Hiring Happy Hour

AI moves fast, and the organizations building for it need to move just as fast. In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole Hammond sits down with Michal Nowak, SVP of Engineering at SmartRecruiters, to unpack the organizational shift behind building Winston and preparing for an increasingly agentic world of hiring. Michal shares why SmartRecruiters moved away from long-standing product teams and reorganized around six key outcome...

Many conversations on Hiring Happy Hour circle back to a familiar question: as hiring gets faster and more automated, where is human judgment most valuable? This special compilation pulls that thread together, bringing voices from across the show into one conversation about the moments that still need a human in the room. From the "hello" of a first interaction to the trust built long after the offer letter, this episode makes the ...

70% of the skills needed for today's jobs are expected to change by 2030, and most leaders are still figuring out how to evolve their workforce. In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole Hammond sits down with Lauren Tropeano, Chief People Officer at Docebo, to talk about how organizations can build a workforce ready for what's next. Lauren shares how she thinks about skills, growth, and readiness at a foundational level, from w...

Some companies rushed to be first with AI. Continental is taking its time to get it right. In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole sits down with Alexandra Gaillard, Chief Marketing Officer, and Pia Stender, Strategic Lead of Global Talent Acquisition, at Continental, to discuss how brand and hiring work the same problem from opposite ends. The conversation moves through Continental's glocal approach to recruiting, how they're...

What happens when a recruiter refuses to let technology replace the human connection at the heart of hiring? In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole Hammond sits down with Stormy Jones, HR Business Partner at Pyrotek, for a conversation centered on the human side of recruitment. Stormy shares how her transition from decentralized to centralized recruiting reshaped her career and strengthened her approach to hiring. She reflect...

SmartRecruiter’s Winston just turned one. What started as an AI hiring agent is starting to look like the first piece of something much bigger. In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole sits down with Shiran Yaroslavsky, SVP of Product Management at SmartRecruiters, to mark one year since Winston's launch. Shiran looks back at the decision to pause an entire roadmap to rebuild Winston from the ground up, and forward at wha...

Can you actually get a team to embrace constant change without burning them out on it? In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole sits down with Alastair Schirmer, Global Head of Digital Innovation at Randstad Enterprise, to talk through what it actually takes to build a talent tech stack that holds up under pressure. Al breaks his approach into three pillars: purpose, experience, and data connectivity, and explains why the princ...

What if the fastest way to lead a team forward is to slow down and understand how they already work? In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole sits down with Alison Bosch, SVP and Chief of Staff at SmartRecruiters, to talk about the moment she stepped into a much larger leadership role and what she learned about trusting the experts around her. Alison shares how understanding the systems behind an organization, not just the peop...

AI may be changing hiring fast, but the real differentiator is still human judgment. 83% of job seekers research a company before they ever apply. 32% of candidates who leave within the first 90 days point to culture misalignment as the top reason. 70% of employees stay at least three years when onboarding is done well. These numbers frame one of the most practical conversations we have had on the show about what culture actually l...

1,500% ROI. 42% faster hiring. 570% more graduate applicants. 92,000 productivity hours returned. These aren't projections — they're what happened when one TA leader decided to treat hiring transformation as a business outcome, not an IT project.

In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole sits down with Rob Dunderdale, former Head of Talent Attraction at KPMG Australia and Enterprise Talent Leader of the Year (International ...

What separates recruiters who thrive in an AI-driven world from those who get left behind, and what does it take to build a team that runs through walls? In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole reconnects with a powerhouse in the talent world, Mike Moriarty, Founder and CEO of Arsenal Pulse, on what it really takes to build strong teams and talent functions that can keep up with ambitious companies and fuel real-world strategy...

Human connection isn't a soft skill in recruiting, it's the strategy. In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole sits down with Katrina Collier, six-continent keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, and author of three books including The Robot-Proof Recruiter and Reboot Hiring, to explore what it truly means to build a human-first talent function in this age of AI. Katrina makes the case that the intake conversation is the linchp...

Can you answer this question right now: who are you, really? Not your title, not your role, just you.

Hiring has never been more optimized, yet 53% of job seekers have been ghosted by an employer, and the most sophisticated tech stacks still can't explain why the right hires aren't sticking. LaShawn Davis, Founder and Chief Culture Strategist at The HR Plug, believes the problem isn't the technology. It's that we've stopped treating...

Transformation rarely happens in perfect conditions. Sometimes it happens during executive departures, a rocky return, and a phone call on your birthday telling you that you're now the CEO.

In part two of this conversation, Rebecca Carr, CEO of SmartRecruiters, an SAP company, joins Hiring Happy Hour for a candid look at one of the most defining chapters in company history: rebuilding momentum internally, pivoting SmartRecruiters in...

Rebecca Carr didn’t plan to end up at SmartRecruiters. What started as an accidental application through a demo recruiting account became the beginning of a decade-long journey helping shape one of the most influential companies in hiring technology.

In part one of this special two-part series, Rebecca, CEO of SmartRecruiters, an SAP company, joins Hiring Happy Hour to reflect on the early career moments, bold bets, and custom...

Only 37% of hiring leaders say they feel prepared for AI, so what's the other 63% missing? Matt Alder, host of the globally renowned Recruiting Future podcast and one of the most forward-thinking voices in TA, joins Nicole to cut through the noise. From drawing sharp parallels between AI and the early internet to defining what actually separates real, working innovation from a flashy demo, this conversation is grounded, strategic, ...

What does real TA transformation actually look like, beyond a system migration? In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole sits down with Alan Walker, Co-Founder and CEO of Udder, to unpack what it takes to build hiring operations that actually work from the ground up, under pressure, and at scale. Alan shares how Udder grew from a two-person startup, launched mid-pandemic with a few hundred pounds, into a global consultancy that...

Some of the best ideas in business history weren’t born in boardrooms, and Steve Hardy has the Sip Club to prove it. In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole sits down with Steve Hardy, five-time CMO, Forrester Marketing Executive of the Year, and current SmartRecruiters CMO for a conversation about what modern hiring innovation should actually enable and all that it takes to get there. From building a Friday ritual that ...

What does it actually take to build a hiring system from scratch, launch it during COVID, and hit 1.3 million hires in a single year? In this episode of Hiring Happy Hour, Nicole sits down with her friend and former implementation partner Preeti Woods, Senior Product Manager at Amazon Web Services, to unpack the real story behind deploying SmartRecruiters to 3,000+ Amazon DSPs across 14+ countries, including the moment a UAT crisis...