The Next Step: AI for TA and EB

Quick thought after a late night at my daughter’s first club show (yes, I feel old): You’re using AI wrong. Most people think: “How can AI remove the boring parts of my job?” Better question: “How can AI help me do things I couldn’t do before?” Why analyze 4 competitors when you can analyze 40? Same time investment, 10x the insight. Why ask AI to “fix this job posting” when you can ask “Who is thi...

Hey, Just landed back from RecFest. Two days of stages, presentations, panels, hundreds of conversations. Here’s what I kept hearing: “How do we get buy-in for that?” Translation: “I don’t think I’m allowed to do this.” You are. You’re not a recruiter or a recruiting leader. You’re a Chief Growth Officer. If you hire better people, the company grows. Full stop. That gives you permission to experim...

Hey, Quick one today because I’m slammed with client work and RecFest prep. But I couldn’t let the week go by without giving you one incredibly useful AI tool: A b******t detector for your employer brand content. Paste your career site copy, job posting, or EVP document into this ChatGPT prompt, and it will: * Flag every vague, meaningless line * Suggest concrete, specific replacements * Tell you...

When was the last time you tested your career site messaging with actual target candidates? If you’re like most employer brand professionals, the answer is probably “never” or “not recently enough.” Why? Because getting feedback from your ideal candidates (especially hard-to-reach ones like doctors, executives, or specialized engineers) is expensive, time-consuming, and honestly, a total pain. Unt...

Quick question: When was the last time you read a LinkedIn post from a recruiter and thought, “Wow, this person really gets our industry”? Yeah, me neither. Here’s the problem most of us face: We’re trying to attract specialized talent (engineers, developers, nurses, etc.) but we don’t have deep expertise in their fields. So we end up writing generic “join our amazing team” posts that make everyon...

What if I told you that switching a single $20/month subscription could completely transform how you find and engage top talent? That's exactly what happened when I started playing with Perplexity AI - and the results are mind-blowing. In the latest episode of The Next Step: 🎯 The "Persona Channel Finder" - An AI prompt that uncovers hidden communities where your ideal candidates actually hang ou...

Most teams treat AI like a shiny tool and brainstorming like a meeting. Both are wrong. In this week’s The Next Step , we dig into AI as a leadership skill —how you think, ask, and decide—not a software purchase. And we pair it with a dead-simple 3-day brainstorm cadence that actually ships original ideas. Steal these ideas: * AI as a teammate: How to prompt like a leader (framing, constraints, co...

If your careers content and your outreach feel… fine—but not moving needles—this week’s The Next Step hands you a tiny workflow that does big things. It’s one process you can run two different ways: first to pressure-test your careers messaging against real target profiles, then to flip it and spot tension inside a competitor’s public story. The output isn’t “opinions”—it’s a simple grid you can t...

Here's a question for you: How much do your hiring managers really love those hour-long intake meetings you schedule? If you're being honest, they probably don't. At all. But what if I told you there's a way to cut your intake meetings down to 10 minutes while getting BETTER information and making yourself look like an absolute recruitment genius in the process? It all comes down to asking the rig...

I built a fully working Chrome extension in under 10 minutes. No coding. No tools. Just ChatGPT and a good prompt. In the latest episode of The Next Step , I walk through the exact process—from idea to execution—of building a browser tool that scrapes job posts and rates their quality. If you’ve ever thought “I wish Chrome could just do ___,” this is the episode you need to see. It’ll get your whe...

This one started with a truck driver survey, and turned into an AI-powered insight engine. You know those little pulse surveys you send out? They might be more powerful than you think. In this week’s episode of The Next Step , we unpack how a single weekly text to drivers unearthed a ton of untapped strategic value. With a little AI and a lot of curiosity, we turned 13 lines of feedback into opera...

Most recruiters are still sleeping on one of the most useful AI tools out there: Notebook LM.It’s not just another chatbot—it’s a way to build smarter, reusable context for every hiring manager, job family, and role. This week’s episode of The Next Step breaks down exactly how to use it to: * Nail intake meetings before they even happen * Customize job posts with hiring manager nuance * Generate b...

