The Jim Stroud Podcast

In this compelling episode, HR futurist Jim Stroud sits down with Dr. Deepak Bhootra of Sandler to explore the powerful intersection of talent acquisition, sales strategy, and leadership development. Tailored for recruiters and HR leaders, this conversation reveals how organizations can align hiring, training, and performance to drive measurable business results. Discover how consultative selling...

What if your biggest talent advantage isn’t AI—but where you hire? In this episode, Jim Stroud and Brian Samson challenge outdated hiring models and make the case for nearshoring to Latin America as the smarter alternative to both offshoring and overpaying domestically. Discover why companies are tapping into high-skill, same-time-zone talent—and why AI may actually increase the value of adaptable...

But behind the disruption is a bigger story most employers are missing. In this episode of The Jim Stroud Podcast, Jim Stroud talks with Eileen Linnabery about why government workers are often overlooked and what companies get wrong when evaluating their talent. As TSA workers rethink their future, this conversation reveals where hiring breaks down, how bias shapes decisions, and why highly capabl...

Your best employees aren't quitting for more money — they're quitting for relief. Tens of millions of workers are quietly carrying an invisible second job: caregiving. And it's burning out your most valuable people from the inside out. In this episode, we explore why elder care benefits have become one of the most overlooked retention tools in the workplace, what the research says about ROI, and w...

AI is transforming hiring—but it’s also enabling a new wave of candidate fraud. In this episode of The Jim Stroud Podcast, Jim speaks with Maryam Mahdaviani, founder of Attesto, about how AI tools, deepfakes, and identity impersonation are reshaping the hiring process. Some candidates now use AI to generate resumes, get real-time interview answers, or even appear on camera using face and voice fil...

This podcast brought to you by: "Career Intelligence Weekly" - the newsletter that tracks the invisible job market for smarter career decisions. https://newsletter.jimstroud.com In this episode: At a recent conference, I sat down with recruitment marketing expert Jim Durbin, also known as the “Indeed Whisperer.” With 25+ years in staffing, headhunting, RPO, and internal TA, Durbin shares blunt ins...

It started with a single research memo. In February 2026, a scenario paper from a macro firm called Citrini Research sent the Dow plummeting 800 points and triggered phrases like "AI Doomsday" across financial media. But the crash wasn't really about artificial intelligence. It was about something far more personal — the kind of work you do every day. In this episode, Jim Stroud breaks down the co...

What if everything you believed about how hiring works… was only half the story? The job market has always had rules. Apply. Interview. Get picked. Simple, right? But something is quietly changing beneath the surface — and it's making a lot of people uncomfortable. Job seekers are now paying recruiters. Not to polish their résumé. Not to prep for interviews. They're paying someone to pitch them —...

The factory runs perfectly. The robots work tirelessly. Production costs plummet. And then someone asks the question that breaks the entire model: Who's buying the cars? This episode examines the economic paradox no one wants to name. Companies don't survive on efficiency alone—they survive on customers with money. If automation displaces massive amounts of human labor, the math breaks. Not morall...

There's a social network you're not allowed to post on. No account. No comments. No ability to clarify context. But your company's employees are already active there—not the human ones, the digital ones. In January 2026, a machine-only social network called Moltbook quietly went live, and within weeks, more than a million AI agents showed up. What happened next should make every leader uncomfortab...

By 2027, not knowing how to work with AI won’t get you fired — it’ll get you quietly excluded. In this episode, we unpack why AI literacy is no longer a skill, but a signal. A test of trust, judgment, and who gets a voice inside AI-mediated workplaces. This isn’t about prompts or tools. It’s about power, credibility, and what happens when human judgment starts getting audited. If work feels differ...

This episode brought to you by ProvenBase: https://provenbase.com ... On this episode of the Jim Stroud Podcast, Jim sits down with Michelle Cass, global talent acquisition leader and author of Hired by Humanity, to cut through the AI hype in recruiting. Michelle shares why AI doesn’t fix broken processes or culture—it exposes them. Together, they unpack how automation should amplify recruiters (n...

This episode brought to you by: Job Search 3.0 and The Recruiting Life newsletter. Links below. ... You walk into your review prepared to discuss your metrics. But there’s a new name on the dashboard. It’s not a peer. It’s not a hire. It’s an AI recruiting agent—with a title, a scorecard, and a seat on the org chart next to yours. The moment your KPIs are placed side-by-side, everything changes. T...

This episode of The Jim Stroud Podcast is brought to you by ProvenBase - an AI-powered talent acquisition and Deep Search sourcing platform that helps organizations find, engage, and hire hard-to-find candidates from thousands of real-time online sources. See it in action for yourself by visiting - https://provenbase.com ... In this episode: Are pharmacy benefits actually helping employers and emp...

This episode brought to you by "The Career Intelligence System" at https://ci.jimstroud.com ... Everyone keeps saying career coaching is booming. You hear it on podcasts. You see it on LinkedIn. You see screenshots, sold-out programs, and bold income claims. But if that’s true… why does the market feel crowded? Why does demand feel real—but uneven? In this episode, we strip away the hype and look...

Everyone keeps asking if the job market is broken. It’s not that simple. Hiring didn’t disappear—it changed. Quieter. More selective. Less forgiving of guesswork. In this episode, Jim Stroud unpacks why the market feels confusing, why familiar strategies stopped working, and what’s really driving hiring decisions right now. If your experience suddenly feels harder to translate—or the rules feel di...

Companies aren’t failing at AI because the tech isn’t ready—they’re failing because they’ve underinvested in the humans expected to make it work. | Subscribe to "The Recruiting Life" newsletter at JimStroud.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jim Stroud shares a special message of thanks to everyone who supported him online. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recruiting is crossing a line from AI support to AI execution, and the winners won’t be the fastest adopters—but the ones who pair automation with accountability and governance. | Subscribe to "The Recruiting Life" newsletter at JimStroud.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Long searches, low response rates, and widespread burnout reveal a hiring system optimized for volume over clarity—leaving job seekers exhausted and trust eroding fast. | Subscribe to "The Recruiting Life" newsletter at JimStroud.com Read the report that inspired my rant - "Job Seeker Survey: 76% Burned Out by Job Hunt" https://www.howdy.com/blog/job-hunter-survey Learn more about your ad choices....

The global labor market isn’t breaking, but the data shows employers quietly shifting from hiring at scale to hiring with intent—while U.S. metrics remain temporarily distorted by missing government data. | Subscribe to "The Recruiting Life" newsletter at JimStroud.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new Stanford study reveals that nearly half of today’s AI tools are automating tasks workers don’t want automated—so why is Silicon Valley racing to replace judgment and creativity while employees are still drowning in expense reports? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly half of employees—and even more executives—are secretly using AI at work, so what happens to trust, risk, and leadership when the future of work is something no one is willing to admit out loud? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A former U.S. consular officer claims up to 90% of H-1B visa applications she reviewed were fraudulent—so what does that mean for American workers, global talent, and a system that may be breaking in plain sight? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first time ever, the government is putting a warning label on college—so what happens when students start seeing which degrees (and classes) may actually cost them more than they’re worth? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices