Small Talk Window
"Small Talk Window" is where host Brent Skinner and his guest have a small window of time to dispense with the small talk as quickly as possible and settle into a meaningful conversation related to the world of work.
Episodes
February 24, 2025 • 23 mins
My guest for this episode of the podcast is Ben Mones, founder and CEO of Fama. After he and I got past discussing what we feed our young children for breakfast, we left the virtual greenroom and started recording in earnest. Bad actors can do bad things while working at your company. That’s why hiring can’t just be about hiring people who can do the job. We need to hire people who will get the work done in a way that doesn’t negat...
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February 21, 2025 • 15 mins
Epignosis CEO Nikhil Arora has been a guest on the podcast previously. In that episode, we discussed the curious and undeniable benefits of unlearning when it comes to fostering an organization's learning culture.
As for this episode, it's interesting. Having a growth mindset is important to a business and to individual contributors in the workforce. The most visceral objectives for each differ, of course. An employer needs to foc...
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January 24, 2025 • 19 mins
My guest for this episode of the podcast is Summer Delaney, who got her start in her career working for the iconic Katie Couric. Later, Summer founded CollabWORK, where she is CEO. Summer saw where recruiting had been for years and, with CollabWORK, disrupted things a bit.
In many respects, recruiting today is still where it's been for a long time: with some evolution along the way, yes, a nevertheless elaborate system designed to...
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January 17, 2025 • 22 mins
For this episode of "Small Talk Window," my guest is John Hansen, CEO and chairman of Atana. We talked about Atana's jam: transforming workplace learning into a tool for cultural and business impact. A long-time entrepreneur with an uber-interesting career in leading companies and other organizations in high technology and abutting areas, John tells me Atana is his "swan song," a notable final accomplishment ahead of retirement. Co...
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December 17, 2024 • 16 mins
My guest for this episode of "Small Talk Window" is Nikhil Arora, CEO of Epignosis. A learning technology company, Epignosis is known best for TalentLMS. So, logically, Nikhil and I decided to talk about unlearning, instead....
Wait. It makes sense. Really, it does. You'd think that unlearning would be the opposite of learning. And, by definition, it is. But unlearning is, in fact, a part of learning — boom, there's that logic....
...
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December 5, 2024 • 18 mins
From here on out, we're switching to the first person when it comes to descriptions here of the latest episodes of "Small Talk Window." It's more fun this way.
Prompted by the seemingly breakneck pace of artificial intelligence's evolution, I found myself recently thinking anew about Robot Dreams, a compilation of short stories by the famous science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov. I must've still been in high school when I read that...
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Today marks the announcement of an agreement to merge between The Cloud Connectors, an integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) in enterprise HR technology, and Joynd, a provider of HR technology integration solutions. In an on-demand webinar, members of TCC's and Joynd's leadership explain the merger's rationale and many benefits.
And the news makes today's episode of "Small Talk Window" all the more special. Host Brent Skinner's...
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For this episode of the "Small Talk Window" podcast, Ian Cook, vice president of product management at Visier, joined host Brent Skinner for an illuminating conversation. If you're in the profession of managing the employment of people, you've probably heard the mantra: advanced people analytics will help you finally get granular with your workforce to boost productivity and spark innovation, the lifeblood of competitiveness. And i...
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November 7, 2024 • 20 mins
The guest for this episode of "Small Talk Window" is Ashlie Collins, director of solutions at Joveo. An expert in neurodivergence in the workplace, Ashlie has conducted a ton of research on the topic especially as it relates to job seeking and talent acquisition.
When we talk about diversity, it’s important to emphasize that it can apply to all sorts of things, including the mind. This isn’t just about people along the “spectrum” o...
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November 6, 2024 • 18 mins
For this episode of the "Small Talk Window" podcast, host Brent Skinner went deep into the paint with guest Alex Furman, co-founder and CEO of Performica. What was their topic? Going into the recording, they weren't exactly sure except that they wanted to explore how we measure the return on investment of HR and people performance. And they concluded the discussion with a newfound respect for just how deep this rabbit hole goes. Yo...
