Leaders in Talent Podcast with Adriaan Kolff

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Leaders in Talent is a podcast for Talent Acquisition, People, and HR leaders who are building modern, scalable, high-impact talent functions. Each episode brings you in-depth conversations with the operators, founders, authors, and practitioners shaping how companies hire, develop, and retain talent. We go beyond theory. Guests share the decisions, playbooks, data, and lessons learned from scaling global teams, implementing new talent technologies, designing employer brands, building recruiting operations, and turning TA into a strategic business function. If you work in talent and are solving challenges around growth, capability, culture, or transformation, this podcast gives you practical insight you can apply today. Real conversations. Real operators. Real lessons.

  1. 5d ago

    A New Colleague, Not PowerPoint 2.0: Annika in der Beek, Statista

    In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Annika in der Beek, Chief People Officer at Statista. A psychologist who somehow went business, Annika started in M&A, moved into HR consulting at Accenture, and joined About You in 2020 at 700 people, leaving after the IPO at 1,600. Since early 2024 she has been Statista's first CPO, hired as the founders stepped out and a new CEO took over. Statista is moving from a media company to a data and software business, with its data now inside ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. Annika explains what that does to the org underneath: why silos made sense in hypergrowth, what she found on arrival (nine HR teams across 13 countries, no central HR beyond contracts and payroll), and why transformation does not end after the first restructuring. She is candid about closing offices, not being the most liked person in the company, and learning that her last employer's playbook, a 20 minute walk away, did not transfer. The second half is about AI as a new colleague rather than a better PowerPoint: remodelling the content department sub-process by sub-process, a SharePoint HR assistant in Langdock, and the performance coach agent she wrote herself, which prepares leaders but is not allowed to fill in the review or press submit. Plus the math on token costs, and why she blocks hours every week to write agents. Timecodes 00:00 Cold open 01:32 Welcome, and Annika's own podcast 02:56 Statista, and a psychologist who went business 06:02 From media company to data business: why silos made sense 11:21 Nine HR teams, one company 15:30 Transformation does not stop 18:33 Advice to her younger self, and the blueprint trap 23:56 AI urgency you can see in the revenue numbers 28:29 AI as a new colleague, not PowerPoint 2.0 29:32 Content department, Langdock, and token costs 33:39 The performance coach agent that never presses submit 38:14 Never say never, and the first AI-free retreat ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ ___________________________ Connect with Annika in der Beek: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annika-in-der-beek/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ Resources mentioned in this episode: HR ungeschminkt, der ehrliche Personal-Podcast (German), with Annika in der Beek and Anjuli Mauer: https://hr-ungeschminkt.podigee.io/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

  2. Sep 8

    Hiring Is the Last Step: Nancy Martinez, Relativity Space

    In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Nancy Martinez, former Head of Talent at Relativity Space and now Head of Talent at Machina Labs. Nancy spent 17 years in talent acquisition, starting at Google as a technical sourcer and scaling Facebook and Twitter when both were under 500 people, before moving into hardware. She joined Relativity at 600 people, eight months before its first rocket launched, and left when the company was 2,100. When Eric Schmidt invested and became CEO, the Terran R timeline moved up and the team had to hire roughly 1,000 people in nine months. Nancy's first instinct was to ask how to hire faster, how many recruiters and sourcers to add. She decided those were the wrong questions. Instead she asked where the real bottlenecks were, whether leaders could absorb that pace of hiring, whether interviewers were trained and calibrated, and which roles would actually move the business forward fastest. Nancy explains why she tells people hiring is the last step, and infrastructure comes first: the tech stack, the data, interviewer training, employer brand, and a recruiting operations person hired before more recruiters. She also covers what surprised her moving from software to hardware, where TA becomes the bottleneck for the whole business, how she got the CFO, COO and CTO personally closing candidates, how she protected her team from burnout through periods of extreme intensity, and why she builds talent roadmaps instead of hiring plans. Timecodes 01:11 Welcome and Nancy's background 02:13 17 years in TA: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Honey 02:51 What Relativity Space is building 03:24 Joining at 600 people, eight months before Terran 1 04:13 Engineering products are an organizational challenge 05:02 Eric Schmidt arrives and the timeline accelerates 06:34 From 600 to 2,100: hiring 1,000 people in nine months 08:18 The wrong questions, and the ones she asked instead 10:52 If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority 12:41 Why hiring people is the last step 15:19 Educating leaders who only knew the SpaceX way 16:34 What surprised her moving from software to hardware 19:13 Competing for talent without winning on compensation 20:24 Getting the CFO, COO and CTO closing candidates 22:10 Urgency without burning the team out 24:52 How she handles the pressure herself 25:50 Joining Machina Labs 27:16 What she would do differently from day one 28:56 The hiring engine: tech, employer brand, data, recruiting ops 30:33 The three buckets of data she watches 31:44 Talent roadmaps instead of hiring plans 32:51 Where to find Nancy ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://matchr.io/contact ___________________________ Connect with Nancy Martinez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancymartinez/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

