Try Harder Is Not A Strategy

About Try Harder Is Not A Strategy

The world of hiring is experiencing more change now than anytime in my 30 year career in talent. Try harder won’t cut it. We need real strategy. The business expects more. Candidates need more. And because of the impact of AI on our profession, we’re in the middle of the biggest lead or be led moment of my career. Join me as I interview talent leaders from companies who are leading the way around high volume hiring.

Publisher

John Vlastelica

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

29 Jul 2026

Latest episode

27 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

6 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   27 Oct 2026

   Paradox/Workday - Redesigning Talent Acquisition for the AI Era with CEO Adam Godson

   In this episode, I talk with Adam Godson, former CEO of Paradox and now GM of Talent Acquisition Products at Workday, about what it takes to turn AI into better hiring and business results. Recorded live in April 2026 for The Conversation, a Paradox talk series, our discussion explores how TA leaders need to rethink processes, roles, and change management to get the value technology promises. We start with community: why Paradox brings clients together to share what’s working, what isn’t, and what they’re helping build next. Adam explains how honest peer learning and collaboration between practitioners and technologists help solve real hiring problems. From there, we get practical about vibe coding, the growing importance of recruiting operations, and where human connection belongs in an increasingly automated process. We also discuss why faster hiring matters beyond time to fill, how to connect AI investments to revenue, and why keeping the old process alive can undermine the new one. Questions We Explore How do you build a TA community where clients share real lessons and help shape better products? With AI making it easier to build an ATS, when should TA teams build, buy, or extend an existing platform? Why is RecOps becoming more important, and how will recruiting jobs change as AI agents take on delivery work? Where should humans stay in the hiring process—and when should we add human contact back in? What does slow hiring really cost in candidate experience, manager confidence, and employee turnover? How can TA leaders tell an AI ROI story that connects to revenue, beyond hours saved and faster hiring? Why does redesigning the hiring process matter as much as the technology itself? How do you get people to adopt a new process—and why can making it optional or under-resourcing the rollout derail it?

2. 

   6 Oct 2026

   FedEx - Offers within minutes, Moving recruiters from transactional to problem solvers and forecasters, Candidate experience

   In this episode, I talk with Kylie Kingston and Melissa Oakley of FedEx about how one of the world’s largest employers transformed frontline hiring at extraordinary scale. FedEx operates in more than 220 countries and territories and employs approximately 450,000 permanent and seasonal team members. For FedEx, hiring package handlers, material handlers, drivers, retail employees, and other frontline workers isn’t simply an HR priority—it’s essential to keeping the operation running. Kylie is a Vice President of Human Resources and formerly served as Managing Director of HR Planning and Technology. Melissa is Vice President of Human Resources for Join and Grow, where she leads talent acquisition strategy along with onboarding and learning and development. Together, they share how FedEx redesigned a high-volume hiring process that had become overwhelmed during the pandemic. Using conversational AI and other automation, FedEx enabled frontline candidates to complete nearly the entire hiring process from a mobile phone—from application and shift matching to a conditional offer, documentation, and background screening. The company also eliminated interviews for certain frontline roles after its data showed that interviews weren’t improving hiring decisions. Candidates can now receive an offer within minutes and move from application to starting work in as few as 10 days. Just as important, the transformation changed the recruiter’s role. Instead of chasing paperwork and manually moving candidates through the process, recruiters can operate as talent experts—working with operations on workforce demand, labor-market insights, recruitment marketing, forecasting, and the root causes behind staffing gaps. Questions We Explore How did FedEx redesign frontline hiring to support hundreds of thousands of hires at scale? Why did FedEx eliminate interviews for certain frontline roles—and what happened to quality and retention? How can removing human touch-points actually improve the candidate experience? How did automation shift recruiters from process administrators to strategic talent advisors? What should TA leaders prioritize when transforming high-volume hiring?

3. 

