DE Talk | Reworking Recruitment: AI, a Frozen Job Market & the Human Edge

Season 7 • Episode 8

The headlines say unemployment is low. The front lines tell a different story. In this episode of DE Talk, Jeff Gill sits down with Brian Fink, managing partner of The ReWork Group and author of Talk Tech to Me, to unpack what’s really happening in today’s talent market—and what it means for the future of recruiting. From trust erosion in tech hiring to AI’s role as a force multiplier for mid-size companies, Brian challenges conventional wisdom and makes the case that in a frozen, patience-driven market, the recruiters who win are the ones doubling down on relationships, curiosity, and human judgment—not just automation.

About DE Talk

The DE Talk monthly podcast features honest and open dialogue between powerhouse industry experts on a variety of HR topics ranging from OFCCP compliance advice to emerging recruitment marketing trends, equal employment opportunity initiatives, and insightful solutions that help infuse new life into your HR strategies.

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Episode Guests

Transcript

DirectEmployers (00:00):

Get ready! The DE Talk podcast starts now. Insightful conversations and dialogue helping you put the human factor back in HR.

Jeff Gill (00:09):

Welcome to the DE Talk Podcast. I’m Jeff Gill, executive director, DirectEmployers Association. I’m excited to dive in today’s conversation focused at the heart of where DirectEmployers began, helping Member companies with talent management and recruitment. Recruitment has changed since DirectEmployers was founded 25 years ago by Bill Warren and our original 14 sponsoring Member companies. Today’s recruitment processes are augmented with the advancement of AI and data-driven tools to help recruiters find and secure top talent. The root of the process hasn’t changed though. It’s still a human-driven process that relies on people to connect the dots between what an employer truly needs and the talent that is abundantly out there. Tools such as automated screening, structured interviewing techniques, social media reviewers, AI avatars, skills matching, and many more tools have been a benefit and a burden to hardcore relationship-based talent hunters. Regardless of the tools that are at our disposal, recruiters with strong business acumen and the ability to tell the story of the candidate and the company’s needs are the recruiters who are successful in finding and sourcing top talent.

(01:15):

Today’s guest recently wrote that we are living in a world of red hot numbers that don’t always tell the full story of the job market. He’s the author of Talk Tech to Me, a talent strategist who believes inclusion might be the secret cure to the employee burnout and an industry professional who is actively trying to help recruiters move from being Boolean string builders to market intelligence pros. Please welcome Brian Fink, the managing partner of Rework Group. Thanks for joining us today, Brian.

Brian Fink (01:42):

Jeff, thanks for having me. I’m really excited about the conversation we’re going to have here today and the conversation we’re going to have in a few months in Indy.

Jeff Gill (01:49):

I am too. I am too. To kick us off, I just want to say that you have a strong industry reputation for what some may call sourcing wizardry, a true passion for the human side of the desk. You have an extensive history for helping some of the largest companies find the best talent, McAfee, Amazon, Twitter, Apple, Zocdoc, and quite a few growing and emerging companies from startups to mid-size turnarounds. I like in particular that over the course of your career, you’ve focused on aligning qualified candidates with roles, regardless of their demographic or capabilities. And recently, you’ve been involved in using AI and machine learning to spearhead talent development processes that bring together an inclusive view of talent and a human in the middle recruitment approach. I’m eager to hear about ReWork. So kick us off by telling us about your journey in creating ReWork and why now?

Brian Fink (02:37):

I think that there are a lot of reasons that you already touched on and one of them is very apparent and the other one is kind of hidden. The first of which is I’ve been a corporate recruiter for a number of years and I wanted to take the secret sauce to more industry leading corporations and kind of be a force multiplier, if you will, looking at bottlenecks with a unique perspective and figuring out how we can overcome those bottlenecks and organizations so that organizations aren’t their own worst to enemy when attracting talent or putting talent through talent pipelines or different conduits. You touched on demographics and capabilities and abilities. One of the things that’s near and dear to my heart is making sure that individuals of all stripes, colors, races, creeds, and capabilities, whether they’re invisible disabilities or visible disabilities, that they all have the same at bat, that they all have the same chance.