This week’s episode of The Next Step is hands-on. Like really hands-on. I grabbed a real biotech company (Sarepta—no connection to them), found a role they’re actively hiring for, and used AI tools—ChatGPT and Apify—to reverse engineer exactly what content would help them attract the right person. We scrape the career site. We analyze LinkedIn posts. We upload a real candidate profile. We build a...

Hey there, I was on a coaching call with a client last week, and they brought up something that's been eating at me ever since. They said: "I feel like I'm stuck in an impossible situation. I need to engage subject matter experts, but I'm not one myself. So I end up sounding like every other recruiter." Sound familiar? Here's the thing - you ARE an expert. You understand the talent market, candida...

Quick question: When you're choosing between final candidates, what do you rely on most? If you said "gut feel" or "instinct" - you're not alone. Most recruiters and hiring managers do the same thing. But here's what behavioral science tells us: that "gut feel" is actually unconscious bias in disguise. And it's costing you great hires while letting poor fits slip through. The good news? You can fi...

In this week’s episode of The Next Step , I invited Michael Brown from Door 3 Talent to walk me through his LinkedIn sourcing workflow. The twist? I wasn’t the best use case… and that’s exactly why it’s worth watching. ▶️ Watch the experiment unfold Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe on YouTube. And don’t forget: I JUST launched Talent Idea of the Day . It’s free, so go subscribe! And if you’re inte...

Ever wish you could pull a candidate’s phone number, email, and back-story before your coffee gets cold— without a ZoomInfo bill? In the latest episode of “The Next Step,” I sit down with sourcing wizard Brian Fink to live-demo the exact free AI tools he uses every day: Perplexity Pro, You.com, Google’s new AI Mode, and a few surprises. We even throw them into a head-to-head duel on Chatbot Arena....

We need to talk about AI paralysis—the moment you realize AI matters, but you're frozen by risk, complexity, or just too many shiny tools. In this episode of The Next Step , I take that feeling head-on. I walk through a real-world example from Chad and Cheese —giving feedback to rejected candidates—and show how to use ChatGPT to simulate the conversations that normally stop change in its tracks. H...

To my recruiters friends: How many times have you marched a tidy shortlist over to a hiring manager only to hear, “Hmm… not quite right” ? That’s the Order-Taker Trap, and it’s killing your credibility and your calendar. In this week’s episode of The Next Step , flip that script with a single ChatGPT prompt. I take a real request, “We need a front-end developer” and turn it into you looking like a...

Let’s get right to it. In this episode, we tackle two big ideas: Talent scarcity in critical roles - 59% of employers seek "go-getters” but only 21% of students identify as go-getters. Talent scarcity? Or something we can fix? EVP relevance and refresh needs - How can you tell if its time to refresh your EVP? This week’s challenges are from Universum’s conversation between Nikki Trifunovic and Jef...

Ever feel like you're paying for three tools that basically do the same thing? You're not alone. And you're probably right. In the latest episode of The Next Step , I did something I've never tried before: I fed ChatGPT a list of common HR and recruiting tools and asked it to audit them for overlaps, redundancies, and waste. The results? Eye-opening. It didn't just identify where tools overlap—it...

Hello Employer Brand Champion! Ever felt like you're speaking a different language when trying to explain your employer brand ROI to finance? In my latest episode of The Next Step podcast, I tackle one of our biggest collective headaches: proving the value of employer brand work on tight HR budgets. But instead of the usual "track these 5 metrics" advice, I'm sharing something much more powerful....

Hello, fellow sufferers of "corporate-approved messaging" fatigue! (It’s a club, we meet at the bar.) In the latest episode of "The Next Step," I dive headfirst into the giant pool of employer branding garbage that's flooding the internet and emerge with AI-powered life rafts. All inspired by my friend Ashten Fizer and her interview on the Chad and Cheese Show , who's apparently as tired of the EB...

Welcome to the FIRST EPISODE of "The Next Step," a new series where employer brand strategist James Ellis shows talent acquisition professionals how to leverage AI for real-world recruiting challenges. In this debut episode, James tackles the AI elephant in the room - helping you take practical first steps regardless of whether you're excited about AI or terrified by it. Using a real case study fr...