The Talent Bar

Anna Taylor is the Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Semperis, where she has spent the last five years growing the company from under 200 employees to over 600 across multiple countries with a recruiting team she can count on one hand. In this episode, she talks with Colleen about why the best recruiters are business partners instead of order takers, how she cross-trains every new recruiter before they specialize, and how she won over hiring managers with a company-wide recruiting roadshow. They also dig into fixing your process before layering on AI, how TA titles and leadership roles are evolving, and why quality of hire should be a shared responsibility. Anna also shares how she went from dreaming of fashion to leading talent, and the advice she would give her post-graduation self.

Takeaways:

• Ask more questions of the business, not just candidates. Even if you have filled a role a hundred times, keep asking your hiring managers until you feel confident. Recruiters who skip this end up taking orders instead of advising.
• Cross-train new recruiters before they specialize. Give them four to six months across different departments, managers, and role types. It builds business knowledge and shows you whether their foundational skills are strong enough to hire.
• Earn hiring manager trust before you ask for it. Meet with every manager one on one, learn how they have hired in the past, and make a plan together, like sticking to three to four interviews. If you need them to hand over agency relationships, promise to protect those relationships.
• Fix your process first, then add AI on top. Teams that chase every shiny tool end up with scattered workflows and uneven hiring manager experiences. Plan for the fact that the time AI gives back will first go to deciding how to use it.
• Treat quality of hire as a shared metric. The hiring manager has to ask for the right hire, TA has to deliver them, and onboarding has to set them up to stay. More visibility across TA, HR, compensation, and talent development makes that loop tighter.

Quote of the Show:

• “Talking about how we use the AI is taking up the time that the AI got us back.” - Anna Taylor

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaorentaylor/
• Website: https://www.semperis.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• The Talent Bar: https://thetalentbarpodcast.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR  
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talent-bar/id1891705495 
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• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTalentBar

Andrea DeBrino has been a Disney photographer, the Bride of Frankenstein at Halloween Horror Nights, and a Deloitte auditor, and she now leads TA enablement at Light & Wonder across 30 countries. In this episode, she talks with Colleen about why the best recruiters are the most curious ones and why she thinks the industry is rushing to AI without building the core capabilities that make it work. Andrea breaks down how she rolled out Paradox and HiredScore with a session called “Bring Your Own Manager,” how she earned back the trust of a skeptical TA team, and what she learned from cold messaging companies like Deloitte, Netflix, and Starbucks for a Disney benchmarking study. She also shares her winding path from theme parks to audit to recruiting, and why saying yes to scary things has shaped her career.

Takeaways:

• Get curious before you get tactical. Walk into every intake asking why the role is open and what gaps the team is feeling, not just what the requirements are. Recruiters who ask “why” can spot when a role needs to be rescoped before the search goes sideways.
• Build capability before you layer on AI. A shiny new tool won’t make you a better talent advisor if you don’t know what problem you’re solving. Look at where your workflow has friction first, then decide whether technology, process, or behavior is the real fix.
• Bring the skeptics into the room early. Andrea invited recruiters to bring their toughest hiring manager to a session and tear the rollout apart before launch. Hearing the objections up front lets you plan for them instead of getting surprised after go-live.
• Sell hiring managers on outcomes, not candidate experience. Most leaders won’t open their calendars for a better candidate experience, but they will for a faster hire. Give your recruiters the language to connect the change to what the manager actually cares about.
• Say yes to the thing that scares you. Andrea’s non-traditional path happened because she raised her hand, followed up for three years, and took chances. The opportunities you skip out of fear are the ones you’ll still be thinking about a decade later.

