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Episode 20
Kill Your Indeed Habit: What Job Ads Actually Cost You
with Jason Pistulka, Founder & Principal Consultant, StratTech Talent Consulting and Advisory
A full teardown of where recruitment advertising money actually goes. Jason Pistulka — 25+ years in HR and recruiting, including leading a 600-person national recruiting team at HCA Healthcare — walks through his viral Walmart career site audit, why he says 'the soul of Indeed rotted some time ago,' the 11%-of-traffic channel nobody believed in (it's Bing), and how he built a fully functioning ATS from scratch in one weekend. Plus Ashley's Talent Outside the Box on data hygiene vs. data integrity.
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Episode 19
Stop Hiring Out of Panic
with Alycia M. Huston, Founder & CEO, The Culture Cru
Alycia M. Huston spent a decade co-founding and running a biopharma company, sold it, and stayed through the acquisition. Now she runs The Culture Cru, working with founders and SMBs on intentional hiring and culture before the org chart outruns the people in it. A masterclass in slowing down without slowing down — the phased approach, preparatory research, why urgency and precision aren't opposites, the AI-bot screening disaster story, and why 80% of Alycia's work ends up being culture work, not hiring work.
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Episode 18
Merit Won't Get You Hired. Visibility Will.
with Abdurrahman "Muni" Muni, Founder @ Dreampath
Merit isn't dead, but it's not driving the bus alone anymore. Muni — founder of Dreampath and former Head of Global Talent Acquisition at ApplyBoard where he helped scale from 300 to 1,000 people in two years — joins Des and Ashley to break down relationships vs. resumes, why you are a business of one, the return of the long resume in an AI world, and why back-channeling candidates is functionally unethical. Plus Ashley's hot take: most companies claim meritocracy but are actually just capitalism for their friends.
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Episode 17
Back to Basics, Vol. 1: Vocab, JDs & Comp
with Desiree Goldey & Ashley King
Desiree and Ashley ditch the guest chair and go one-on-one for a back-to-basics refresher — the terminology, habits, and blind spots that trip up even experienced recruiters. Prospect vs. applicant vs. candidate, how to vet (and fix) a bad JD, building a comp business case with real data sources, and a Talent Outside the Box segment on gendered language in job descriptions. Consider this Part 1.
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Episode 16
Why Has Recruiting Not Changed Since 1996?
with Matt Schalsey, CEO, PerfectHire
Matt Schalsey, CEO of PerfectHire, makes the case that recruiters are salespeople — and Ashley immediately pushes back with "recruiting is sales plus ethics." They get into vanity metrics, ATS systems quietly blocking candidates from reapplying, why nobody can prove recruiting ROI the way sales can, and how PerfectHire's new Agency Plus platform is built specifically for agencies and embedded recruiters. Talentless listeners get one free month with code TALENTLESS.
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Episode 15
LinkedIn User #204,097: 39 Years of TA, Told Straight
with Steve Levy
Steve Levy is LinkedIn user #204,097. He co-founded ATAP. He was doing AI in hiring at Pitney Bowes before AI had a Wikipedia page. Des and Ashley sat down with one of the actual OGs of modern Talent Sourcing and asked him to zoom out. A masterclass wrapped in a roast wrapped in an hour of the funniest, sharpest TA conversation we've had all year.
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Episode 14
Off Script: One Year of Talentless
with Desiree Goldey & Ashley King
One year. Thirty-seven episodes. Two hosts who somehow still like each other. For our post-anniversary episode, Des and Ashley turned the mic on themselves — no guest, no script, no agenda beyond "let's actually let people meet us." It's honest, a little messy, and the two of them at their most them.
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Episode 13
Your Origin Story Is the Job Skill Nobody's Hiring For
with T. Tara Turk-Haynes, Founder of Equity Activations
Talentless's 1-Year Anniversary Episode. T. Tara Turk-Haynes — founder of Equity Activations and creator of The Origin Arc framework — joins Des and Ashley to unpack why DEI failed (spoiler: icing over a crumbling cake), what The Origin Arc unlocks for hiring managers and recruiters, why feedback is the talent acquisition crisis nobody is naming, and why your origin story is the most undervalued skill in the room.
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Episode 12
The Talent You Were Trained to Throw Away
with Chason Forehand, Founder of HR-4U Inc. & Creator of Transformation Kitchen™
"People-first" is the most overused, underutilized phrase on LinkedIn. Everyone says it. Almost nobody does it. Chason Forehand — chef, nonprofit founder, and someone who has lived on every side of "unhireable" — sits down with Des and Ashley for a conversation about action over words, profits versus people, and the responsibility recruiters carry in every job description they write.
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Episode 11
Empathy Is Not Soft. It's a Damn Strategy.
with Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller
Empathy is the most overused word in leadership right now. Everyone says it. Almost nobody does it. Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller joins Des and Ashley to break down the 43 types of empathy, why self-empathy is the leadership foundation everyone skips, and why the hiring process is the least empathic experience companies offer.
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Episode 10
Bargains Are Bunk: The Truth About Pay
with David Turetsky
Compensation isn't a math problem — it's a truth-telling problem. David Turetsky brings 35+ years in compensation, a U.S. patent on performance-driven pay tech, and zero patience for the salary band shortcuts HR has used to underpay people for decades.
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Episode 9
Early Career Hiring: What is different?
with Lori Golden
Lori Golden brings 27+ years of recruiting experience to unpack why the hiring market feels so disconnected for Gen Z candidates and employers alike — and why companies quietly pulled back from investing in early career talent.
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Episode 8
Clockout with Erin Riska
with Erin Riska
Erin shares how curiosity, flexibility, and a healthy dose of irreverence shaped her work as a fractional talent strategist and writer. From building better candidate experiences to designing people-first recruiting systems, her story is equal parts grit and wanderlust.
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Episode 7
AI Isn't Replacing Recruiters — Bad Leadership Is.
with Oscar Chavez
Recruiting isn't broken because of AI. It's broken because too many companies reduced recruiting to speed, admin work, and “paper pushing” long before AI entered the conversation.
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Episode 6
Are Recruiting Models Broken... or Just Misunderstood?
with Chloe Ryan, VP Talent Solutions, WSI Talent Sync
We dig into whether the traditional recruiting model is truly broken or if we just need to rethink how we use it.
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Episode 5
CSI: Hiring Funnel — AI Fraud, Fake Candidates & Trust Signals
with Maryam Mahdaviani, CEO of Attesto
The rise of AI-generated resumes, deepfake interviews, and how to build trust signals into your hiring process.
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Episode 4
Is the Resume Dead? AI Screening & the New Hiring Front Door
with Mayur Macwan, CEO, Roundone.ai
Are resumes still relevant in an AI-first world? We explore the future of candidate screening.
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Episode 3
What Hiring Lost (and How We Get It Back)
with Mark Lane
A look at what the hiring process has lost over the years and practical steps to bring humanity back.
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Episode 2
Building the Table: Leadership, Power & The Climb
with Felicia Smith, Founder & Board Chair, The Climb
How to build your own seat at the table — leadership lessons from the trenches of talent acquisition.
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Episode 1
Interviewing is Broken... or Just Exposed?
with Victoria Gates & Lorna Erickson
Two experts join us to dissect why interviewing feels so broken and what a better process looks like.
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