   29 Sept 2026

   Gallo - Agile TA Model, Candidate Experience, Developing Recruiters, and Intelligence vs Wisdom

   In this episode, I talk with Ryan Cook, Head ofTalent Acquisition at Gallo, about redesigning TA for a business—and a profession—experiencing rapid change. Ryan previously led talent acquisition for Jacobs/CH2M and is one of the most consistently recognized leaders in our field for candidate experience. Founded in 1933, Gallo has evolved from a wine company into a total alcohol beverage company with a portfolio spanning wine, spirits, and malt beverages. Ryan’s team supports approximately 2,500 hires annually: slightly more than half are production and frontline hires, about one-third are professional hires, and the remainder come through college recruiting. Ryan explains how Gallo moved from a traditional model—with recruiters dedicated to particular business groups and coordinators handling administrative tasks—to an agile, squad-based structure. Senior recruiters remain strategic points of contact for the business, while other recruiters rotate across squads, develop broader capabilities, and move quickly to wherever demand is greatest. The model helped Gallo respond to unexpected hiring needs while building new development and leadership opportunities for its recruiters. The results are impressive. Comparing 2025 with 2024, Gallo reduced average time to offer acceptance by 37%, reduced time to start by 21%, increased offer acceptances by 10%, and cut employee relations cases among seasonal hires by 50%. The team also automated 18 manual processes—saving an estimated 1,500 administrative hours—while reducing the overall TA budget by 8%. Questions We Explore · How can an agile, squad-based TA model respond faster to changing business needs? · What work should automation handle—and where do recruiters still provide irreplaceable value? · How should companies balance AI’s intelligence with human judgment and organizational wisdom? · What practical changes can dramatically improve the candidate experience? · Which emerging technologies could make recruiting systems more flexible and connected?

4. 

   10 Sept 2026

   Pepsico - TA Org Model Redesign, Standardizing then Scaling, Talent Foresights, Automation vs Humans Doing Work

   In this episode, I talk with Blair Bennett, Senior Vice President of Talent Acquisition at PepsiCo, about transforming TA inside one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies. PepsiCo is a $90 billion-plus organization operating in more than 200 countries and territories, with over 300,000 associates. Approximately 230,000 employees are frontline workers who help make, move, and sell its products. Blair’s global TA organization supports roughly 75,000 requisitions each year, including approximately 40,000 frontline requisitions. She shares how PepsiCo moved from a complex, decentralized structure toward a centralized operating model organized around three areas: strategy, enablement, and execution. The goal wasn’t consistency for its own sake—it was to create a foundation that could respond faster, generate better insights, and support the future needs of the business. We explore PepsiCo’s work to reimagine frontline hiring after bringing its U.S. food and beverage businesses together under one North America organization. Rather than starting with technology, Blair’s team conducted more than 100 interviews with business leaders, HR partners, and other stakeholders, mapped the existing processes, and identified the most important pain points. That work informed a new model combining internal capabilities, an RPO partner, centralized recruitment marketing, and technology designed around PepsiCo’s specific needs. Blair also discusses the evolving scope of TA. PepsiCo is developing capabilities in talent foresight, career transitions, talent intelligence, and scenario planning—helping the business think beyond filling today’s requisitions to understand the skills, tasks, and workforce models it may need several years from now. Questions We Explore How do you transform TA across a company operating with high complexity? What must be standardized before technology and automation can scale successfully? How should frontline hiring differ for entry-level, skilled, and highly technical roles? Where can automation improve hiring—and where do recruiters and hiring managers still add unique value? How can TA help the business anticipate future talent needs instead of waiting for requisitions?

5. 

   5 Aug 2026

   Marriott - Quality of Hire, Assessments, People Analytics, and Using AI to Understand Work

   I interviewed my friend and assessment/people analytics expert, Tyler Weeks, PhD, who is the Managing Vice President of People Technology, Research and Analytics at Marriott International. Questions We Explore How useful are assessments in predicting whether someone will become a successful hire? Should quality of hire be measured at the individual or team level? How much responsibility do managers and teams share for a new hire’s success? Could AI’s greatest value come from measuring work rather than automating it? How is AI helping us understand the actual work people do?

6. 

   29 Jul 2026

   Compass Group - Automation, Candidate Experience, AI with Voice, Build vs Buy

   I sat down with Shay Johnson, Vice President of Strategic HR Partnerships at Compass Group USA. Questions We Explore How do you design hiring technology for 150,000 to 180,000 annual hires across more than 30 brands? Can familiar technology create a better candidate experience than a highly differentiated one? Where should automation lead the hiring process, and where should humans step in? How can TA leaders demonstrate ROI beyond efficiency and cost reduction? What could agentic and voice AI make possible for hiring and internal mobility? Should we be building our own tech, in house?

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