(03:30):

And so about a year or so ago, I exited the team at McAfee, not because they weren’t doing those things quite the opposite. We were recognized for being one of the most diverse workplaces in America, but because I’ve got a daughter that has special needs, has some of those invisible disabilities, and I wanted to be able to spend more time being a force multiplier in her life as well as in the lives of other companies. So at Rework, we really rework the bottlenecks and make sure that you’re not being your own worst enemy when it comes to attracting talent, making sure that talent’s moving through the process, and making sure that you’re retaining talent.

Jeff Gill (04:05):

That’s a great mission. And I love the fact that you’re popping out, starting your own organization and your own company in order to help corporate talent acquisition teams in order to find their way to that. And it really aligns with corporate workforce strategies. So I’d like to dig into that a little bit. Tell us how ReWork aligns with corporate workforce strategies. I think we’ve seen a lot of things in the market. We’ve seen the landscape for TA partners changing. Big job boards seem to be consolidating. There’s emerging AI-based talent search companies that are popping up. Every single vendor in the talent marketplace has an AI solution that claims to automate talent hunting, but you’re doing something different. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Brian Fink (04:42):

Well, first off, I’d like to say that everybody is popping up with all these AI talent discovery and AI interviewing tools. And I liken it actually, Jeff, to 15 years ago that every company had to have an app on the iPhone or on the Android phone. And when you ask them the question why they’re doing these things, it’s very surface level. It’s very surface level as to why they were building apps and it’s very surface level and parallel in tandem today as to why they’re using these tools to automate different tasks in the process. So one of the things that we’re really focusing on is asking people to stop and think about why they’re making these adoptions, why they’re making these investments. What’s the ROI? To borrow a phrase from a friend of mine, Torin Ellis talks about the ROI of humanity. And what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to make sure in the marketplace of ideas that ideas actually hold value and that they hold water, that they are there for retention variables and making sure that organizations are systemically stronger.

(05:44):

So workforce planning is much more than that. It’s looking at where the gaps exist in your team, whether it’s … For me, we focus primarily on engineering organizations and assessing that engineering talent to figure out who’s doing what and what’s not being done so that we can remove those bottlenecks to encourage people to build in those functions and to get that either to hire into the organization to deliver that type of solution or to find additional training, which we don’t provide to upskill and up level their talent because that strategy is really more than that. It’s retention, it’s making sure that products hit market, that products have market fit, that engineering teams are not overworked or overexercised.

Jeff Gill (06:28):

It’s a complete solution is what you’re talking about.

Brian Fink (06:30):

So I argue about the completeness of solution is that I think that when you say that something is quote unquote end to end, that you either have eliminated the ideation of curiosity or you’ve overlooked something that needs to be built in that manifest and you’re going to wait for version 2.0, and we really should be working in an agile capacity to make sure that we’re bringing home the proverbial bacon, so to speak.

Jeff Gill (06:56):

I’m always curious about how much talent is lost after the hire. I worked at a large international business consulting company decades ago, and I recall the metric that we lost 70% of our new hires within the first year after onboarding. What an incredible statistic, right? And that always struck me as something that could be handled as a business risk. What suggestions do you have for talent acquisition and HR executives to retain the talent after they’ve worked so hard to attract it and onboard?

Brian Fink (07:21):

Okay. So Jeff, I think that that statistic has actually become more staggering as you look at Gen Z and Gen Alpha as they enter the workforce, is that I saw a statistic the other day, and I’ll pull it up so you can included in the show notes about the fact that 90% of Gen Z quit their job in the first 90 days because they don’t find that it fits with … That it was mis-sold to them or it was misappropriated to them. I think that’s even more startling is that I think we have to think about not just employer brand, how things are facing on the outside, but internal communications, how things are being communicated on the inside. I also encourage organizations when they are making a hire, is that they sit down and they have the manager lay out a 90-day strategic plan on where they want to move that individual to in the organization based on their strengths and their weaknesses.

(08:14):

That type of planning really goes the extra measure to make sure that you’re retaining that Gen Z talent, that you’re making sure that they feel valued, seen, and heard, and that you can show up for them the way that they want to show up for you because this is a generation which unfortunately is the COVID generation, right? And they’ve had to deal with a lot of change and a lot of maturity very quickly. And they’re also dealing with return to office statutes that are coming down. This is a specific instance whereby creating that type of strategic plan, that partnership with your manager that your manager transitions from being a manager to a leader and a mentor and not just simply somebody who tells you you’re doing the wrong thing, but somebody who reaches in and helps you do the right thing. Is that helpful?