Quote of the Show:

• “If you can have them be involved, and you can really understand what they need to do their job better, I think that’s where you can really elevate what the solution is.” - Andrea DeBrino

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreadebrino/
• Website: https://www.lnw.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• The Talent Bar: https://thetalentbarpodcast.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR  
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talent-bar/id1891705495 
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• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTalentBar

Pam White is the Director of Talent Acquisition at Cambria, an American-made, family-owned luxury surface manufacturer. She took an unconventional route to recruiting through teaching, cosmetology, sales, and managing stylists. In this episode, she sits down with Colleen to talk about why the person walking in the side door of the factory deserves the same red carpet as the person heading to the corner office. They get into how Cambria sells a 22-year-old on a 25-year career in manufacturing, why their 10+ year internship program has interns solving real business problems, and what happens when an ATS and a job board finally start talking to each other. Pam also shares how she filters AI tools on a family-owned budget, and why saying yes to opportunities has shaped every chapter of her career.

Takeaways:

• Give every candidate the red carpet, no matter the role. A line worker and a marketing hire may not get the identical experience, but both should get a clear email, a text confirmation, and the right people greeting them. Thoughtfulness is what counts.
• Ask the same values-driven questions across every level of the business. If collaboration matters at your company, ask the line worker about collaboration too. It tells candidates what the culture is really like and shows them you care how they think, not just whether they can work third shift.
• Sell the future, not just the job. Show early-career candidates real people who started where they are and worked their way up to supervisor, and lead with the perks that matter to them, like clean facilities, boots, and uniforms. When someone can picture what year five looks like, you’ve got them.
• Fix the friction in your application process. If candidates have to apply twice and your recruiters are bouncing between systems, your drop-off rate will show it. Connecting your ATS to your job board helps candidates, recruiters, and your sourcing data all at once.

Quote of the Show:

• “Every career that I’ve had is born because somebody said, ‘You know what? You’d be really good at this.’” - Pam White

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pam-white-a43269b/
• Website: https://www.cambriausa.com/quartz-countertops/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=organicsocial_feed&utm_campaign=engagement&utm_content=text_bio-link

Ways to Tune In:

• The Talent Bar: https://thetalentbarpodcast.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR  
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talent-bar/id1891705495 
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• iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1333-the-talent-bar-328811219
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTalentBar

Karin Wagner has spent 20 years building the operational engines behind talent acquisition. She started as a CPA, used an MBA to move into HR, and built a machine learning hiring model in 2016, before most of TA was talking about AI. Today she’s VP of Talent Acquisition Operations at Empower Pharmacy. In this episode, she talks with Colleen about why AI speeds up the good and the bad, what it means to see inside the black box of hiring manager interviews, and why quality of hire is everyone’s job. Karin also shares what changes when talent reports straight to the CEO, how a farm kid turned CPA found her way into recruiting, and why her house is currently full of elite figure skaters.

Takeaways:

• Learn the business before you try to hire for it. Use AI to research competitors and how the company wins, then ask your business partners a little at a time about their next big goal. The best recruiters Karin has worked with are subject matter experts in the business they support.
• Fix the process before you add AI to it. AI only speeds up whatever you already built, so a three-stage-too-long process just fails faster. Get the job description and the fundamentals right first.
• Ask what you’re doing with the hours AI saves you. Hours saved is not the win. Reinvest that time in consulting with hiring managers, improving candidate experience, or evaluating talent better, then check that you’re getting the outcome you actually wanted.
• Make vendors prove it before you buy it. Pilot new AI tools against a measurable outcome, and ask every vendor for their innovation roadmap. Then pick two or three things to get really good at, because trying to do everything will burn out your recruiters.
• Share quality of hire instead of passing it around. TA, hiring managers, and even onboarding all play a part in whether a hire works out. When everyone owns the metric, nobody can point the finger at someone else.

Quote of the Show:

• “The real story behind AI is what are you doing with the hours you are saving? I’ve said AI does speed up both the good and the bad.” - Karin Wagner

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-wagner-b26500/
• Website: ​​https://www.empowerpharmacy.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• The Talent Bar: https://thetalentbarpodcast.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR  
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talent-bar/id1891705495 
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• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTalentBar

Britt-Angela Williams-Ward ran her own boutique staffing firm for over eight years, then took her talent acquisition career in-house at one of the largest health systems in the country. Today she leads talent acquisition at Cape Fear Valley Health in rural North Carolina, where her team ranks among the top AI-powered sourcing tool users in the world. In this episode, she talks with Colleen about her "four E's" framework, why remembering the details about a candidate is the most underrated recruiting skill, and how a rural health system went from outside the top 100 to the top 20 healthcare employers in its state. She also explains how her team uses AI to resurface past applicants, why she always asks nurses why they got into nursing, and what it means to be both the gatekeeper and the ambassador for the people who care for your community.

