The Talent Fix: Future of Hiring and Recruitment Innovation

AI was supposed to make hiring easier. Ask Katie Cormier and she'll tell you it's made it noisier: thousands of applications, AI-polished CVs, and candidates optimising for algorithms rather than jobs.

As EdgeTier's first People hire, Katie scaled the AI start-up through its Series A push, making around 60 hires in her first 18 months, largely as a team of one, while competing for scarce tech talent against some of the best companies in the market.

In this episode, she opens the playbook:

Why EdgeTier deliberately tests for ambiguity tolerance, and why the "right skill set" from big tech often means the wrong cultural fit for a start-up shipping features fast without guard rails

Why she doesn't rely on psychometric testing, and uses structured, behavior-based interview questions instead

How her team uses AI where it actually adds value: fraud-signal detection in applications, keyword indicators in the ATS, interview scheduling, note-taking, and surfacing past candidates who reached final stage months ago

The rule she won't compromise on: every final-stage candidate gets a phone call and real feedback

Why speed, not perks, is what wins the best candidates in a market where every offer has a competing offer on the table

If you're an HR or talent leader trying to figure out where AI belongs in your hiring process, and where it doesn't, this one's for you.

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"AI hit like a tsunami" What HR leaders do next- Marisa Lynskey, CHRO at Ceto

Marisa explains why HR has moved from the end of the table taking notes to running transformation, especially in a business scaling through M&A. Her framing: the CEO's right hand is finance and operations, and the left hand is human capital.

She also shares what happened when Ceto went to market for a Principal in management consulting in Atlanta, a city full of qualified candidates, and got just 10 applicants. The job description wasn't the problem. The role itself has changed: Ceto's clients, banks and credit unions, want to be taught a new way of working, so Ceto needs people who are strong in their discipline and genuinely excited about applying AI, and that combination is hard to find right now.

In this episode:
- Why HR has become the CEO's left hand
- What she found when she asked her HRIS/ATS provider what AI it could actually offer
- Why legacy platforms are behind AI-native systems
- Her dream HR system: one source of truth from ATS through the whole employee life
- Her closing message: use AI at the front end to move faster, because speed wins the hire

Thanks to Marisa for joining us.

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If your company is scaling and hiring is becoming more complex, explore how a flexible recruitment model can support your growth.

How is AI changing recruitment, and what role will recruiters play in the future?

In this episode of The Talent Fix, Barry Prost is joined by Steven Talbot, Co-Founder & CEO of Nebula, to discuss how AI is transforming recruitment, where it delivers the biggest productivity gains, and why human relationships remain at the heart of successful hiring.

The conversation explores how AI can automate repetitive tasks, improve sourcing accuracy, help organisations cut through hiring noise, and tackle the growing challenge of candidate fraud. Steven also shares why the most successful recruiters will be those who combine AI with trust, judgement and deep market knowledge.

In this episode:
How AI is reshaping recruitment workflows
Why great recruiters won't be replaced by AI
The growing challenge of candidate fraud
Using AI to improve sourcing and market mapping
Why trust and relationships still drive successful hiring
Finding signal through the noise in today's talent market

Whether you're a recruiter, HR leader or business owner, this episode offers practical insights into where recruitment is heading and how AI can be used to make better hiring decisions, without losing the human element.

Guest: Steven Talbot, Co-Founder & CEO, Nebula
Subscribe for more conversations on recruitment, talent acquisition, AI and the future of work.

How is AI changing recruitment, and are we actually hiring better because of it?
In this episode of The Talent Fix, Barry Prost is joined by Niamh Geraghty, Head of People at Strata, to explore the future of hiring, the growing shortage of specialist talent, and why recruitment technology needs to be designed around people, not just efficiency.
Drawing on leadership experience at Google, Procore and Strata, Niamh shares practical lessons from scaling high-performing teams and explains why organisations need to rethink how they attract, assess and engage talent.
In this episode we discuss:
• Why engineering and construction talent shortages continue to grow
• How AI has changed recruitment for both employers and candidates
• The "spray and pray" application problem
• Why recruitment should prioritise human connection over automation
• How Strata is building long-term talent pipelines through graduates, apprenticeships and international hiring
• What companies can learn from Google's hiring process and culture
• How structured interviews lead to better hiring decisions
Whether you're a CEO, founder, HR leader, recruiter or hiring manager, this episode offers practical insights into building stronger hiring strategies in an increasingly AI-driven world.

About Niamh Geraghty
Niamh Geraghty is Head of People at Strata. She previously held senior HR leadership roles at Google and Procore, where she led people strategy, organisational development and employee relations across global teams.
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AI is reshaping recruitment faster than most companies can keep up, but it still can't replace the one thing that closes a great hire: relationships and judgment.
In this episode of The Talent Fix, Barry Prost sits down with David Hanrahan, Chief People Officer at SolarWinds, to unpack what's actually working in talent acquisition right now. David brings 20+ years of people leadership across Twitter, Zendesk, Eventbrite, Niantic, and SolarWinds to share what separates companies that hire well from those that don't.
They cover: the build vs. buy question on agentic AI tools, why executive search still matters for hard-to-fill roles, how to write job descriptions around "wild success," tackling recruiter-hiring manager misalignment, and the growing threat of candidate and recruiter fraud.
Essential listening for CPOs, CHROs, talent leaders, and anyone serious about building great teams.