Jeff Gill (08:58):

I completely agree with that. Hey, Brian, you have a lot of experience on the front lines of recruiting. What’s the truth about the low unemployment rates that the news are reporting and what’s the hidden truth about the front lines of the talent market today?

Brian Fink (09:10):

So the headline unemployment number, which I think in February was 4.4%, it’s not measuring the discouraged worker. It’s not measuring the people who are working part-time because they can’t find full work. That number actually sits, I think, according to CNBC at like 8%, right? That’s nearly double. So that’s the number that actually tells you how the job market feels to the average person. I think the misnomer that we’re looking for is that low unemployment doesn’t mean a healthy job market. It just means fewer people are officially counted as job hunting. Instead, what I think is happening is that we got a really messy picture. The other day, American employers unexpectedly cut 92,000 jobs in February, the unemployment rate ticked up to that 4.4, 4.5%, and that was well below the expected gain of 60,000 new jobs. That’s amiss, right? I mean, that’s a delta of 150,000.

(10:13):

So many economists are describing today’s job market as no hire, no fire, where companies are reluctant to add workers that don’t want to let go of the job that they have. There’s a lot of job hugging that’s going on. That is a frozen market. That’s not a healthy one. When monthly payroll growth averages only 50,000 jobs in 2025, dropping as low as like 29,000 in June, according to JP Morgan, that’s a far cry from the post-pandemic boom. So where I think that that matters for recruiting and where I think that matters for the work that we do at ReWork is the real signal isn’t the headline rate, it’s the quality of the movement. A frozen market means that candidates aren’t voluntarily jumping, which means that that sourcing wizardry that you spoke about, Jeff, and I’m going to try to live up to that at DEAMcon, is that candidates aren’t voluntarily jumping.

(11:04):

Companies aren’t aggressively backfilling and the deals that do get done, the hires that get made, they carry more weight. It’s not a buyer’s market, it’s not a seller’s market, it’s a patient’s market. And the firms that are going to win in this environment are the ones with real relationships and people who don’t play transactional recruiting.

Jeff Gill (11:24):

We often lump recruiting into one bucket, but as you specialize in more tech, sales and executive roles, those tend to require different psychological approaches. What is the biggest hurdle currently unique to tech hiring versus the challenges of scaling a high output sales team?

Brian Fink (11:37):

That’s a really good question. That cuts pretty deeper than most people in the industry want to admit. I think that what you see is the biggest hurdle in tech hiring right now isn’t supply. I mean, there are lots of candidates. What I think it is with all these talented engineers, capable heads of engineering, AI, strong platform leads, the hurdle is trust erosion. I mean, after two years of mass layoffs, rescinded offers and teams rebuilt, then dismantled again, top tech candidates and top sales candidates and executive leadership, they’ve kind of become skeptical of institutions. I mean, they’ve watched companies hire aggressively pivot, cut, and then sometimes pivot and cut again at the same time. So I think there’s really been a general trust erosion. And I think from the psychological standpoint, from what you’re going to is something that I’ve written about time and time again, I talk about it, the psychological safety around the move itself.

(12:32):

I think senior engineers, sales leaders, they’ve watched, like I said, those layoffs and they’ve been sold this efficiency narrative. It’s a very deeply risk averse candidate pool. And with that, like I said just previously, it’s not that people aren’t passive. I mean, they’re not passive. They’re frozen. They want to move, but the calculus has clearly shifted. The pain of a bad move now outweighs the upside of a great one. So recruiters have to make sure internally that they’re building a strong relationship with a candidate pool that understands the technical talent is stress testing everything. They’re not just evaluating comp and scope. They’re doing reference checks on the hiring manager. They’re not just reading the Glassdoor reviews, but they’re studying it like it’s a financial prospectus. They’re asking hard questions about board dynamics and the first interviews. Or that’s what I’m seeing because like I work with a lot of startups, the psychological work required to move a strong staff engineer or a VP of engineering isn’t recruiting anymore.

(13:34):

It’s de-risking. Jeff, I want you to understand it’s not selling an opportunity. It’s methodically dismantling the reasons not to take it. Now that’s technical hiring. With sales hiring, and we engage in that as well, sales candidates, especially at the mid-market and enterprise level, they’re not frozen. They’re overconfident about what they can deliver. So the interview process is rewarding charisma and narrative construction, which means companies keep hiring people who are exceptional at being interviewed and mediocre at being held accountable. That kind of goes in two different directions. If you think about it for a second, tech hiring, it’s a trust problem. Sales hiring, it’s a signal problem. Same industry, same conversation about talent, completely different disciplines.

