Talk Talent To Me

Rob welcomes back Colin Yasukochi, Executive Director of CBRE's Tech Insight Center, to walk through CBRE's annual Scoring Tech Talent report. Covering 50 markets and millions of data points, the report is the definitive map of where tech talent lives, moves, and works. This year's findings are striking: remote job postings in San Francisco have collapsed from 24% to 7%, New York has overtaken the Bay Area as the largest tech talent market in the US for the first time, and AI is simultaneously responsible for the biggest boom and the biggest cut in tech talent in recent history. Colin explains what is behind each of those headlines, which emerging markets are worth watching and why, and what it actually means to find tech talent when 60% of them don't work for tech companies at all.

Key takeaways

• Remote work is effectively over for AI companies.
• Tech talent is defined by what you do, not where you work. 60% of tech talent works outside the tech industry entirely.
• New York overtook the Bay Area as the largest US tech talent market in 2026, driven by finance sector investment in AI while Bay Area headcounts contracted.
• AI talent grew 45% year over year to 751,000, while AI-attributed job cuts hit 102,000, or 22.9% of all cuts.
• Emerging markets like Huntsville, Halifax, Colorado Springs, and Dayton are rising for specific reasons tied to local industry, not just cost or population.
• The 15 most VC-funded AI companies grew their combined workforce from 7,500 in 2020 to 56,000 today. The AI hiring boom is real, even if it runs alongside the cuts.

Links:

Colin on LinkedIn

LHH Recruitment Solutions

A Beautiful Working World

A Soundbeam Studios Production

Tracy St. Dic, Global Head of Talent at Zapier, built a quality of hire algorithm from scratch. What it yielded helped them measure their ability to get better at hiring over time, but it also taught them the five durable traits that actually predict top performance, why credentials are a weak proxy for ability, and Zapier's four-component AI fluency framework that every single candidate is now evaluated against. If you want a masterclass in what a modern, rigorous, data-backed talent strategy looks like, this is the episode.

Key takeaways

• Ability is equally distributed but opportunity is not. Credentials are a weak proxy for whether someone can actually do the job.
• Zapier's quality of hire algorithm tracked new hires across their entire first year and found the same five traits consistently predicted top performance: navigating ambiguity, proactive ownership, stakeholder communication, cross-functional collaboration, and fast on-ramp.
• Slope not snapshot. How fast someone is learning matters more than what they know on day one. Zapier measures this even within the hiring process itself.
• Manager and employee alignment on performance is more predictive of success than the actual performance rating. Misalignment is the real red flag, not a low score.
• Zapier's AI fluency framework has four components: mindset, strategy, builder skills, and accountability. 100% of candidates must meet a minimum threshold before an offer can go through.
• Not upskilling your team in AI fluency is management malpractice. TA leaders own this responsibility for their own teams, not just the broader org.

Links:

Tracy on LinkedIn

LHH Recruitment Solutions

A Beautiful Working World

A Soundbeam Studios Production

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

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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

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.

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

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A Soundbeam Studios Production

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

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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

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

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