Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell

AI in hiring isn't a yes-or-no question, it's a risk-management one. Johnny talks with Heather Bussing, an employment attorney who's spent almost 40 years at the intersection of employment law and technology, about what's actually required under the EU AI Act and US state laws. They dig into why risk rises the closer AI gets to a hiring decision, why pre-interview sorting is the ha...

Most TA leaders lose budget battles not because their ideas are bad, but because they're making the wrong argument. Johnny sits down with David Weinstock, VP at News Story, who learned the hard way that soft costs don't move CFOs. Hard dollars do. David shares how he rebuilt his approach to business cases: finance language, benefit loads, EBITDA thinking, and using AI to stress-test pitche...

Johnny sits down with Melissa Thompson, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Ford, to talk about something the AI conversation often skips: how TA leaders — not just recruiters — should actually be using it. Melissa shares how she built Project Bengal to tackle runaway req volumes, how she uses AI to analyse quality-of-slate data, and what it took to get her team genuinely on board. Honest, practi...

Most TA teams measure where they've been. Mike Peterson, Senior Director of Talent Source Intelligence at Edwards Lifesciences, is building something different — a sourcing model driven by the workforce plan, not the req queue. Johnny talks with Mike about moving from reactive to proactive: working backwards from need dates, pressure-testing the plan, and measuring success by whether you deliv...

How is AI actually reshaping talent acquisition? Johnny sits down with Elias Albino, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Syngenta, to talk through what changes when you free up recruiter capacity — and where human judgment still has to stay. They get into the friction between TA, HR business partners and talent management, why the 360 recruiter is fading, and how to measure whether all this autom...

In Budapest for recruiTECH CEE, Johnny sat down over a beer with Hung Lee — founder of Recruiting Brainfood and one of the most-followed voices in talent. They get into how AI is reshaping recruitment: the three archetypes driving the AI debate, why the efficiency you gain rarely comes back to you unless you negotiate for it, and the risk that subsidised AI ends up costing more than the people it...

Pulled from the Hiring Excellence vault — Johnny's conversation with Pavan Kumar, recorded nine months before agentic AI became the dominant talking point in TA. At the time, Pavan was leading global talent acquisition at Eightfold, rolling out their AI Recruiter to 600+ candidates across 35 roles. The argument that only got more relevant: interviewing is more automatable than scheduling, top-...

Pulled from the Hiring Excellence vault while a new season finishes mixing, Johnny's 2023 conversation with Wendy Mayer, VP Candidate Experience at Pfizer, that only gets more relevant. Wendy came to candidate experience from strategy, CX and employee experience, and brings all of that lens to TA. A practical take on why 'perfect' is the wrong target, which moments actually matter, and...

In this Best of Hiring Excellence replay, Johnny sits down with Glen Cathey, SVP of Talent Advisory at Randstad Enterprise, to dig into what it really takes to get value from AI as a recruiter. Glen unpacks the University of Zurich Reddit study on AI persuasion, explains why AI skills are really management skills, and shares why most of us are still treating these tools like a search engine. Liste...

We're returning to one of our most popular episodes ever in this replay episode of Hiring Excellence. Johnny sat down with Kelly Jones, now Chief People Officer at Cisco, to explore what it really took to build a hiring culture where talent became everyone’s responsibility, not just TA’s. From tackling talent hoarding to improving internal mobility and creating better candidate experiences, Ke...

What does a future-ready TA function actually look like? In this episode of the podcast, Johnny speaks with Blair Bennett, SVP of Global Talent Acquisition at PepsiCo, about redesigning TA from the ground up. From moving away from fragmented hiring models to building dedicated strategy, enablement, and execution teams, Blair shares how PepsiCo is preparing for AI, workforce transformation, and the...

“Cheating” in interviews might actually be forcing hiring teams to ask better questions. In this episode of the Hiring Excellence podcast, Johnny speaks with Amanda Richardson, CEO of CoderPad, about how AI is reshaping technical assessment, why traditional coding interviews are failing candidates, and what great hiring looks like when AI tools are part of the job itself.