Jeff Gill (14:22):

That’s very insightful. Does that change a whole lot if the candidate is in between jobs or if you’re trying to draw them away from their current job situation?

Brian Fink (14:30):

That’s a really good follow-up. I think that the equation still persists because of the trailing 24 months that we’ve looked at, Jeff, is that in the past 24 months, to site those layoffs and what have you, we’ve got this tsunami of companies that are saying we’re laying off because of innovations that we’ve had in AI or AI adoption. Like I said, that’s a 24 month trailing. It helps me to specialize in what I do so that the real market context wins. The candidates have to separate the signal from the noise and they have to make sure that things are not structurally misleading and that it makes sense to cut through the BS and make sure that they understand the narrative, really getting at that signal and the noise.

Jeff Gill (15:15):

And part of the recruiter’s role is to build trust with a candidate through transparency with the employer.

Brian Fink (15:20):

So I think that it’s the goal of the recruiter and the hiring manager to build transformational trust. If you think about it like this, Jeff, have you ever done a trust fall?

Jeff Gill (15:30):

Yeah.

Brian Fink (15:30):

Absolutely. So when you do a trust fall, one person is usually not catching you. It’s usually a multitude of people. So when you go through the interview process, I encourage candidates to meet as many people as they can to bring in as many diverse perspectives as possible. Don’t just take the recruiter’s word for it. Ask the team, “Hey, tell me about a topic that you guys failed to deliver. What happened?” Recruiting has always been a game of liars poker, especially when I talk about that overconfident salesperson where the rubber meets the road, right? In engineering, you can more than likely show that you do or do not have that skillset through different testing and builds, but the reality of it is you need to interview everyone and double check the recruiter against the hiring manager and make sure that you’ve got that narrative.

(16:20):

So I think it’s incumbent upon everyone involved in the hiring process, all the way from the recruiter to the person who creates the offer letter to the recruiting coordinator, all the way to the hiring manager.

Jeff Gill (16:31):

So let’s shift gears a little bit. You talked a little bit about AI before, and I know you published a recent article on LinkedIn. The title of the article was The Uncomfortable Truth is that the future of recruiting isn’t about whether AI will transform your role. It’s about whether you’ll have the courage to let it transfer your role or something pretty close to that. So let’s unpack that a little bit as we lean into this part of the conversation around AI. How has AI transformed the smaller companies and the mid-size companies, and how have those size companies been able to take advantage of advancements in AI?

Brian Fink (17:02):

So first off, I think that smaller companies by and large do more with less, that they have to punch above their weight class all the time. But that’s definitely a lesson that my father taught me. He was a two-time entrepreneur, built different medical collection, medical billing companies and what have you, and he played with the big boys. About playing with the big boys is that AI helps you 10X what you’re doing. It allows you to take those tasks that you might have relegated to a recruiting coordinator or might have bogged you down. It takes care of those tasks. Like for instance, with a $20 a month, and this is not a pitch for Claude, but with a $20 a month Claude subscription, they have an HR suite. And in the HR suite, you can have it build offer letters and come up with employee onboarding plans.

(17:51):

These are all things that would be taken care of by somebody in recruiting or somebody in L&D. It takes that human interaction to double check them. But in terms of being able to produce that content, that content is produced in a matter of minutes as opposed to a matter of days and weeks. And so when you think about AI’s implication of being the force multiplier in the organization, it really allows the recruiter to be in multiple places at multiple times. It really gives them the opportunity to transform, especially in those mid-size organizations, how they’re going to do everything from create job descriptions, because let’s face it, sometimes organizations, even large organizations, take a job description and they rehash it. Let me be a little more precise because the hype and the reality are kind of traveling at two different speeds. The first wave of AI isn’t automation.

(18:42):

It’s compression, like I said, like it’s reducing that time is that AI collapses the time between we have a need and we have a short list. Sourcing, screening, initial outreach, scheduling, all these things are getting faster and cheaper. For mid-size companies specifically, this is meaningful. Like I gave the example with my dad because they’ve historically been stuck in a no man’s land. They are either too big to hire purely on network or too small to build the recruiting infrastructure that enterprises have. What I think AI does and what it does for my three person team is it gives a 500 person company the sourcing muscle of a team three times its size. That’s really real. There are tooling that I use like LinkedIn’s hiring assistant or pin.com that I use to help me find candidates, discover candidates, engage with candidates and get them ready for a phone screen with me.

