Inside Talent with Craig Fisher

Welcome back to Inside Talent — the podcast that digs into the people, tech, and trends shaping the future of hiring.In this episode, host Craig Fisher talks with Adam Stokar, founder of Talent Llama, about the rise of AI-driven interviews and a new hiring philosophy called The Fairness Factor. What if the resume wasn't the deciding factor? What if screening could be faster, more objective, and better for candidates?This conversation unpacks:What “The Fairness Factor” really means in modern recruitingWhy dynamic skills inference beats keyword filteringHow Talent Llama helps teams screen thousands fairly and efficientlyAdam’s founder journey and vision for unbiased, scalable hiringThe future of TA tech — and where humans still matter most💡 Brought to you by Inside Talent — where smart hiring meets smarter conversations.🔗 Learn more at TalentLlama.com🎙 Hosted by Craig Fisher | LinkedIn#InsideTalent #FairHiring #TalentLlama #AIHiring #RecruitingTech #HRTech #CraigFisher

🚀 Inside Talent: Agentic AI with Steven Jiang, CEO of HireEZ🎙 Hosted by Craig FisherWe’re diving deep into the future of AI in recruiting! In this episode of Inside Talent, Craig Fisher sits down with Steven Jiang, the visionary founder and CEO of HireEZ, to unpack the launch of Agentic AI — and how it's reshaping the talent acquisition landscape.🔍 What you’ll learn:The origin story of HireEZ (formerly Hiretual)What makes Agentic AI different from basic automation or chatbotsHow semi-autonomous AI empowers recruiters (not replaces them)Why ethical AI and data compliance are at the core of this evolutionA bold vision of recruiters as strategic business partners🎉 Plus, we recap the exciting HireEZ Hoedown and analyst breakfast!If you're an HR or TA leader, staffing pro, or tech-forward recruiter — this is a must-watch.👇 Drop your thoughts below or connect with us to learn how AI is changing the game in talent tech.#InsideTalent #HireEZ #AgenticAI #HRTech #RecruitingInnovation #TalentAcquisition #FutureOfWork #CraigFisher #StevenJiang #AIRecruiting

In this episode of the Inside Talent Podcast, hosted by Craig Fisher of TalentNet Media, guests from the forefront of AI and labor market analytics delve into how these technologies are revolutionizing recruitment marketing. Joining Craig were Yazhad Dalal from Joveo, Erika Oliver and Will Crandle from Horsefly Analytics, who shared their insights and experiences. The conversation kicked off with an exploration of the pivotal role AI and labor market analytics play in refining recruitment marketing strategies. By leveraging global labor market data, companies can optimize their recruitment budgets, target the most promising talent pools, and enhance their overall hiring processes. The speakers emphasized the shift from traditional "post-and-pray" methods to data-driven strategies, underscoring the efficiency and effectiveness of using AI to navigate the complexities of the global labor market. Erika Oliver highlighted the significance of using labor market analytics to identify optimal locations for talent acquisition, ensuring companies invest their resources wisely. Will Crandle provided a deeper understanding of Horsefly's capabilities, illustrating how the platform offers granular insights into the labor market, enabling companies to make informed decisions. The discussion further delved into the impact of AI in recruitment marketing, with Yazhad Dalal sharing compelling examples of how AI-driven tools like Joveo's platform enhance job content optimization and personalized job recommendations. This not only improves job visibility and candidate matching but also addresses challenges such as bias in job descriptions, promoting more inclusive hiring practices. Craig Fisher shared a success story, demonstrating the power of integrating AI and market analytics to solve real-world recruitment challenges. By reevaluating campaign strategies based on labor market data, significant improvements in applicant numbers and cost savings were achieved, showcasing the tangible benefits of this synergy. However, the conversation also acknowledged the challenges in incorporating AI into recruitment efforts, including concerns over privacy, bias, and the need for leadership buy-in. The speakers shared valuable advice on overcoming these hurdles, emphasizing the importance of ethical considerations and the continuous auditing of AI models. In closing, the episode underscored the transformative potential of AI and labor market analytics in recruitment marketing. The speakers encouraged listeners to embrace these technologies, experiment with new tools, and share success stories to foster a community of learning and innovation in the field. This episode not only provided practical insights into leveraging AI and analytics for recruitment marketing but also inspired a forward-thinking approach to talent acquisition in the digital age.