What does it really take to bring a global TA function back in-house? In this episode, Johnny speaks with Rohit Joshi (Sanofi) about shifting from 90% outsourced hiring to a more controlled, scalable model. They unpack why process comes before technology, how to balance global consistency with local needs, and what it takes to drive real change across regions.

What does inclusive leadership really look like when your workforce spans 60 nationalities on offshore oil rigs? Johnny sits down with Holly Strople, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Noble Corporation, to explore how inclusion moves from idea to necessity in high-stakes environments. From redefining TA as a strategic advisor to bringing early talent back into the business, Holly shares practic...

AI in talent acquisition doesn’t fail because of technology. It fails because of overcomplication. In this episode, Johnny sits down with Chris Tennant (VP Global Talent Acquisition at Infor) to unpack a grounded, practical approach to AI adoption. From improving intake quality to standardizing interviews and giving recruiters time back, Chris shares what actually works, what doesn’t, and why star...

What does good hiring look like when you’re operating at global scale? In this episode, Johnny speaks with Kelly Tompkins from Accenture about designing hiring processes that actually work in the real world. They explore why “one size fits all” breaks down quickly, how to stay consistent on candidate experience, and why trust is a metric worth measuring. If you’re balancing scale, speed, and fairn...

When does outsourcing actually make sense in talent acquisition? In this episode, Johnny sits down with Gemma Milner (PwC) to unpack one of the toughest decisions TA leaders face: build in-house or partner externally. From cleaning messy data to redesigning the entire hiring model, Gemma shares what it really takes to make a confident, evidence-based call. If you’re weighing flexibility, cost, and...

What does it take to move from scattered AI experiments to a structured, scalable TA strategy? In this episode, Johnny speaks with Kerstin Wagner (Deutsche Bahn) about how her team built an AI roadmap without losing innovation. From recruiter-led prompt libraries to internal AI hubs and governance, this is a practical look at balancing compliance, scale, and creativity.

In this episode, Johnny speaks with Mary Kay Baldino, Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Morningstar, about what it really takes to build AI into a recruiting function. Mary Kay shares how her team mapped over 100 process inefficiencies before touching a single tool, how Morningstar's AI Academy is building genuine capability across TA, and why getting governance right up front made everythi...

In this episode, Johnny speaks with Michael Kulak, Global Director of Talent Acquisition at Warner Bros. Discovery Games, about the "great unbundling" of the recruiter role. From AI system managers to candidate concierges, Michael explores how specialization is reshaping TA teams — and why leaders who move too fast risk hollowing out the talent pipeline. A candid conversation about where...

Most teams don’t have an AI problem. They have a workflow problem. In this episode, Johnny speaks with Phil Mellows-Facer (BMS Performance) about what actually changes performance in a tough market. From cutting CV screening time to increasing reply rates from 30% to 81%, Phil shares how focusing on real bottlenecks, not shiny tools, transformed recruiter productivity and candidate experience.

What does the future recruiter actually look like? Johnny sat down with LinkedIn's Adam Hawkins, at LinkedIn Talent Connect UK, to unpack the shift from recruiter to talent strategist. This isn’t just about new tools. It’s about a structural change in how hiring works. They explore why data, trust, and advisory skills now sit at the core of the role, what work is disappearing, and where human...

What happens to careers when AI changes not just how we work, but how work itself is structured? In this episode of Hiring Excellence , Johnny sits down with Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn and co-author of Open to Work . They explore why careers now look less like ladders and more like climbing walls, what “skills-first” really means in practice, and how talent leader...

Are TA teams focusing on the wrong metric? This episode, originally recorded as part of a SocialTalent Live session, features Johnny in conversation with Kevin Blair on why productivity has become a trap for talent acquisition. Instead of doing “more with less,” Kevin argues for a shift towards capacity and a more strategic, value-led role for TA.

Lean TA isn’t about cutting for the sake of it. It’s about clarity, consistency, and focus. In this episode of the Hiring Excellence podcast, Johnny speaks with Robert Rice , Global Head of TA at ERM , about reshaping a 70-person TA team into a more focused team of 40 while strengthening process, improving data integrity, and moving upstream into commercial workforce planning. This is a grounded l...