Takeaways:

• Keep a file on every candidate, even the ones who aren't right for the role today. When a new opening comes up, reaching out with details they shared shows them they were never just a number.
• Ask hiring managers what isn't on the job description. Work those intangibles into the posting and the intake form, and sit in on a couple of their interviews to learn the why behind their questions.
• Before you spend a dollar on job ads, use AI to resurface past applicants already in your ATS. They've shown interest before, so they're far more likely to say yes to an interview, and it can shave about two weeks off a hire.
• Ask candidates why they chose their field, then listen for the personal story. If they can get to the why, you likely have the right person, and if they can't, that tells you something too.
• Get out from behind the video call and spend time where your hires actually work. Rounding on units monthly builds credibility with hiring managers and helps you describe the culture to candidates with real authority. 

Quote of the Show:

• "We are the shining lights that are bringing people in the door, but we're also the gatekeepers." - Britt-Angela Williams-Ward

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittangelaward/
• Website: https://www.capefearcareers.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• The Talent Bar: https://thetalentbarpodcast.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR  
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talent-bar/id1891705495 
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• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTalentBar

Daniel Dale started his career carrying a quota in enterprise security sales, then built his own recruiting agency before moving in-house. Nearly 10 years later, he leads talent acquisition across EMEA and APJ at Tenable. In this episode, he talks with Colleen about why understanding the business matters more than filling reqs, how he separates business problems from recruitment problems, and why quality of hire belongs to everyone. He also shares how recording and reviewing interviews has become his team's "thousand hours of tape," how Tenable handles candidate fraud, and the charity cycling ride that has him climbing Mont Ventoux in memory of his mother.

Takeaways:

• Learn the business you're hiring for. Recruiters who understand what the company needs and want to see their hires succeed do better work than those who just fill seats. Ask yourself whether you're invested in the end result or just the offer letter.
• Sort your problems into two camps: recruitment problems and business problems. If your team has done everything from kickoff to a strong slate of candidates, decisions about hiring now, later, or not at all sit with the business. Know where your job ends so you can support your team through the pressure.
• Treat quality of hire as a shared responsibility. When a hire doesn't work out, look back at the interview, the onboarding, and the environment without pointing fingers. Use backfills as a chance to ask what's changed and what you don't want to repeat.
• Review your interview recordings the way athletes review game tape. Have people watch themselves back first and frame it as coaching rather than inspection. You'll build better interviewers, get better data, and protect your team if a candidate disputes what happened.
• Fight candidate fraud at every stage of the process. Be upfront about requirements like no virtual backgrounds and ID checks, and never make an offer without meeting the person face to face. When your gut says something is off, press on it.

Quote of the Show:

• "We never make an offer without actually meeting that person face to face." - Daniel Dale

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dadale/
• Website: https://www.tenable.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• The Talent Bar: https://thetalentbarpodcast.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR  
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talent-bar/id1891705495 
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• iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1333-the-talent-bar-328811219
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTalentBar

Vikki Costello has spent nearly 15 years at Pariveda, growing through six different roles to become Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at the employee-owned tech consulting firm. In this episode, she talks with Colleen about what it took to rebuild her team from nearly 30 people down to eight, why curiosity and diagnostic thinking are the traits she looks for most in a recruiter, and how bringing in interview intelligence software and migrating ATS platforms helped her team scale without adding headcount. Vikki also shares how Pariveda's employee ownership shapes a culture of radical transparency, and why AI has made critical thinking, not automation, the skill that will set recruiters apart in the years ahead.

