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Talk Talent To Me

Talk Talent To Me

Rob Stevenson: Recruiting, Employer Branding, and Career Growth Expert. 419 Episodes Jul 29, 2026

Talk Talent To Me is a podcast that explores the strategies, metrics, techniques, and trends shaping the recruitment industry. Hosted by Rob Stevenson, a recruiting and employer branding expert, the show features interviews with recruiting leaders from various companies. It is produced by LHH and offers insights into talent acquisition.

Episodes

33,000 Applications and Counting: Navigating the AI Hiring Surge with Katie Rakusin of Merit America
33,000 Applications and Counting: Navigating the AI Hiring Surge with Katie Rakusin of Merit America Jul 29, 2026 32:11 Katie Rakusin, Director of Talent Acquisition at Merit America. has seen the AI hiring surge hit in real time: 33,000 applications in five months, 10,000 in May alone, and yes, the bots have officially arrived. The conversation covers how her team is restructuring its entire hiring process around the assumption that candidates are using AI, why stopping bot detection might actually be the smarter
Included Health CPO Jim O'Gorman
Included Health CPO Jim O'Gorman Jul 24, 2026 27:21 Jim has held senior people roles at Hulu and Quibi, but he'll tell you this job is different: the stakes are higher. The episode digs into why employer-sponsored healthcare is broken, how health deserts across rural America make virtual care a necessity, and why recruiters are leaving one of the most powerful differentiators in any offer completely undersold. Jim also weighs in on AI in the health
LinkedIn's First CHRO Steve Cadigan on AI Mistakes & Opportunities
LinkedIn's First CHRO Steve Cadigan on AI Mistakes & Opportunities Jun 30, 2026 43:05 Steve Cadigan, the first CHRO of LinkedIn and one of the most candid voices in the talent space, discusses where AI is genuinely helping organizations and where it is quietly doing damage. Steve challenges the assumption that replacing humans with AI is a strategy, makes the case that entry-level talent is the most AI-fluent generation in history and companies are cutting them at exactly the wrong
Freewheel Chief Global People Officer Quentin SaLay
Freewheel Chief Global People Officer Quentin SaLay Jun 26, 2026 33:14 Quentin shares what it actually means to future-proof a workforce, introducing his the three box framework for simultaneously maintaining the present, abandoning the past, and building the future, and walks through a real case study from the SDN era when network engineers resisted upskilling into software roles, with consequences that still inform how he approaches change management today. The co
Conviction, Crank, and Craft with Rox Talent Lead Erin Wilson
Conviction, Crank, and Craft with Rox Talent Lead Erin Wilson May 29, 2026 31:49 Show Notes Rob reunites with Erin Wilson, Talent Lead at Rox and a returning champion from the very first episode of Talk Talent to Me. Erin breaks down the two things Rocks screens for in every conversation, conviction and crank, explains why he still writes his own outreach by hand despite being one of the most AI-enabled recruiters working today, and walks through the exact tools and workflows
Crisp SVP People Ops Joe Bast
Crisp SVP People Ops Joe Bast May 27, 2026 39:54 Rob welcomes back Joe Bast, now SVP of People Operations at Crisp, for a wide-ranging conversation that covers what it really takes to operate at the executive level, why AI is not the equalizer most people think it is, and how the definition of retention needs a complete overhaul. Joe brings 25 years of hard-won perspective on building high-performing people functions at growth-stage companies, a
Re-Thinking Retention with Langan CHRO Donovan Mattole
Re-Thinking Retention with Langan CHRO Donovan Mattole May 22, 2026 35:34 Donovan shares how he deliberately hires business leaders into HR, why TA and retention must operate as a single strategy, and how he's making the case to Millennial and Gen Z employees that staying at one company for a full career can be the best financial decision they make. If you lead a team or manage talent at any level, this episode is full of frameworks you can apply immediately. Key tak
Building a Future-Proof People Agenda with Lisa Skinner Källström
Building a Future-Proof People Agenda with Lisa Skinner Källström Apr 30, 2026 26:06 Lisa is a seasoned CHRO with over 20 years in HR to explore what it looks like to intentionally pause, reflect, and reimagine your next career chapter. Lisa shares how she recognized the natural end of a mission-driven CHRO role, why she's now considering a move into consultancy and fractional work, and what that says about how senior HR professionals are rethinking their careers. The conversatio
Rachel Duran, HPE Head of Global Employer Brand & Recruiting Marketing
Rachel Duran, HPE Head of Global Employer Brand & Recruiting Marketing Apr 17, 2026 35:13 Rachel Duran has spent nearly 15 years building her career at the intersection of marketing and talent acquisition, moving through ad agencies, RPOs, and major tech companies. Rob and Rachel cover how the flood of AI-generated applications is forcing a fundamental rethink of what "success" looks like in recruiting marketing, why the candidate experience has to meet consumer-grade expectations, an
ProDriven Global Brands CHRO Kevin Bohan
ProDriven Global Brands CHRO Kevin Bohan Mar 31, 2026 39:27 Kevin breaks down how HR leaders can drive real business impact by aligning talent strategy directly to company goals, with a focus on scaling coaching as a lever for workforce performance and development. He shares how listening to employee feedback and preparing for the next phase of growth led his team to invest in coaching at scale, enabled by new technology that makes it accessible beyond jus
Liberty Mutual VP of Early TA Maura Quinn
Liberty Mutual VP of Early TA Maura Quinn Mar 23, 2026 29:22 📝 Episode Summary Maura explains why investing in early talent remains a high-impact, data-backed strategy despite growing narratives around AI replacing entry-level roles. She shares how Liberty Mutual has built a long-term pipeline that drives retention, accelerates promotion, and produces global leaders, while also evolving programs to align with shifting skill demands. The conversation explore
PepsiCo VP Global TA Ilona Kremer
PepsiCo VP Global TA Ilona Kremer Feb 27, 2026 36:37 Episode Summary Ilona explains what it takes to transform talent acquisition at a 300,000-person organization. From consolidating a sprawling, decentralized TA function into a unified operating model to simplifying a bloated tech stack and driving global process adoption, Ilona shares how her team moved from fragmentation to focus. The conversation explores the difference between operational busy-

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