Tech Connects

The 2026 tech hiring market is loosening up — and the rules have changed. Ted Hellmuth, founder of recruiting firm IQ Clarity, joins Paul Farnsworth to unpack what's driving demand, where AI fits in, and the mistakes holding both employers and candidates back. Key insights from this episode: • Hiring demand is up, especially for leadership roles — a strong signal that companies are investing again...

AI is transforming how companies hire, but not in the way most HR teams expected. Mahe Bayireddi, CEO of Phenom, joins host Paul Farnsworth to break down the real mechanics of AI-powered recruiting: where agents add value, where humans stay essential, and why data quality is the problem standing between HR and meaningful automation. Key insights from this episode: Dynamic, AI-driven workflows are...

The way companies train their workforce has changed. Mike Pitta, Talent Principal at Guild, explains how AI is driving a shift from episodic training programs to continuous, on-demand learning across all roles—not just technical teams. Key insights from this conversation: Low-level coding tasks are being automated, pushing companies to prioritize soft skills like communication, critical thinking,...

AI is changing how tech professionals search for jobs—and MCP servers are leading the charge. In this episode of Tech Connects, host Paul Farnsworth sits down with Nick Mertens, Data Science Manager at Dice, to explore how Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers are transforming the job search by connecting AI platforms like Claude and ChatGPT directly to live job data. Nick breaks down the current f...

Kicking off a new season of Tech Connects, our new host Paul Farnsworth sits down with Amy Thibodeau, Chief Design Officer at Gusto, a platform that helps over 400,000 small businesses manage payroll, benefits, and HR functions. Amy leads product design, user research, content design, and brand design teams, giving her a comprehensive view of how AI is reshaping creative work across organizations....

Our guest on 'Tech Connects' is Scott Brighton, CEO of Bonterra, a software company focused on social good that helps nonprofits raise money, manage donor relationships, and report on impact outcomes while connecting them with funders looking to give money away. We explore how AI is transforming the nonprofit sector—an area where efficiency demands are actually more intense than in for-profit comp...

Our guest on 'Tech Connects' is Dr. Rebecca Swift, Senior Vice President of Creative at Getty Images, which provides licensed visual content to businesses worldwide. Rebecca oversees Getty's creative team that works with photographers, filmmakers, and visual researchers to understand market trends and guide their community of over half a billion creators. We explore how AI-generated imagery is res...

Our next guest on 'Tech Connects' is Harry Wang, Chief Growth Officer at Sonar, a Geneva-headquartered company that's been helping developers build better, safer software faster for 16 years. Sonar serves over 7 million developers worldwide by providing insights on code quality, vulnerabilities, and security directly in developers' workflows. With AI-driven coding becoming increasingly prevalent a...

Our next guest on 'Tech Connects' is Eric Wang, VP of AI at Turnitin, which provides tools to academic institutions for everything from course assessment to academic integrity. For example, they have a platform that detects the use of AI in students' papers. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are having a huge impact right now on how students learn and educators teach, and I wanted...

Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice's podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you. I'm your host, Nick Kolakowski, and today we're going to be talking about learning and development with Becky Wallace, head of people at LearnUpon.   As we’ll get into, LearnUpon builds tools for employee training and learning. I wanted to talk to Becky b...

Our next guest on ‘Tech Connects’ is Kara Sprague, CEO of HackerOne. With over two decades of experience as a tech leader, Kara has held significant roles at F5, McKinsey, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard, culminating in her current leadership at HackerOne. She also served on the board of Girls Who Code, a nonprofit dedicated to achieving gender parity in technology jobs. Given that background, she bri...

Our next guest on ‘Tech Connects’ is Paul Farnsworth, who’s president of Dice. I wanted to talk to Paul because he’s had a long career in tech as a specialist and a manager. He’s overseen huge teams, worked on complex projects, and deeply understands the tech industry.   With that in mind, I wanted to ask him about the current tech landscape, and how he thinks tech pros can best prepare thems...