Takeaways:

• Curiosity is the trait that separates good recruiters from great ones. Vikki looks for people who are diagnostic, who dig into why something is happening instead of letting it slide. In a field as unpredictable as recruiting, that instinct to ask "why" catches problems before they become bigger ones.
• Rebuilding a team is a chance to build utility players, not just replace headcount. When Vikki's team shrank from nearly 30 to eight, she cross-trained everyone to run and cover multiple functions instead of simply backfilling roles. That flexibility is what let the team scale again without ballooning in size.
• Build the business case before you build the tool. Before bringing in interview intelligence software, Vikki mapped out interview counts and time to hire so leadership could see exactly where the investment would pay off. Running a pilot with senior stakeholders first turned early skeptics into advocates.
• Partner fit matters as much as product fit. When Vikki's team evaluated new platforms, they weighed vendor relationship and hand-holding just as heavily as features, especially as a smaller organization. Choosing a partner who can grow with you beats chasing the flashiest tool on the market.
• AI can speed up screening, but critical thinking is what will set recruiters apart. Vikki's team uses AI carefully, with guardrails, to manage volume like 8,000 applicants for a single role. She believes the recruiters who can think critically about fraud, fit, and candidate behavior are the ones who will matter most as AI reshapes hiring.

Quote of the Show:

• "Critical thinking is what's probably gonna help set us apart as a recruiting team in this next wave of work." - Vikki Costello

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikkicostello/
• Website: https://parivedasolutions.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• The Talent Bar: https://thetalentbarpodcast.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR  
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talent-bar/id1891705495 
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• iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1333-the-talent-bar-328811219
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTalentBar

Mawulom Nenonene spent nearly seven years building weapon systems for the US Department of Defense as a mechanical engineer before an unexpected pivot took him into technical sourcing at Google, and from there into a decade of building and leading talent functions at Thumbtack, BetterUp, the Long Term Stock Exchange, and Point. In this episode, he talks with Colleen about the real difference between a good recruiter and a great one, why he gives every new sourcing tool a strict four to six week trial, and how he's building a recruiting engine from scratch as Flux scales from 18 to 80 people. Mawulom also opens up about the personal loss that redirected his entire career, why he believes consistency matters more than kindness when it comes to earning trust, and why "culture add" has replaced "culture fit" in how he hires.

Takeaways:

• Good recruiters know the job. Great ones know the why. Understanding an organization's disposition and gaps, not just filling a seat, is what separates a recruiter who hits targets from one who actually shapes the team. If you're not steeped in the "why" behind a role, you're optimizing for the wrong outcome.
• No action can beat the wrong action. Moving fast with an untested process (like blasting thousands of automated messages to the wrong candidates) does more damage to your brand than simply pausing to figure out the right approach. If you don't know what to do yet, it's often better to do nothing than to guess loudly.
• Give new tools, and new roles, a real runway before judging them. Mawulom tests every sourcing tool for four to six weeks minimum, watching not just results but responsiveness to feedback. The same patience applies to people: expect a real learning curve before writing off a new hire, a new process, or yourself in a new industry.
• Consistency builds trust faster than charm does. Mawulom has learned to judge leaders less by how pleasant they are in the moment and more by whether they apply their principles the same way every time, good day or bad. A leader who is tough but fair, consistently, is more trustworthy than one who's warm but plays favorites.
• Hire for culture add, not culture fit. When you're building a high-performance team, the goal isn't finding people who match the existing vibe, it's finding people who bring something the team doesn't have yet. Culture fit protects what already exists; culture add pushes it forward.

Quote of the Show:

• "A good recruiter is an individual that knows the job. A great recruiter is someone that understands the why." - Mawulom Nenonene

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mawulom/
• Website: https://www.flux.ai/p

Ways to Tune In:

• The Talent Bar: https://thetalentbarpodcast.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR  
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talent-bar/id1891705495 
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• iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1333-the-talent-bar-328811219
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTalentBar

Dana Neiger spent eight years running her own recruiting firm focused on transportation engineering before stepping into talent acquisition leadership at Barge Design Solutions, a 70-year-old, employee-owned AEC firm with plans to grow from 700 to 1,000 employees in under two years. In this episode, she talks with Colleen about why relationship-based recruiting is non-negotiable in a talent pool small enough that everyone knows everyone, how she built new metrics like the recruiter maintenance ratio to tell the TA value story to leadership, and why AI has made tailoring a resume, not outsourcing it, more important than ever. Dana also shares how she coaches new recruiters through what she calls a three-year relationship-building runway, and why being willing to say no to a hiring manager, with real reasons behind it, is one of the most valuable things a recruiter can do.