  3. Aug 18

    Default Aggressive: Taylor Nelson on Scaling TA at Filevine

    In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Taylor Nelson, Talent Manager at Filevine, the legal AI platform that grew from 230 to over 900 employees in the two and a half years since he joined as recruiter number three. Taylor started out hiring 50 people a week in high-volume staffing, and that agency DNA still shapes how his team of nine runs today. Taylor walks through the shift from operator to manager: letting go of the protective, commission-driven island mindset, moving from responsible for me to responsible for we, and the line from his own manager that stuck: you don't get points for doing it all yourself. His team fills every role in under 30 business days against an industry standard of 40 to 60, runs default aggressive communication with hiring managers, and fills out an intake sheet before any job is posted. He also shows the data spine behind the growth: recording himself doing 26 minutes of onboarding admin per hire to justify a recruiting coordinator who now saves each recruiter three hours a week, forecasting headcount with finance (270 hires projected this year, 300 done by late July), and what he would do differently, from hiring that coordinator on day one to unblocking technical hiring faster. Plus the question every recruiter now faces: telling the candidates who use AI as a resource from the ones using it as a crutch. Timecodes 01:18 Welcome and Taylor's background 02:00 Psychology degree to 50 hires a week in agency staffing 03:53 Recruiter number three at Filevine, now a team of nine 04:59 From me to we: the first-time manager shift 08:48 Agency habits worth keeping: 30-day fills and default aggressive 11:27 Building the case for more headcount with data 14:25 The coordinator math: 26 minutes per hire, three hours back per recruiter 15:58 Workforce planning with finance: 270 projected, 300 by July 18:16 What he would do differently 20:45 Intake sheets and the prioritization template 21:39 Manager habits: blocked time and specific sourcing sprints 23:53 Candidates using AI: resource or crutch 27:19 Three takeaways for first-time managers 30:09 The balcony and the dance 33:05 Where to find Taylor ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ ___________________________ Connect with Taylor Nelson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylornelsonhr/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

  4. Aug 4

    Start With the Pain, Not the Tool: John Keenan, Gong

    In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with John Keenan, Director of International Talent Acquisition at Gong, the revenue AI company, where he leads recruiting across EMEA and APAC from Dublin. He has spent nearly 20 years in TA, from agency recruiting to LinkedIn, Pluralsight and now Gong, and he is also an executive coach. John's rule for AI in recruiting is to start with the pain point, not the tool. He walks through how he runs his week through Claude as an operating system, connectors and MCPs feeding a weekly-planning agent off a now.md file, why ATS data integrity now decides the quality of every insight, and the RAPID decision framework he uses to give hiring managers clear ownership. He and Adriaan get into the moment AI-generated content started irritating everyone, hiring for AI literacy, and where AI interviewers actually fit: useful for junior and volume screening, off the table for senior hiring. Timecodes 01:09 Welcome and John's background 02:17 What Gong does: revenue AI, 1,400 people 03:14 Don't start with the technology, start with the pain points 05:17 Claude as an operating system: connectors, MCPs, a weekly agent 07:14 Building the planning agent and the human stack 09:05 Why ATS data integrity now decides everything 10:03 Rolling Claude out to the team: licenses, training, AI for coaches 12:34 The AI-generated proposal that irritated everyone 14:07 An agent for mid-year reviews from 1:1 recordings 15:39 AI literacy as a hiring signal 16:18 Fake and AI-polished candidates: is inbound a bottleneck? 18:03 The RAPID framework: clarity on who decides 20:07 AI for bias mitigation and interview consistency 22:03 Will AI interviewers replace recruiters? 24:54 The mobile-phone news clip, and what normalises 25:45 Making time to think and build with AI 27:04 Where to find John ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ ___________________________ Connect with John Keenan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkeenanlinkedin/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