On our next episode of ‘Tech Connects,’ we’re talking to two guests about a new report that dives deep into tech workplace and culture, especially as it relates to crucial issues such as age and gender. Here’s our lineup for today. There’s Pam Nigro, who’s VP, security/security officer at Medecision, and an ISACA board director. There’s also Anna Murray, who’s founder, president and lead consultan...

Our guest today is James Raybould, who’s Head of Turing Intelligence at Turing, a company building AI solutions for a variety of organizations. In addition, Turing also helps clients train large language models, or LLMs, which power the chatbots that millions of people use every day. James’s team leverages the latest research to build AI systems that help businesses transform. If there’s one thing...

Our next ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Jenni Troutman, who’s Director of Training and Certification Products and Services at Amazon Web Services (AWS). In that role, she’s worked to help people interested in AWS and the cloud gain access to low-cost and self-paced training. Given that background, she seems like an ideal person to discuss the evolving landscape for cloud skills, the importance of certai...

For our latest episode, I’m chatting with Danny Thompson, who’s the director of technology at This Dot Labs, a frequent speaker on tech hiring, a conference organizer, and a podcast host. He’s constantly talking to recruiters, hiring experts, and people in the developer community about what it takes to land a job in tech, and I thought I’d be great to sit down with him and break down what the hiri...

For the latest episode of 'Tech Connects,' we’re talking to Brandon Jeffs, who’s the director of people and talent at TLDR, a newsletter collective with more than five million readers that covers startups, coding, tech, and so much more. He’s been a senior recruiter and talent partner at numerous firms, including the fintech unicorn Caribou, Prospectus Labs, and more. I wanted to chat with hi...

On this latest episode of ‘Tech Connects,’ we’re talking with Art Zeile, CEO of DHI Group, the parent company of Dice, about the latest Dice Tech Salary Report. Every year, we survey thousands of tech professionals for the Report’s breakdown of tech industry salary, benefits, and much more. This is the 20th annual edition of the Tech Salary Report, and we’re taking this opportunity to analyze how...

Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice’s podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you! I’m your host, Nick Kolakowski, and I’m talking to great guests every month about the current state of the tech careers world, including the tech job market, the hottest tech skills, what companies are doing to attract and retain tech professionals in a histor...

Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice’s podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you! I’m your host, Nick Kolakowski, and I’m talking to great guests every month about the current state of the tech careers world, including the tech job market, the hottest tech skills, what companies are doing to attract and retain tech professionals in a histor...

Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice's podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you. I'm your host, Nick Kolakowski.   Our next guest on “Tech Connects” is Christopher Savoie, who’s the CEO of Zapata AI, which is figuring out how to best integrate artificial intelligence into industrial-scale applications. In other words, he spends all da...

Our latest guest on ‘Tech Connects’ is Stefan Weitz, who’s co-founder and CEO of HumanX, which is currently planning a flagship AI conference in Las Vegas in March 2025. HumanX will use an extensive lineup of AI experts and executives to explore how this technology will impact everything from marketing and healthcare to cybersecurity. Seriously, there's going to be a lot of speakers and a lot of t...

Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice's podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you. I'm your host, Nick Kolakowski, and today we're going to be talking about the current state of the recruiting and talent acquisition market with Carmen Hudson, an author and recruiting expert. Carmen has led corporate recruiting teams, built recruiting softwar...

Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice's podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you. I'm your host, Nick Kolakowski. Our latest guest has been on the show before: Katrina Collier, a recruiting expert who’s an author, speaker, mentor, and facilitator specializing in the human side of talent acquisition. Her passion is ensuring that recruit...

Our next ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Seth Robinson, who’s vice president of industry research at CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association. CompTIA offers education, training, certifications, and monthly research. If you read Dice’s articles and e-books, you know we cite their research pretty constantly, including their monthly analysis of the tech unemployment rate and job trends. &nbsp...