Podcast
Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell
Hosted by SocialTalent · EN
Welcome to the ‘Hiring Excellence’ podcast, where each week, SocialTalent CEO and Co-Founder Johnny Campbell takes you on an insightful journey into the world of recruitment and talent acquisition. Join Johnny as he chats with industry thought-leaders, pioneering experts, and influential authors, exploring their unique insights and expertise. From groundbreaking strategies to the latest trends, ‘Hiring Excellence’ delivers actionable advice and innovative ideas to help you navigate and succeed in the ever-evolving landscape of work.
13episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
The Strategic Shift in HR
4d ago00:44:08Tap to summarizeJohnny sits down with Ray Chaaya, VP of Talent and Culture at Zurich Canada, to unpack how HR's role has shifted since 2020; from crisis response to a genuine seat at the strategy table. Ray shares a three-bucket model for the modern HR function (AI-driven transactional work, HR business partners as concierges, centres of expertise), why skills-first workforce planning is replacing role-first thinking, and why early-career apprenticeships need a rethink.
Transcribe →Building Internal Mobility at Scale — with Thom Staight
3w ago00:51:45Tap to summarizeInternal mobility is having a moment. Johnny sits down with Thom Staight, who spent 11 years at Microsoft, most recently as General Manager of Global Talent Acquisition for EMEA and Asia, to unpack how the company built a scaled internal mobility system from the ground up. Thom explains why the biggest barriers weren't technology but culture, how a shared skills taxonomy became the common language that made everything else work, and why a hard business case, not an HR case, is what finally got leaders on board.Download Thom Staight's Top Tips here!
Transcribe →Inside the Candidate Fraud Epidemic — with Stacy Zapar
4w ago00:41:51Tap to summarizeCandidate fraud isn't a fringe problem anymore. It's organized and hitting companies of every size. Johnny talks with Stacy Zapar, longtime recruiter and founder of the Fraud Squad community, about how fake applicants, proxy interviewers, and North Korean IT operatives are slipping through hiring funnels. Stacy shares her framework for catching fraud at every stage, not just one interview, plus ways to add friction that stops bad actors without hurting real candidates.Download Stacy Zapar's Top Tips
Transcribe →AI, Bias & the Law: Hiring Risk in 2026
Jul 800:45:41Tap to summarizeAI in hiring isn't a yes-or-no question, it's a risk-management one. Johnny talks with Heather Bussing, an employment attorney who's spent almost 40 years at the intersection of employment law and technology, about what's actually required under the EU AI Act and US state laws. They dig into why risk rises the closer AI gets to a hiring decision, why pre-interview sorting is the hardest area to get right, and how bias audits can protect you.Download Heather Bussing's Top Tips Here
Transcribe →From Soft Costs to Hard Dollars — with David Weinstock
Jul 200:40:14Tap to summarizeMost TA leaders lose budget battles not because their ideas are bad, but because they're making the wrong argument. Johnny sits down with David Weinstock, VP at News Story, who learned the hard way that soft costs don't move CFOs. Hard dollars do. David shares how he rebuilt his approach to business cases: finance language, benefit loads, EBITDA thinking, and using AI to stress-test pitches before the real meeting. Worth a listen if you're trying to get TA investment approved and keep hitting a wall.Download David's Top Tips
Transcribe →AI for TA Leaders
Jun 3000:40:29Tap to summarizeJohnny sits down with Melissa Thompson, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Ford, to talk about something the AI conversation often skips: how TA leaders — not just recruiters — should actually be using it. Melissa shares how she built Project Bengal to tackle runaway req volumes, how she uses AI to analyse quality-of-slate data, and what it took to get her team genuinely on board. Honest, practical, and grounded in what's actually working at Ford right now. Worth a listen if you lead a TA team and want a real example to follow.Download Melissa's Top Tips here!
Transcribe →Recruiting Like a GPS, Not a Rearview Mirror
Jun 1800:40:06Tap to summarizeMost TA teams measure where they've been. Mike Peterson, Senior Director of Talent Source Intelligence at Edwards Lifesciences, is building something different — a sourcing model driven by the workforce plan, not the req queue. Johnny talks with Mike about moving from reactive to proactive: working backwards from need dates, pressure-testing the plan, and measuring success by whether you delivered on time — not just how fast. Listen for a practical look at how one team is making proactive recruiting actually work.
Transcribe →Freeing Capacity to Elevate the Recruiter — With Elias Albino
Jun 900:26:27Tap to summarizeHow is AI actually reshaping talent acquisition? Johnny sits down with Elias Albino, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Syngenta, to talk through what changes when you free up recruiter capacity — and where human judgment still has to stay. They get into the friction between TA, HR business partners and talent management, why the 360 recruiter is fading, and how to measure whether all this automation is producing better hiring, not just more activity.
Transcribe →Keep What You Kill: Who Captures the Value of AI in Recruitment
Jun 400:39:48Tap to summarizeIn Budapest for recruiTECH CEE, Johnny sat down over a beer with Hung Lee — founder of Recruiting Brainfood and one of the most-followed voices in talent. They get into how AI is reshaping recruitment: the three archetypes driving the AI debate, why the efficiency you gain rarely comes back to you unless you negotiate for it, and the risk that subsidised AI ends up costing more than the people it replaced.
Transcribe →Agentic AI in Hiring Before It Was a Buzzword
Jun 200:32:27Tap to summarizePulled from the Hiring Excellence vault — Johnny's conversation with Pavan Kumar, recorded nine months before agentic AI became the dominant talking point in TA. At the time, Pavan was leading global talent acquisition at Eightfold, rolling out their AI Recruiter to 600+ candidates across 35 roles. The argument that only got more relevant: interviewing is more automatable than scheduling, top-talent sourcing still belongs to humans, and it all falls apart without human-in-the-loop guardrails. Worth a listen if you're piloting agentic AI now.
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