Featuring Craig Fisher and Jason Putnam, CRO of Plum. This episode aims to debunk the myths surrounding traditional talent assessments and illuminate the path toward a more effective, skills-based approach to talent intelligence. 🌟 Highlights of the episode: Exploring Assessment Myths: We'll dive into why many commonly held beliefs about talent assessments are outdated and how they may mislead us in identifying the true potential and suitability of candidates. Introducing Skills-Based Talent Intelligence: Discover how Plum's innovative platform is leading a shift in the talent acquisition landscape, focusing on the skills and potential that are crucial for organizational success. The Science of Effective Assessments: Learn about the data-driven and psychological foundations underpinning Plum's approach, which offers a more accurate and predictive method for talent identification. Adopting Skills-Based Hiring Practices: Gain actionable insights on how to transition your organization to a skills-based hiring model, capitalizing on the strengths of Plum's platform to enhance your talent strategy. What's in it for you? In today's rapidly evolving job market, the conventional markers of candidate suitability are increasingly under scrutiny. Plum is pioneering a movement that emphasizes the importance of skills and potential over traditional metrics. This webcast is a must for HR professionals, recruiters, and business leaders eager to navigate the changing terrain of talent assessment and talent intelligence successfully. Tune in now for an engaging session that promises to challenge existing paradigms and provide you with the tools to make more informed talent decisions. Embark on a journey to transform your talent assessment approach with groundbreaking insights from Plum. #Plum #Webcast #TalentAssessment #SkillsBasedHiring #UnravelingMyths

Hey, it's Craig Fisher. I am here with Michelle Thompson. She is the head of sourcing at Uber. And she is a longtime friend and colleague and collaborator. Michelle will be appearing at TalentNet Live and TheCandE's conference Nov. 2-3 in DFW.  Register https://insde.co/78rj And we're glad to have you here with us, Michelle, how are you?  Excellent. Thanks for having me. So, tell us a little bit about what's going on in your role currently, and what issues your team is seeing and how you're tackling? Yeah. So we've been going through kind of a reinvention for lack of a better term here at Uber for the past few years, I've been here for two and a half now. came over to build the sourcing space for tech, and then switched over to build the sourcing space for non tech. And one of the things that we're really seeing with all these interesting ups and downs and post great resignation, and all of this is that our candidate attraction strategy has to be way more focused, while at the same town way more diverse than it's ever been in the past. So part of the things that I'm working on are where does the talent that we won't really live in each of our verticals? And how are we going to attract them? And how are we going to sell the story of why Uber Uber, as you know, is a global company with a lot of reach. They're one of the companies that definitely came out of out of COVID. You know, stronger, faster better than before. So though our, our needs have shifted their continuous. So it's been a really interesting model. I think when I came on board, they had literally just shuttered all the all of the offices and kind of screeched everything to a halt. And what they didn't realize was within 30 days, the Uber Eats side of the business will just explode. I think the first two months I was here, they added 34,000 restaurants to the platform. And then since then, we've added about 18 different variations of what we can do with that model. So Uber, pharmacy and grocery delivery and liquor delivery and all these other pieces. Uber freight has been huge for us. But that keeps me on my toes as far as how that messaging gets out to reach that group of candidates that not only has the skill set that has the desire to come and work with a company that is in continuous flux.

Jim Durbin is the Director of Recruitment marketing for PSG Global, a company that I've got a lot of experience with. He is also known, suspiciously, as the Indeed whisperer.  In this episode we talk recruitment marketing, job advertising, job boards, your process and how it affects your job ad conversion rate, and many other things that you're probably thinking about, but don't even know you should be on top of. Indeed has made tracking and converting candidates all the way through your process slightly trickier with the addition of Indeed Apply and the move to get most traffic flowing through that system.  But is that the best way to track and convert candidates?  Maybe not.  Jim and I discuss your options and all the things that can get in the way of low CPA's and high apply conversions of the right candidates. Join Jim and Craig for more amazing tips at The CandE's and TalentNet Live Conference November 2-3 in Dallas - Register here https://insde.co/78rj

Craig Fisher here.  We are back with another edition of Inside Talent.  My guests today are Brandon Sammut, Chief People Officer for Zapier, and Carrie Wang, CEO of Searchlight.ai. Zapier is not just one of our favorite tech tools, they are growing rapidly. And we talk today about their method of talent acquisition as one of the original remote organizations, and how they've partnered with another of our fav tech tools, Searchlight.ai to hire and retain the right people. 

Leah Daniels knows a thing or two about job advertising,  She spent nearly 5 years as a leader with one of the top programmatic advertising platforms for jobs, Appcast, and is now a leader with JobSync - one of the top job distribution platforms that created the Native Apply from any job board or ad.  In this episode, Leah and I break down the downfall of Facebook's jobs marketplace, what's happening with Indeed, and how to get the right qualified candidates applying to your jobs without overspending on your campaigns.  Leah is fun and funny.  But this smart lady brings a ton of great insight for any employer looing to up their hiring game.