Takeaways:

• Relationships you build today aren't for today. In niche, tight-knit industries especially, the person you meet now may become the hire, the referral, or the open door two or three years from now. Treat every relationship like it's for the future, not just the immediate need.
• Building trust with hiring managers means being willing to say no. Dana coaches her team to decline candidates when there's a real risk, backed by facts instead of emotion. That confidence is what turns a recruiter into a strategic advisor hiring managers keep coming back to.
• New industries take time to master, so plan for it. Dana tells recruiters entering AEC to expect roughly three years before they can tap their own network instead of starting from scratch. Setting that expectation upfront keeps people from getting discouraged early.
• Separate your metrics to find the real story. When Dana split time to fill into average and median, she found a handful of highly technical, senior roles were skewing the numbers while most positions were actually performing at or better than benchmark. Look past the headline number before deciding something is broken.
• AI has made it easier to fake a fit and harder to spot a real one. Dana still expects candidates to tailor their resumes and research the company themselves rather than hand a job description to AI and call it done. That extra effort is often what shows a candidate genuinely wants the role.

Quote of the Show:

• "You must understand empathy and compassion in order to be a recruiter." - Dana Neiger

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-neiger/
• Website: https://www.bargedesign.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• The Talent Bar: https://thetalentbarpodcast.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR  
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talent-bar/id1891705495 
• Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b7f77aa2-de4c-4e5c-b5de-cfe60fe39c77  
• iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1333-the-talent-bar-328811219
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTalentBar

Jennifer Neef has spent more than two decades building one of the largest career services operations in the country at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, working with 40,000 students a year and coordinating over 150 career professionals across campus. In this episode, she talks with Colleen about what she's actually seeing on the ground as AI reshapes how students apply for jobs, why internships have become the clearest signal employers can get, and how the shift away from name-brand employers is opening doors at small and mid-sized companies. Jennifer also shares her own winding path from animal science and 4-H education to running career services at one of the country's biggest public universities, and what that unlikely journey has taught her about telling students to stop planning ten years ahead.

Takeaways:

• AI has made it easier to apply to everything and harder to stand out doing it. Jenny coaches students to resist the "apply to 500 jobs" instinct and instead get specific about their interests, values, and skills, then use that clarity to build a targeted search with real outreach and networking.
• An internship isn't just a resume line, it's proof of work. Students who've done one are landing full-time roles at twice the rate of those who haven't, because employers finally get a real signal instead of a polished application.
• When big-name employers pull back, smaller and mid-sized companies get a shot at overlooked talent, but only if students do the work to find them. Jenny's team is focused on surfacing opportunities at organizations that don't have a consumer brand or a big recruiting budget behind them.
• Watch what's happening in assessment as a leading indicator for hiring. Paper and pencil exams and in-person testing centers are making a comeback, not out of nostalgia, but because institutions need a real read on whether people can think and decide for themselves.
• Tell students to stop building a ten-year plan. Jenny's advice, born out of her own unplanned career path, is to build resilience instead of rigidity, since the opportunities that end up mattering most are rarely the ones anyone saw coming.

Quote of the Show:

• "We're spending a lot of our time helping students really think through what are their interests, what are their values, how are their skills aligned with the needs of employers, and figuring out their own authentic self." - Jennifer Neef

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferneef/
• Website: https://illinois.edu/

Ways to Tune In:

• The Talent Bar: https://thetalentbarpodcast.com/ 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR  
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talent-bar/id1891705495 
• Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b7f77aa2-de4c-4e5c-b5de-cfe60fe39c77  
• iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1333-the-talent-bar-328811219
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTalentBar