Try Harder Is Not A Strategy

In this episode, I talk with Ryan Cook, Head ofTalent Acquisition at Gallo, about redesigning TA for a business—and a profession—experiencing rapid change. Ryan previously led talent acquisition for Jacobs/CH2M and is one of the most consistently recognized leaders in our field for candidate experience.

Founded in 1933, Gallo has evolved from a wine company into a total alcohol beverage company with a portfolio spanning wine, spirits, and malt beverages. Ryan’s team supports approximately 2,500 hires annually: slightly more than half are production and frontline hires, about one-third are professional hires, and the remainder come through college recruiting.

Ryan explains how Gallo moved from a traditional model—with recruiters dedicated to particular business groups and coordinators handling administrative tasks—to an agile, squad-based structure. Senior recruiters remain strategic points of contact for the business, while other recruiters rotate across squads, develop broader capabilities, and move quickly to wherever demand is greatest. The model helped Gallo respond to unexpected hiring needs while building new development and leadership opportunities for its recruiters.

The results are impressive. Comparing 2025 with 2024, Gallo reduced average time to offer acceptance by 37%, reduced time to start by 21%, increased offer acceptances by 10%, and cut employee relations cases among seasonal hires by 50%. The team also automated 18 manual processes—saving an estimated 1,500 administrative hours—while reducing the overall TA budget by 8%.

Questions We Explore

· How can an agile, squad-based TA model respond faster to changing business needs?

· What work should automation handle—and where do recruiters still provide irreplaceable value?

· How should companies balance AI’s intelligence with human judgment and organizational wisdom?

· What practical changes can dramatically improve the candidate experience?

· Which emerging technologies could make recruiting systems more flexible and connected?

In this episode, I talk with Blair Bennett, Senior Vice President of Talent Acquisition at PepsiCo, about transforming TA inside one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies. PepsiCo is a $90 billion-plus organization operating in more than 200 countries and territories, with over 300,000 associates. Approximately 230,000 employees are frontline workers who help make, move, and sell its products.

Blair’s global TA organization supports roughly 75,000 requisitions each year, including approximately 40,000 frontline requisitions. She shares how PepsiCo moved from a complex, decentralized structure toward a centralized operating model organized around three areas: strategy, enablement, and execution. The goal wasn’t consistency for its own sake—it was to create a foundation that could respond faster, generate better insights, and support the future needs of the business.

We explore PepsiCo’s work to reimagine frontline hiring after bringing its U.S. food and beverage businesses together under one North America organization. Rather than starting with technology, Blair’s team conducted more than 100 interviews with business leaders, HR partners, and other stakeholders, mapped the existing processes, and identified the most important pain points. That work informed a new model combining internal capabilities, an RPO partner, centralized recruitment marketing, and technology designed around PepsiCo’s specific needs.

Blair also discusses the evolving scope of TA. PepsiCo is developing capabilities in talent foresight, career transitions, talent intelligence, and scenario planning—helping the business think beyond filling today’s requisitions to understand the skills, tasks, and workforce models it may need several years from now.

Questions We Explore

• How do you transform TA across a company operating with high complexity?
• What must be standardized before technology and automation can scale successfully?
• How should frontline hiring differ for entry-level, skilled, and highly technical roles?
• Where can automation improve hiring—and where do recruiters and hiring managers still add unique value?
• How can TA help the business anticipate future talent needs instead of waiting for requisitions?

I interviewed my friend and assessment/people analytics expert, Tyler Weeks, PhD, who is the Managing Vice President of People Technology, Research and Analytics at Marriott International.

Questions We Explore

• How useful are assessments in predicting whether someone will become a successful hire?

• Should quality of hire be measured at the individual or team level?

• How much responsibility do managers and teams share for a new hire’s success?

• Could AI’s greatest value come from measuring work rather than automating it?

• How is AI helping us understand the actual work people do?

I sat down with Shay Johnson, Vice President of Strategic HR Partnerships at Compass Group USA.

Questions We Explore

• How do you design hiring technology for 150,000 to 180,000 annual hires across more than 30 brands?

• Can familiar technology create a better candidate experience than a highly differentiated one?

• Where should automation lead the hiring process, and where should humans step in?

• How can TA leaders demonstrate ROI beyond efficiency and cost reduction?

• What could agentic and voice AI make possible for hiring and internal mobility?

• Should we be building our own tech, in house?