Allie Brown does employer branding for Continental, a 200k+ employee world leader in tire production and global racing sponsor. And she's been doing some really fun things over the last couple of years with their employee advocacy. This episode will share best practices about rolling out an employee advocacy program and how to best encourage your employees to share your company's great employer culture with their networks to help attract more talent. Ally and I first met about 3 years ago when I was keynoting the Employer Brand Strategies conference.  She told me at the time she was going to change the game at Continental, and she did just that. Her story is fascinating and her results speak for themselves. Inside Talent is back after a Fall hiatus.  Buckle up.

Can AI help match your company's existing employees to new internal jobs?  You bet.  This episode of Inside talent is brought to you by Eightfold Eightfold's deep learning talent intelligence platform is powered by the largest global talent data set to unleash the full potential of the total workforce, employees, candidates, contractors, and citizens. To learn more, visit eightfold.ai. This episode features Andrea Shiah, newly with Eightfold, recently head of talent for Amex. She is the head of talent strategy and transformation at Eightfold.

In this episode Craig talks with Jenny Cotie Kangas, Director of Digital Experience for Talent Acquisition at Regis Corporation - the largest hair salon chain in the world which owns brands like Supercuts, SmartStyle, Cost Cutters, First Choice Haircutters, Roosters, and many more. Jenny is a rare hybrid in the recruiting world.  She describes herself like this:  "My professional tool belt doesn't look like many others. It's comprised of a variety of tools, added and sharpened through years as a Project Consultant. I'm a Program Manager but by all other standards, I’m a builder. As a kid, learning came hard for me. To understand what came easy to my peers I would identify patterns and reverse engineer. This helped my “faster than normal” brain understand and learn. From an early age, I viewed the world through systems. Having this mindset resulted in me being able to move learning to mastery quickly. I became known as the girl in the project world you’d call if you didn’t have a person with the necessary skill set for a role. “She’s the Purple- Sparkly-Unicorn-Utility Tool and sharp as a tack,” a former Recruiter explained to a hiring manager, “She might not have the background today, but she will learn it and quick.” In October 2019 I was challenged to apply my systems brain to a new world. My insurance company had not given me enough money post water damage to finish my home. I had a couple of options - pay the extra money to finish the house or sell as-is. I went with option three and picked up an actual tool-belt. Single mom with three kids - I learned construction and personally rebuilt my house from the studs out. These days you’ll find me during the week focused on building frictionless processes and systems. Outside of work, you'll find me in an actual tool-belt, finishing my house and helping others to learn the trades." Jenny and Craig discuss  -designing outcomes with your audience in mind -Store-level hiring -Franchisees and how to get them to understand hiring, what's the story for that? -Failing fast and failing forward -Design bias, when you go into a situation to help but those you are helping are pre-disposed to think anyone from "corporate" isn't helpful. -Solving hard, non-linear problems -The concept of the mirror and window in hiring -How to avoid basing recruiting on what we've traditionally done -How to avoid shrinking your guardrails -How to condense user adoption from 3 days to 15 minutes  -The power of a "what if?"  It's always fun when Jenny and Craig get together for a chat.  This is a good one. 

Craig Fisher and Carrie Corcoran of TalentNet Media break down a recent project to fix funnel recruitment marketing for a major retail distribution center. When Indeed and traditional job boards aren't performing for one or more of your regions, what do you do to get job candidates to apply?  You have to think outside of the box and get creative. Craig and Carrie walk through their process to audit the candidate experience and remove barriers from interest and applying to jobs at your company.   How do you amplify a transparent, non-friction employer brand?  You need to show your benefits right up front.  We talk title and geographic expansions, opening of social channels and niche job boards, and more. TalentNet Media is doing some interesting work right now to help companies find and attract talent, and get them to apply and follow through all the way to hiring and retention in this upside down job market.  Find out more at www.talentnetmedia.com

Joel Cheesman and I go way back.  He spoke at some of the very first TalentNet Live conferences and was a friend and fellow blogger back in the early days of RecruitingBlogs.com.  In this episode of Inside Talent we discuss Joel's new venture, Poach.ai that performs daily sentiment analysis for your company, or of any competitors you, as an employer, might target for talent acquisition purposes. We also discuss Joel's swag marketing strategy How to save time recruiting from competitors when the iron is not and how to know when it's not The current talent shortage that includes companies like Uber and Lyft Stimulus checks, IRS refunds The current high cost of Indeed Smart job title strategy The return of in-person events Clubhouse And much more.