  5. Jul 21

    The AI Question HR Keeps Getting Wrong: Syed Ali Abbas on Impact Over Efficiency at HelloFresh

    In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Syed Ali Abbas, Global Vice President of People for Business Units at HelloFresh Group. He has led HR at AT&T and PacNet Group, invests in early-stage HR startups, and does stand-up comedy. Most companies ask how AI can make HR more efficient. Abbas asks a different question: how does AI change the business, therefore the organisation, therefore HR? He covers what that means for HRBPs, talent acquisition and L&D, why the companies that cut deepest hired people back six months later, and how HelloFresh combined AI, robotics and supply chain software so packing productivity doubled without replacing anyone. One pilot centre now offers 350 meal options instead of 50. Timecodes 00:00 Cold open 01:36 Welcome and Abbas's background 02:35 A year of stand-up, and roasting HR from the inside 06:29 The question most companies ask about AI, and the better one 07:18 FOMO, token maxing, and "what's the plan and what's the payoff?" 09:31 What the reframe means for HRBPs, talent acquisition, and L&D 13:08 Inside HelloFresh: anonymous AI self-assessment and partner workshops 15:02 Tool access, the IT and legal review team, training the leaders first 17:36 HelloFresh in context: 20,000 people, a 400-person people team 18:14 Incremental mindset vs exponential mindset 20:37 Why the companies that cut deepest hired people back six months later 22:14 "Technically I'm pretty basic": Abbas on his own AI journey 23:56 The four-hour Claude workforce planning experiment 26:34 Peak hype, the trough of disillusionment, and not panicking 32:19 The installed base problem, and why people are the hardest part 34:21 Pull factors and push factors in a transformation 35:44 AI, robotics and 350 meals: inside the HelloFresh production centre 40:32 How to reach Abbas ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ ___________________________ Connect with Syed Ali Abbas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/syedaliabbashr/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

  6. Jul 7

    "I Hate AI": Karim Gharsallah on Why a Tool Is Not a Strategy

    In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Karim Gharsallah, Head of Talent Acquisition at BDR Thermea, the 7,000-person European manufacturer of boilers and heat pumps. Karim opened their prep call with three words: "Adriaan, I hate AI." The nuance is what makes this episode. Karim does not hate the technology, he hates what it is doing to how we communicate: every LinkedIn post with the same structure, personality fading out, and companies believing a tool will fix problems they have not defined. His line for it: a tool is not a strategy. Meanwhile he uses Claude every day, for the deep work of building the business case for a centralized TA function and for structured interview guides, and BDR Thermea's policy has just moved from "no AI" to public-information-only. He walks through the Recruitment Blueprint he is building: why companies that start by hiring recruiters end up with inconsistent processes, unclear ownership and agencies everywhere; taking ten steps back to define what recruitment should be; governance and hiring guides first; a baseline across seven countries; intelligent alignment instead of centralization for its own sake; the Ulrich model; and a flexible mix of roughly 60-70% in-house with RPOs and agencies for the rest. Karim and Adriaan also get into the move from scale-ups (VanMoof, and Recruitee where he was Global Head of TA) to a 7,000-person corporate: decision speed, pacing yourself, and why every company thinks it is uniquely complicated while having exactly the same hiring problems. Timecodes 01:09 Welcome and Karim's background 02:54 "Adriaan, I hate AI": the nuance behind it 04:39 Where Karim actually uses AI, and why he switched to Claude 05:22 BDR Thermea's AI policy: from "no AI" to public-information-only 06:38 AI use cases for a head of TA 07:46 Karim turns the table: AI fatigue 09:41 How Matchr is doubling down on AI 10:40 Rebuilding a website with AI instead of a 20,000 euro project 12:49 The Recruitment Blueprint: take ten steps back 14:21 BDR Thermea: 7,000 people, decentralized by acquisition 16:50 Centralize or not: intelligent alignment 18:30 The Ulrich model and building the baseline 20:57 "Every company thinks they're uniquely complicated" 21:49 From scale-up to corporate: the speed of decisions 23:24 AI principles before AI tools 25:26 Where to follow Karim ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ ___________________________ Connect with Karim Gharsallah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karimgharsallah/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

