Talentless

Guest: Hanan Harb, Principal and Learning & Development Consultant, Everybody, Be Cool!; author of Everybody, Be Cool! Guest links: •             LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hananharb/ •             Website: https://www.everybody-be-cool.com/ •             Book: https://www.everybody-be-cool.com/buy...

Guest : James Ellis, Principal, Employer Brand Labs Guest links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thewarfortalent/ Website: https://employerbrandlabs.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EmployerBrandLabs Book, Becoming Choosable: https://employerbrandlabs.com/becoming-choosable From the Vault: James Ellis of Employer Brand Labs calls out the "employer bland," the careers page that could bel...

Sean Kennedy (“Sean The TA Guy”), Founder & Chief Content Officer, Kennedys Content; fractional Head of TA Guest links: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanthetaguy/ - Newsletter: The Recruiter Reality Check: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-recruiter-reality-check-7420456125470318592/ - The Talking Talent Podcast (RecTalk, guest host): https://www.linkedin.com/company/rectalk-podc...

Recorded: Live at RecFest USA, Nashville Sponsor: RecOps Collective Live from RecFest Nashville: your brain runs on bias, so what happens when recruiters stop pretending it doesn't? Ashley breaks down anchor bias, decision fatigue, and why "bias-free" AI isn't, and the hosts debate where influence ends and manipulation begins. Resources and Links RecOps Collective, recruiting operations community...

Recorded: Live at RecFest USA, Nashville Sponsor: RoundOne AI (roundone.ai) Disclosure: Desiree is Head of Growth and Partnerships at RoundOne AI. Live from RecFest Nashville, Desiree and Ashley ask what "qualified" means when AI can optimize every resume. Ashley breaks down her four-quadrant recruiter performance model and time to find, a metric nobody tracks. Desiree asks whether any CEO will ac...

Amit Parmar, Co-Founder & CEO, Cliquify LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/parmar79 | Company: cliquify.me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cliquify/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cliquify Somewhere around minute thirty-four of this episode, Amit Parmar describes the best recruiter he ever managed: a guy who refused to look at the applicants. He would take the req, go out into the world, find the r...

Just Send The Email: What Hiring Transparency Actually Takes Alex Feder, Founder of Ghosted.work LinkedIn · Ghosted (ghosted.work/trace, free, public beta) Desiree and Ashley flip the usual Talentless lens this week. Instead of coaching recruiters, they sit down with someone who just spent a year living on the other side of the desk. Alex Feder, founder of Ghosted.work, walks through the exact fru...

Jason Pistulka, Founder & Principal Consultant, StratTech Talent Consulting and AdvisoryLinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/jasonpistulka) | Website (strattechconsulting.com) | Newsletter: The Talent Strategy Brief Jason Pistulka spent over 25 years in HR and recruiting including roles at Microsoft, Stora Enso, and CUNA Mutual Group, then a decade at HCA Healthcare (2014–2025), rising from Sr. Director of T...

Alycia M. Huston, Founder & CEO, The Culture Cru LinkedIn | Website: theculturecru.com | Instagram | Threads: @alyciahuston | YouTube Alycia M. Huston spent a decade co-founding and running a biopharma company in San Diego, sold it in 2014, and stayed on through the acquisition, watching two completely different operating systems try to merge into one....

Abdurrahman "Muni" Muni, Founder @ Dreampath, Ex-Head of Global Talent Acquisition @ ApplyBoard LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ammuni Website: dreampath (site TBD, confirm URL with Muni) Booking link: calendly.com/muni-dreampath/careerchat Merit isn't dead, but it's not driving the bus alone anymore, and this episode is Desiree and Ashley pulling that apart with Abdurrahman "Muni" Muni, founder of Drea...

In this episode, Desiree and Ashley ditch the guest chair and go one-on-one for a back-to-basics refresher — the terminology, habits, and blind spots that trip up even experienced recruiters. After a suitably unhinged icebreaker (where would you not want to die?), they dig into three fundamentals: the real difference between a prospect, an applicant, a candidate, and a new hire — and why mixing th...

Matt Schalsey, CEO of PerfectHire, joins Desiree and Ashley to argue that recruiters are basically salespeople and the hosts don't fully let him off the hook. Matt built PerfectHire after getting laid off one too many times as a sales enablement leader and deciding the real problem wasn't him, or the hiring managers, or even most recruiters, it was the systems everyone was forced to work inside of...

Steve Levy is LinkedIn user #204,097. He co-founded ATAP. He was doing AI in hiring at Pitney Bowes before AI had a Wikipedia page. And unlike a lot of "thought leaders" in this space, he never stopped practicing, he's currently at R1 RCM building production AI/ML sourcing prompt stacks while simultaneously training the next generation of ocean lifeguards at Jones Beach (34 years and counting). If...

One year of Talentless. Thirty-seven episodes. Two hosts who somehow still like each other. And a whole lot of people who tuned in along the way, thank you. For our post-anniversary episode, Des and Ashley did the thing they've been avoiding for a year: they turned the mic on themselves. No guest. No script. No agenda beyond "let's actually let people meet us." If you've been listening for the str...

This one's special, it's Talentless's 1-Year Anniversary Episode. Thank you for listening, sharing, and showing up for us this year. For our anniversary episode, Des and Ashley sit down with T. Tara Turk-Haynes, founder of Equity Activations, creator of The Origin Arc framework, first-generation college grad and first-generation corporate worker, and 15+ years deep in talent acquisition and people...

"People-first" is the most overused, underutilized phrase on LinkedIn. Everyone says it. Almost nobody does it. This week, Des and Ashley sit down with Chason Forehand — chef with 45+ years in the culinary world, founder of HR-4U Inc. (a four-time Platinum Seal of Transparency nonprofit), creator of Transformation Kitchen™ (now operating in Nicaragua with locations coming to New York, Beacon, and...

Empathy is the most overused word in leadership right now. Everyone says it. Almost nobody does it. This week, Des and Ashley sit down with Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller , TEDx speaker, international bestselling author of The Empathic Leader, host of The Empathic Leader podcast, and the founder of EQ via Empathy. Two doctorates, an MBA, a master's in data analytics, and a personal story that tur...

This week, Des and Ashley sit down with David Turetsky with 35+ years in compensation, U.S. patent holder on performance-driven pay tech, former VP at ADP, and the brain behind HR Data Labs. He's seen every comp shortcut, every salary band shortcut, and every excuse HR has ever used to underpay someone. And he's not interested in being polite about any of it. If you're a recruiter who freezes up w...

Early career hiring didn’t suddenly “break.” Companies changed the rules. In this episode of Talentless, Desiree Goldey, Ashley King, and Lori Golden unpack why the hiring market feels so disconnected for Gen Z candidates, recruiters, and employers alike, and why companies quietly pulled back from investing in early career talent. Lori brings over 27 years of recruiting experience across agency, s...

Recruiting isn’t broken because of AI. It’s broken because too many companies reduced recruiting to speed, admin work, and “paper pushing” long before AI entered the conversation. In this episode of Talentless, Desiree Goldey, Ashley King, and Oscar Chavez unpack the real issue behind modern hiring dysfunction: leadership decisions that stripped recruiting of strategy, empathy, and human judgment....

What happens when hiring becomes automated, impersonal, and frankly broken? This week on Talentless, Desiree and Ashley sit down with communications strategist and Ghosted by the Machine host, Mark Lane, to unpack what job seekers are really experiencing right now and what recruiters need to hear. From being ghosted for months (or a year ) to competing against AI-generated resumes, this conversati...

In this episode of Talentless, we’re joined by Victoria Gates and Lorna Erickson; co-founders of Expert Interviewers and hosts of the Don’t Tell Me About Yourself podcast to unpack a truth many companies don’t want to hear: Interviewing isn’t broken because of AI… it was already broken. AI is just exposing it. From gut-based hiring decisions to untrained interviewers and wildly inconsistent proces...

In this episode of Talentless, Des and Ashley are joined by Chloe Ryan, VP of Talent Solutions at WSI Talent Sync, to tackle a question most of the industry avoids: Are recruiting models actually broken… or do we just not understand them? From agency to RPO to retained search, there’s no shortage of options, but most companies still default to the same approach when hiring gets hard. Chloe brings...

The resume is not dead yet. But it is definitely on life support. In this episode of Talentless, Des and Ashley sit down with Mayur Macwan, CEO of Roundone.ai, to talk about what happens when the traditional resume stops being a useful signal and hiring teams are left drowning in volume, noise, and top-of-funnel chaos. They get into why so much human time gets burned before any real evidence exist...

AI didn’t just change hiring. It changed lying. In this episode of Talentless, Des and Ashley sit down with Maryam Mahdaviani, Founder & CEO of Attesto, to unpack what “candidate fraud” actually looks like in 2026. We’re not talking about a little resume inflation. We’re talking: Fabricated LinkedIn + resume + GitHub ecosystems Impersonation and proxy interviews Fake candidates who pass early scre...