2025 was a year of real change, not just in tools or trends, but in how recruiting teams showed up.

In this special recap episode, host Shannon Ogborn looks back on the conversations that defined Offer Accepted this year. The common thread among the highest-impact teams across all episodes was not the pursuit of the next big thing, but a clarity on fundamental priorities. They achieved success by embracing structure, maintaining transparency with candidates, collaborating closely with the business, and always prioritizing the human element in the hiring process.

This is a thank you to every guest who shared their time, a reflection on what this community has made possible, and a reminder that, even with all the change, the heart of recruiting hasn’t changed.

Learn more about Ashby, the all-in-one recruiting platform powering Offer Accepted.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:06) Trend 1: AI Won’t Replace Recruiters, But Recruiters Who Can’t Use AI Will Fall Behind

(03:18) Trend 2: The Power of Structured Hiring

(04:49) Trend 3: Candidate Experience as a Trust-Building Engine

(05:51) Trend 4: Authenticity, Transparency, and Brand Storytelling That’s Real

(07:44) Trend 5: Talent’s Strategic Seat at the Table Through Influence

(09:50) Trend 6: Data Fluency as a Skillset 

(12:01) Trend 7: Humanity In Talent

(13:38) Closing Reflections for 2025

How do you keep hiring quality high while the company scales globally at speed? 

In this episode, Shannon sits down with Maggie Landers, VP Talent at Harvey, to walk through the values interview program that keeps a fast-growing AI company aligned. Maggie shares how Harvey turned three simple values, simplicity, decisiveness, and “Job’s Not Finished”, into a global, standardized interview that any people manager can run without adding friction to the process. 

Discover how her team leveraged tools like ChatGPT and Ashby to accelerate the design of interview questions, scoring rubrics, and enablement from months to mere weeks. Crucially, this efficiency was achieved while prioritizing human judgment, active listening, and an excellent candidate experience.

Whether your team is hiring dozens or hundreds of roles, this conversation will help you simplify your values work, prove its impact, and scale it across regions and functions.

Key takeaways:

• Simple values guide hiring: Focusing interviews on a few clear values improves cultural alignment without adding complexity.
• Train managers as interviewers: Empowering all people managers to conduct values interviews ensures culture ownership and scalable hiring across all teams and regions.
• Iterative Improvement: Ship, Learn, Refine. Treat values interviews as an evolving product. Quickly update interview questions and rubrics using AI, informed by focused group feedback.

Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:24) Meet Maggie Landers

(02:08) Why Harvey scaled values interviews for quality

(04:39) Turning three simple values into a global hiring lens

(07:47) Building scoring rubrics that interviewers actually use

(10:29) Designing a low-risk pilot for values interviews

(13:33) Getting exec and board support for experimentation

(17:35) Standardization, simplicity, and training people leaders at scale

(22:59) Using AI to maintain values programs without burning out

(27:10) Why great interviewers are listeners, not checkbox operators

(30:00) Where to connect with Maggie

Cultural context can make or break your ability to close top talent across regions.

Alexandre Corbin, Head of Talent Acquisition at Tabby, joins Shannon Ogborn to share how his team adapted recruiting strategies to local norms while scaling one of the Middle East’s fastest-growing fintech companies. From launching operations in Egypt to navigating hiring compliance in Saudi Arabia, he explains what changes when you hire with cultural awareness.

Alexandre shares how hiring local recruiters, shifting communication styles, and focusing on face-to-face interaction improved pass-through rates and candidate experience in high-volume markets. By combining context-aware data with empathy, his team rebuilt trust and engagement across three regions.

Key takeaways:

• Local context changes candidate behavior: Small missteps can derail high-volume hiring in new regions
• Trust begins with proximity: In-person recruiting shifts perceptions faster than online touchpoints
• Data reveals gaps, not reasons: You need cultural fluency to understand what metrics miss

Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:33) Meet Alexandre Corbin

(01:46) How culture shapes every part of hiring

(04:12) Why Tabby hired local recruiters early

(07:58) Understanding employer reputation in the market

(08:53) Rebuilding trust and employer brand in new markets

(11:27) What changes and what stays the same

(13:47) Adapting interviews for cultural expectations

(16:44) Using cNPS scores to shape strategy

(19:58) What funnel data reveals about cultural mismatch

(22:56) The results of changing the candidate journey

Bringing in early career talent is more than a pipeline play; it’s a catalyst for business transformation.

Corey Twitty, now at Zillow, joins Shannon Ogborn to unpack how he built Netflix’s first emerging talent program from the ground up. He explains how to challenge deep-rooted hiring habits, build trust with skeptics, and design programs that align with culture and business needs.

Corey also shares what makes these programs durable: a clear purpose, flexibility in execution, and a feedback loop that enables daily improvement. Whether you’re building from scratch or refining what exists, Corey’s approach will reshape how you think about early talent.

Key takeaways:

1. Strong programs start with empathy: Sit with stakeholders before designing solutions. Learn what the business truly needs.
2. Early career hiring impacts engineering efficiency: Pairing senior staff with interns freed up senior time and sparked new ideas.
3. Hiring culture changes through ownership: Teams won’t adopt new approaches unless they help shape them.

Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:46) Meet Corey Twitty

(02:07) Why early career hiring matters more than ever

(03:18) How early talent supports long-term succession planning

(04:57) Changing Netflix’s culture around early career

(06:39) Gaining buy-in through co-design and debate

(08:49) Tactical steps for launching a program from scratch

(11:35) What strong opinions loosely held look like in action

(13:32) Advocating for resources during hiring freezes

(16:34) Interns vs. new grads: Where to start

(19:48) Tracking results and impact over time

(23:35) Building a 3-part early talent strategy

(26:29) Where to connect with Corey

The candidate experience coordinator role is changing fast, and innovative teams are evolving it before it becomes obsolete.

Dan Seifert, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition and Experience at Marqeta, joins Shannon to discuss how to future-proof talent teams without sacrificing quality. He outlines how his team restructured this critical role, introduced monthly feedback loops, and began training team members to transform candidate feedback into strategic insights.

Dan shares how he equips his team with AI tools, the simple prompts that surface the most useful trends, and why doing this work well drives business outcomes. He also explains how coordinators can become internal influencers, and how those skills prepare them for bigger roles down the line.

Key takeaways:

1. AI as your co-pilot: Leverage AI to automate repetitive tasks, allowing your team to concentrate on crafting your company's narrative.
2. Monthly feedback for consistent growth: Regular feedback fosters a culture of expected and consistent improvement, leading to better team performance.
3. Candidate experience is a shared responsibility: Recruitment staff—coordinators, recruiters, and interviewers—all shape the candidate experience and influence hiring decisions.
4. Upskilling boosts retention: Employee development empowers growth and retention.

Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:18) Meet Dan Seifert

(01:58) Why AI won’t replace talent teams

(03:10) Evolving the recruiting coordinator role

(05:19) What changed at Marqeta to spark this shift

(06:07) Aligning recruiters and coordinators to the business

(07:24) Coordinators as analysts of candidate experience data

(08:41) How to hire for strategic CX roles

(10:56) Coaching recruiters with monthly CX reports

(13:46) Quarterly updates for people business partners

(18:38) Upskilling coordinators with LLMs for feedback themes

(21:00) Building influence with straightforward data storytelling

(23:50) Offer acceptance rates and what’s driving them

Hiring teams often focus on filling roles fast—but what if your employer brand could do the sourcing for you?

Jeff Moore, VP of Talent Acquisition, Operations and Workspaces at Toast, joins Shannon to share how his team scaled employer brand into a strategic lever for talent. Jeff explains why recruiters need to act more like researchers, how he has built flexibility into TA organizations, and why hyper-local pipelines are the future of field hiring.

He also breaks down how Toast personalizes candidate experiences at scale, what makes a good recruiter today, and how to stay authentic in a noisy hiring market.

Key takeaways:

1. Employer brand scales your story: It’s not just marketing, it’s how you reach the right candidates and help the wrong ones self-select out.
2. Flexibility beats structure: Building a TA org that adapts to business needs matters more than perfecting an org chart.
3. Go hyper-local: Creating shallow talent pools at the zip code level helps fill field roles more quickly and effectively.
4. Candidate experience is your moat: Personal touches, such as virtual office tours, make a lasting impression and are harder to replicate.

Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:43) Meet Jeff Moore

(01:40) Why is employer brand your biggest lever

(03:37) Letting the product story do the heavy lifting

(05:02) How Toast turns interviews into mutual experiences

(06:52) Keeping your org flexible through shifting priorities

(09:32) The surge team experiment that worked, until it didn’t

(12:24) Helping recruiters adapt to different roles fast

(13:06) Why local hiring needs micro-pipelines

(15:13) How to actually source at the zip code level

(17:05) Why recruiters need deep market knowledge

(18:28) The interview insight that made Jeff join Toast

(20:20) Employer brand only works when it’s honest

(23:06) How does a brand also boost employee pride

(25:04) Where to find Jeff online

Hiring is one of the biggest responsibilities founders face in the early stages, and closing the right candidates can make or break your company’s trajectory.

Harriet Walker, Head of Talent at SuperSeed VC, joins Shannon to share her Five Cs of Closing framework: Clarity, Credibility, Connection, Continuity, and Commitment. She highlights why closing is a discipline that begins from the first candidate interaction, offering tips on setting expectations, building trust, and making offers an easy “yes.” Harriet also covers the importance of reference calls, compensation check-ins, and how AI amplifies, rather than replaces, recruiters.

Key takeaways:

1. Closing starts early: The best hiring outcomes come from embedding candidate closing strategies throughout the entire process, not just at the offer stage.
2. Five Cs of Closing: Clearly defining the role, showing authentic connection and consistency sets the foundation for attracting the right candidates.
3. Partnership approach: Treating hiring as a collaborative effort between candidate and company creates buy-in and smoother offer acceptances.

Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:47) Meet Harriet Walker

(02:10) Why early-stage founders must learn to close candidates

(04:45) The Five Cs of Closing framework

(05:16) #1 Clarity: Defining the role and setting expectations

(08:26) #2 Credibility: Building a compelling and honest pitch

(10:55) #3 Connection: Creating rapport and mission alignment

(14:37) #4 Continuity: Delivering a consistent candidate experience

(21:17) #5 Commitment: Partnering with candidates on the process

(25:52) The importance of reference calls to close candidates

(30:20) Why speed and conviction close top candidates

Candidate fraud isn’t just a recruiting problem. It’s a company-wide risk, too.

Ari Garcia, Global Recruiting Operations Lead at Quora, joins Shannon to break down how hiring teams can partner with security, leadership, and with tools like Ashby to address fraud without compromising the candidate experience.

With nearly six years at Quora, Ari brings a systems-focused lens to solving cross-functional challenges inside a fully remote, global organization. She shares how her team built alignment across departments, trained interviewers to stay focused on signal over suspicion, and developed criteria for identifying fraud, which keeps the process fair and efficient.

The conversation also explores the weight of false positives, the risks of moving too fast, and why fraud detection can't sit with recruiting alone.

Key takeaways:

1. Candidate fraud is a business issue: Hiring one wrong person can jeopardize trust and security.
2. Partnerships make the process: Aligning with security and leadership ensures stronger prevention.
3. Candidate experience still comes first: Interviews must stay human even when suspicion is present.
4. RecOps drives clarity: Building systems helps teams act with confidence, not guesswork.

Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:14) Meet Ari Garcia

(03:06) Why candidate fraud is rising across remote companies

(05:18) How to build cross-functional buy-in on fraud

(07:19) Using tools like Ashby to flag fraud signals

(10:46) Protecting candidate experience while preventing false positives

(15:35) What Ari would do differently starting from scratch

(18:14) Evolving fraud detection with RecOps and security partnerships

(22:50) Why hiring fraud hurts business goals and trust

(24:14) Final advice for making fraud prevention a priority

Hiring plans rarely survive first contact with reality. So how do you lead when half your headcount is unplanned?

Tommy Hansen, Head of Recruiting at Juniper Square, joins Shannon to share how his small team hired over 300 people in a year—despite 40–60% of those roles being unplanned. He explains how redefining “planned” vs. “unplanned” headcount changed how recruiting partnered with the business, earned more resourcing, and helped close the company’s largest deal to date.

Tommy also shares how embedding recruiters with the business, strengthening exec partnerships, and prioritizing business acumen helped his team thrive through rapid change.

Key takeaways:

1. Redefining headcount unlocks clarity: Creating shared definitions of “planned” vs. “unplanned” headcount revealed the true scope of TA’s work and made invisible efforts visible.
2. Visibility drives resourcing: By tracking unplanned hiring and visualizing it clearly, Tommy’s team earned more budget, tools, and RPO support.
3. Business acumen builds influence: Connecting headcount to company OKRs helped recruiting steer prioritization and secure executive alignment fast.

Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:43) Meet Tommy Hansen

(03:04) Why unplanned headcount matters more than ever

(04:55) Defining planned vs. unplanned headcount at Juniper Square

(06:28) How Ashby dashboards helped visualize TA’s real workload

(09:06) 40–60% of hiring was unplanned—here’s how leadership reacted

(11:10) Driving prioritization with data and OKRs

(14:28) Forecasting future headcount through business metrics

(16:20) How recruiting helped close a $10M client deal

(17:35) Leading a team through constant change

(20:04) Retaining team engagement during hypergrowth

(22:06) Using business transparency to win over skeptical candidates

(24:02) What hiring excellence means to Tommy

(26:01) Recruiting hot take: AI is great, but we must develop future TA leaders

(29:18) Advice to his early-career self

(30:13) Where to connect with Tommy

What shifts when recruiting leaders show up as business leaders first?

Adam Ward, Founding Partner at Growth by Design Talent, joins Shannon to explore how recruiting teams can evolve from service providers to trusted advisors. With a background leading talent at Facebook, Qualcomm, and Pinterest through massive growth, Adam shows what stakeholder engagement looks like when done well.

He outlines four traits that define a talent advisor and shares how stronger cross-functional relationships lead to better outcomes for both recruiters and candidates.

The episode gets into the value of curiosity, the power of shared accountability, and why recruiting needs a seat at the business planning table, not just the hiring one.

Key takeaways:

1. Trusted advisors lead with data: Visualized insights, not just metrics, shape real conversations.
2. Shared accountability matters: Hiring goals should belong to leaders and recruiters alike.
3. Respect scales faster than likability: Influence grows when recruiting challenges assumptions with clarity and care.
4. Curiosity signals partnership: The best recruiters understand the business as well as the function they support.

Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction

(01:00) Meet Adam Ward

(02:44) Why stakeholder engagement sets teams apart

(04:15) Service provider versus trusted advisor

(07:28) The role of shared accountability

(09:53) Building relationships as a business leader

(12:05) How trusted leadership benefits recruiting teams

(15:43) Top challenges facing talent leaders

(20:52) Gaining influence by letting go of likability

(24:31) Managing your strengths without overcorrecting

(26:42) How to adapt your influence style to different stakeholders