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October 29, 2024 • 15 mins
The bulk of the HCM technology conference season for 2024 has come to a close, and the holiday season is nearly upon us. But let's turn the clock back about one month's worth. This is the second in a two-part series of "Small Talk Window" podcasts recorded with isolved from the floor of the HR Technology Conference & Expo -- the last week of September, millennia ago in HCM technology time....
Host Brent Skinner spoke with Jaylene O...
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The HCM technology conference season for 2024 is coming to a close. Think of this episode of "Small Talk Window" as a redux. From isolved's snazzy, very pink exhibitor booth last month, at HR Technology Conference & Expo, host Brent Skinner spoke with Yutaka Takagi, their principal product evangelist -- amidst a bustling expo floor on HR Professional Appreciation Day, to boot.
Every organization has an employer culture. Many work h...
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September 26, 2024 • 18 mins
Sean Behr, CEO of Fountain and the guest for this episode of “Small Talk Window,” had a laugh with Brent Skinner, the host, over the headline here. You probably won’t reach anybody anymore on Hotmail, of course. But you probably won’t reach any of your frontline workers through email, period. Did you know? The vast majority of them, 84 percent, lack a computer, according to a 2023 survey by MarketSplash. And, according to SHRM, 60 ...
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September 24, 2024 • 15 mins
Today is a special day. It’s "Small Talk Window" host Brent Skinner's birthday, for one. Far more important, however, today is the day of the Women in HR Technology Summit, which again, this year, kicks off the in-real-life much-awaited annual HR Technology Conference & Expo in Las Vegas. So it’s only fitting that Brent's guest for this episode is Natalie Stones, co-founder of Talent Collective, whose tagline is, "paving the way fo...
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September 19, 2024 • 15 mins
We’re hearing a lot about people analytics these days. Aren’t we? One big reason is the technology that powers people analytics has advanced light years in recent years. Alas, a few misconceptions have slipped past unchallenged amid this breakneck pace of innovation, and John Federman, CEO of HireRoad, joined host Brent Skinner to bust a few of these myths on this episode of the podcast. In the process, they also just might have mo...
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September 17, 2024 • 17 mins
Mike Erlin, founder and CEO of AbilityMap (and a repeat guest on the "Small Talk Window" podcast), had his team run Catwoman through their highly robust psychometrics instrument to unearth Catwoman's human skills and how she might best utilize these on the job. Let's just say there's a very clear reason she's the superhero who gives Batman the assist he often needs to catch the bad guys. And there's a bigger picture here about cats...
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There was an article published recently in The Wall Street Journal. The content, especially the headline, "The White-Collar Hiring Rut Is Here. That’s Bad News for Young College Grads," suggests there's a massive decrease in the number of candidates being hired by Fortune 500 employers into roles that require a bachelor's degree. Steven Rothberg, guest for this episode of "Small Talk Window," sees something larger and perhaps close...
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September 10, 2024 • 16 mins
Much of the chatter out there says AI is going to take over our work and leave us with nothing to do. That’s certainly a possibility, especially if we do nothing about it. But consider what Kieran Flanagan, chief marketing officer of Hubspot (and venture capitalist), has to say. He proposes an elegant relationship between AI and humans, wherein the former is a tool to enhance the latter. It'll probably take couples counseling to ge...
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September 9, 2024 • 15 mins
Joining as the guest for this episode of "Small Talk Window" is Lauren Miller. Lauren is an isolved People Hero. That means she uses isolved in her capacity as owner of an Arkansas-based location of Right at Home, provider of in-home care services to seniors and others facing physical and other challenges. It wasn’t too long before Lauren realized she was serving employees, too, not just her customers.
Learn more about your ad choi...
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September 3, 2024 • 14 mins
For this episode of “Small Talk Window,” Jocelyn King, CEO of VirgilHR, joins host Brent Skinner to discuss a Texas-based court’s eleventh-hour effect on the Federal Trade Commission’s brewing, hotly debated ban on non-competes. HR departments were going to have to comply with a key component of the (putting it charitably) now-in-flux regulation by Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024—tomorrow, if you’re listening to this episode the day it we...
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