  7. Jun 23

    Hiring for AI Fluency: Tracy St.Dic on How Zapier Raised the Bar for Every Hire

    In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Tracy St.Dic, Global Head of Talent at Zapier, the fully remote automation company of nearly 1,000 people across 42 countries. Before Zapier she was Senior Vice President of Recruitment at Teach For America, responsible for the largest and most diverse teacher pipeline in the US. Zapier assesses every hire, for every role, against an AI fluency rubric, now on version two because the internal team upskilled past version one within a year. Tracy breaks down its four components, why she measures the slope and not the snapshot (how fast people learn hard things), and what their AI recruiter found at the top of the funnel: 70 to 80% noise in technical pipelines, hidden gems among the auto-rejected, and candidate opt-in that grew from roughly a third to 81%. Plus where to start if your team is not AI native yet: deterministic automation and protected build time. Timecodes 01:04 Welcome and Tracy's background 02:17 Zapier in context: 1,000 people, 42 countries, fully remote 04:00 The 2023 "code red" that started AI fluency at Zapier 07:25 Inside the rubric: mindset, strategy, building, accountability 10:38 Four assessment points in the hiring process 11:49 The slope, not the snapshot 15:14 The AI recruiter at the top of the funnel 18:59 What candidates actually think of AI interviews 22:03 The AI surfaces, the recruiter decides 24:15 Rebuilding the hiring process for an AI-enabled world 27:40 What happens to the recruiter role 29:40 Where TA leaders should start: automation first 32:59 Build days: how the team upskills every three weeks 36:00 Where to follow Tracy ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ ___________________________ Connect with Tracy St.Dic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-stdic/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ Resources mentioned in this episode: Zapier's AI fluency rubric (v2), by Tracy: https://zapier.com/blog/raising-ai-fluency-bar-in-hiring/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

  8. Jun 4

    Hiring the People Behind the AI Boom: Marcus Pask on Scaling Nebius from 300 to 3,000

    In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Marcus Pask, a talent acquisition leader with 20 years in the field who is now helping AI infrastructure company Nebius scale from 300 to 3,000 people in 18 months. Marcus started on an agency desk at 18, worked with investment banks at Hays, ran go-to-market hiring at Expedia, then joined Miro at around 200 people and helped scale it to 2,500 while leading global tech recruitment. Today he is a fractional TA consultant at Nebius, the engine room behind the AI boom, building the data centers that companies like Meta and Microsoft run on. He explains why this growth is different: it is tied to contracts that are already signed, not projected revenue. He walks through the hiring problem nobody talks about, the builders, electricians and specialists who put data centers up in remote locations, who are not on LinkedIn and are now at a premium. And he shares how Nebius brings talent acquisition into the conversation early with talent maps, relocation incentives and rotating build teams. Marcus and Adriaan also get into why neither of them is worried about AI replacing recruiters any time soon, how automation is shifting coordinators toward TA operations, and how both Nebius and Matchr are adopting AI with the right guardrails and context. Timecodes 01:07 Welcome and Marcus's 20 years in talent acquisition 03:40 Leaving Miro, career coaching, and joining Nebius 07:30 Lessons from starting a podcast 13:30 MIT, robots, and exponential growth 15:43 What Nebius is: the engine room behind the AI boom 17:24 Why growth is tied to signed contracts, not projections 19:13 Hiring for data centers in the middle of nowhere 23:30 Will AI take recruiters' jobs? 29:26 From coordinators to TA operators 34:53 Using AI at Nebius and Matchr with the right context 48:21 How the Matchr and Nebius partnership came about 51:40 Where to find Marcus ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ ___________________________ Connect with Marcus Pask: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuspask/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ Resources mentioned in this episode: Talent Unplugged Across the Pond, Marcus's podcast with co-host Megan: https://www.youtube.com/@talentunpluggedacrossthepond Shaping Your Path, Marcus's job search and career coaching: https://shapingyourpath.com ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

    Hiring the People Behind the AI Boom: Marcus Pask on Scaling Nebius from 300 to 3,000
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Leaders in Talent is a podcast for Talent Acquisition, People, and HR leaders who are building modern, scalable, high-impact talent functions. Each episode brings you in-depth conversations with the operators, founders, authors, and practitioners shaping how companies hire, develop, and retain talent. We go beyond theory. Guests share the decisions, playbooks, data, and lessons learned from scaling global teams, implementing new talent technologies, designing employer brands, building recruiting operations, and turning TA into a strategic business function. If you work in talent and are solving challenges around growth, capability, culture, or transformation, this podcast gives you practical insight you can apply today. Real conversations. Real operators. Real lessons.

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