Amy Butchko had a dream to transform the talent attraction and employer brand at a legacy government contractor IT company to a modern blend of funnel marketing to augment sourcing, creating a better and more accurate flow of job candidates and available talent for it's very specialized, often top-secret clearance jobs.  When we met in 2017 after my presentation at the Recruit DC conference, she told me, "I am trying to do at SAIC what you are doing at CA Technologies."  And she told me it would take about 4 years.  With creativity and determination, Amy made it happen and has a really cool story about that journey. What you'll learn: Digital Transformation for talent acquisition in a legacy brand The hurdles of branding and attraction at non-consumer companies What is the perfect team mix of recruitment marketing, sourcing and recruiting How much recruitment tech is too much or too little Much much more. Catch Amy at the TalentNet Live Spring 2021 Virtual Recruiting Conference 3.21.21 - Register HERE

Accenture's Global Talent Acquisition Capability Leader, Jason Roberts and Inside Talent's Craig Fisher talk global sourcing, COVID's impact on the global talent market, the winners and losers, corporate trends, and significant shifts that are the outcomes so far.   We also break down #GlobalTADay and preview TalentNet Live's Virtual conference coming up on November 20th on the Hopin platform.  Details and registration at www.talentnetlive.com. This episode is brought to you by Visage.jobs, where you can crowdsource sourcing to a community of 4000+ global sourcers - humans powered by intelligent matching and ai.  View the video of this episode here 

This episode is part of our Talent Sourcing Series presented by Visage.Jobs where you can crowd-source sourcing The Implications Of GPT-3 On The World Of Talent Talent Acquisition Technologies are changing the way that employers are sourcing candidates. GPT-3 has been hailed as the most powerful language model ever built and is expected to have major implications on the future of talent acquisition. Join Rory O’Doherty, Founder of Olas.io and me to learn how this new technology will change the future of hiring top talent and what you can do to prepare.

Craig Fisher and Joss Leufrancois, CEO of Visage, discuss the difference between rehiring and rebuilding your workforce when jobs come back.  We are looking at likely the largest re-hiring event in history.  But many of our former employees will have found other work or will not be interested in their former employer's post COVID-19 opportunity, which may have changed substantially.  Likewise for the employer.  If your needs change from in-person to an online experience you may need to rebuild vs. thinking about rehiring. We discuss how to do that with a newly limited recruiting and sourcing team.  What efficiencies can be found via automation?  We have the answers for you in this very enlightening episode. This episode is sponsored by Visage.jobs.  Visage crowd-sources Sourcing to a community of 4000 global sourcers making it simple to enter a job and await qualified candidates with full contact info to populate your inbox.   View the full video of this episode at https://bit.ly/34d5pg6

Craig Fisher and Rhonda Merchant of BNSF Logistics talk Diversity, Equality, Inclusion, and Bias.  DEIB in Human Resources, conferences, and more.  How to reach outside of your comfort zone to make a difference in peoples' lives.   We discuss: Inherent Bias of Hiring Managers The fallacy of "culture fit" and how to dig deeper Bias camouflaged at compliments Southern culture and inclusion Being guarded in job interviews Your name may cause bias And much more

On this episode of Inside Talent, Craig Fisher talks with Jerome Ternynck about how recruiters can reinvent themselves and be change agents when the world needs them more than ever. Jerome is the Founder and CEO of SmartRecruiters and Published Author of "Hiring Success: How Visionary CEOs compete for the best talent", Lioncrest Publishing (February 11, 2020) - http://hiringsuccess.com/book You can view the video at https://youtu.be/azTpiEFA6nY We discuss *What Talent Acquisition leaders should be thinking about right now *How recruiters can be change agents for themselves and society during the COVID-19 epidemic *Hiring people and hiring great talent isn't always the same *Most employers don't measure hiring success properly *Quality metrics for hiring *Now might be a great time to plan your ATS upgrade *Lessons from Jerome's new book, Hiring Success  *Jerome's time leading paratrooper boot camp in the French Army

Jim D'Amico is a globally recognized TA Leader, specializing in building best in class TA functions for global organizations. He's a speaker, author, and mentor, with an intense passion for all things talent acquisition.  He's currently Global Head of TA for Celanese and President of ATAP.  He's also a military veteran as well as a stand-up comedy veteran of Second City. In this episode, Jim and Craig Fisher discuss what happens AFTER this new normal.   Topics: Future of work - is remote work or choice the way of the future, more freedom of schedule, back to BAU? Future of Talent Acquisition - What happens to recruiters and TA professionals, video interviews, gig shifts, candidate experience and how ATAP in the community is helping Best lists / challenges from social media Ultimate podcast list (Jim and Craig's favs), Quarantine music list Side hustles and gigs to get us through this Warhammer, craft beer, and comedy