(19:39):

But here’s what it doesn’t fix is that speed without judgment is faster mediocrity. I’ve written about that extensively. The bottleneck and a mid-size company that’s hiring has never been finding candidates. It’s been knowing what you actually need. It’s been selling the company to candidates, right? It’s those attributes. It’s been being able to move fast enough to hire the candidate. So when you think about what it doesn’t fix, again, there’s no standardization of process in smaller organizations. There’s a lot of gut checking and a lot of gut feeling. AI is not going to provide you with that data that’s going to make your gut feel any better.

Jeff Gill (20:17):

What about the candidates that are showing up with copious amounts of AI experience? With so many tools and agentic builders, how does an employer dig into the reality of what a candidate really knows about AI? As a hiring manager, can I actually use AI to test the depth of AI skills and competencies when a candidate applies for a role?

Brian Fink (20:36):

Okay. So a lot of things to unpack here, Jeff. When a candidate applies for a role, I think that we should make the assumption today that the resume is an AI generated document and that we should approach it with skepticism. I think that there’s certain things, particularly in technology that one can’t fake, and that’s using social networks like GitHub. And yes, I qualify GitHub as a social network because you are socially validated by your community. Your code base or repositories are shared, they’re utilized, they provide competitive advantage for you to show people that in fact you do know what you’re doing. One of the things that I think companies like Zapier are really smart about is that they invite the candidate to use AI in the process so they can see how they’re using it for coding, how they’re using it for difficult interview questions, how they’re using it to demonstrate their skills, how they’re using it to make it sharper.

(21:30):

Jeff, I know you did a lot of research on me, so you probably already know that I’m a Star Wars fan. The example that I draw on is in Star Wars, we have R2D2 and C3PO, and R2D2 can crack any code and C3PO can speak millions of languages. He’s a translation droid. If I was to go to Germany, it would be really helpful if I had a translation droid to make that assimilation that much easier. If I was to go to a bank and I needed to put in my debit card to extract some euros while I’m in Germany, it would be helpful if I had a code, i.e. R2D2, to be able to do that for me. So I think that it’s important for companies to ask, how are you using AI? How are you leveraging C3PO? How are you leveraging R2D2 to make sure that the candidate is presenting a full and accurate, transparent picture of themselves?

(22:23):

Is that helpful?

Jeff Gill (22:24):

Yes, absolutely. I think it’s classic recruiting though too, right? It’s knowing how to dig into the candidate’s skillset that they present on their resume and citing examples, as you’re saying, how do you use this skill? What have you achieved with this skill? But there’s a big part that’s still human in the middle when it comes to recruiting. AI doesn’t eliminate that.

Brian Fink (22:42):

Jeff, I don’t know. I want to disagree with you here for a second, is that I think that recruiting, the idea of classical recruiting, it’s dying a very slow and painful death. I think that what we’re witnessing are two, three, maybe four transformations is that at the beginning you complimented me and said, “Brian, you’re a sourcing wizard.” Yes, I am. I can write Boolean strings with the best of them. Bring on Glen Kathy. We’ll have a Boolean battle any day of the week, but sourcing has become a commodity. The competitive advantage of knowing where to find people is evaporating because of AI. Talent matching is moving away from keyword matching to search recommendation logic. Number two, the recruiter’s job description is being rewritten. It’s not filling the funnel. It’s not going to the job board. It’s clarifying what this complex candidate motivations are beyond compensation like we reviewed at the top of the conversation and then skills.

(23:36):

We were like, Brian, people are using AI, there’s got to be trust is that the college degree requirement is disappearing in IT. 50% of the companies that I work with, they don’t care about a college degree. The other ones, they care that you went to a top 25 CS school. What they’re doing is they’re looking at their skills and they’re using their skills and assessments, project portfolios to demonstrate whether or not this person knows what they’re doing. And a recruiter has to become skilled in interpreting that data. And then finally, to your point, Korn Ferry put out a report that like 50% of talent leaders are planning to add autonomous AI agents, not chatbots, but tools that pretty much act independently. Jeff, have you seen some of these tools that basically, not like a Hirevue, but like you call in and it contextually understands who you are from a resume perspective and the person can call in at 10 o’clock at night and they can have an interview with a recruiter that’s fresh, doesn’t have the bias of having had a bad day, that can ask consistent questions, who doesn’t need that consistent prompting and training.

