/

GearUp Talent: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gearup-talent/

🔗 Connect with the hosts

Nitin Sharma: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitin-rectools/

Sean Kennedy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanthetaguy/

Discover tech vendors on Rectools.io: https://www.rectools.io/

Find out about the Recruitment Curry Club:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-recruitment-curry-club/

New episodes drop every Wednesday and Friday. Stay tuned as we launch Founder Diaries, where real entrepreneurs share raw stories of building businesses in recruitment and tech.

Listen to RecTalk on another platform: https://rectalk.co.uk/

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