(24:44):

Now, I will caveat this, is that these are tools that we’re using today at ReWork, is that this is actually how we’re positioning opportunity. We’re getting to know the candidate. We’re making sure that when we build a relationship, it’s built on trust, the relationship capital to get a passive VP of engineering on the phone. I mean, Jeff, if I got you on the phone and I said, “Hey man, I’d really like to interview you. Here’s my interview bot and I passed you over to that, ” that would diminish trust immediately. There would be no relationship, there’d be no social capital. So I think that you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to balance being the recruiter of the future with what you suggested about the classic recruiter who is really relationship driven, trust focused. They’re not using AI the most. They’re using it in such a way that they get to … It doesn’t amplify their human judgment because human judgment is irreplaceable, but it creates that argument as to why a well-trained recruiter internally or an external recruiter becomes more valuable in an AI saturated market.

Jeff Gill (25:51):

Very interesting. So I’m curious about something. I know speaking at DirectEmployers annual conference and meeting in April, and we’re celebrating this year, our 25th anniversary, I’m really looking forward to your session because you’re really talking about custom search engines. So how does custom search engines align to what you were just talking about with the candidate’s ability to use AI to search for jobs? And can you kind of expand? Walk us through some of that.

Brian Fink (26:16):

Absolutely. So a Google custom search engine, and first off, this is a free tool. This is a tool that anybody who has a Gmail address can use. So just putting out there, if you’re coming to DEAMcon bring your Gmail address, we’re going to need it. Okay?

Jeff Gill (26:29):

We’re going to do it live.

Brian Fink (26:30):

We’re going to do it live. We’re going to build these together. So first of all, let me tell you what it is and then I’ll say how we’re going to build them and why we’re going to build them is that a Google custom search engine can go and find information in a contextual setting across multiple domains. It means that you can use Google in a new and distinct way to index LinkedIn without getting in LinkedIn jail or index Instagram or find candidates on GitHub or connect with candidates on TikTok. And we can do all that. But here’s the thing, is that if you’re going to build out a Boolean string every single time you’re going to sit down at a computer for the computer to go find the candidates that you want to talk to, that’s a time suck. That’s a huge time waste.

(27:15):

What we’re going to do is we’re going to compress all those searches into one so that you only have to say, “I’m looking for females who are veterans who live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who are good with Python.” There are a lot of variables there, right? You’re doing a lot of diversity recruiting and that takes a heavy lift. I mean, I’ve seen people who, when they build a diversity string, they go to the top 25 female names and they use that. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to look at adjectives that have lots of synonyms to them. There’s also a limitation as to how many search terms you can put into Google, right? Nobody talks about this, is that you can’t put more than 32 words into Google before it breaks. We’re going to change that and we’re going to change that at scale so that everybody that comes and attends this session can take this back to their team on Monday morning and say, “Look, we’re going to jump the line on LinkedIn.

(28:12):

We’re going to jump the line on TikTok. We’re going to jump the line on Instagram.” Like you mentioned Zocdoc, right? I don’t know how many people are going to be attending that are from the medical field, but what would it be like if you recruited doctors and physicians and you could extract them from a database like a Zocdoc, which is pretty much an OpenTable for doctors and physicians. So we’re going to use that and we’re going to build it and you do not have to be AI native. All you need to bring is your Gmail address and know who you’re looking for and we’re going to knock it out.

Jeff Gill (28:47):

So is that the one skill that you would have recruiters develop as they go about searching for top talent in 2026?

Brian Fink (28:54):

Building a CSE? Yes and no. I thought about weaving this in because I like to do one more thing than is on the agenda. I’m using Claude Cowork and I have it connected to a bunch of different databases so that I can go in and type something like, “Show me companies that recently did layoffs and find me the layoff list.” And it brings me back layoff lists of people who have been laid off and their contact information and their residency and the company they work for. I may, as a teaser, may show how to build that. And if you can write three sentences, you can build that.

Jeff Gill (29:29):

That’s fantastic. That’s a real head start kind of thing. You’re very active on LinkedIn and you created so many incredible posts that lean into not only your expertise, but the recruiting industry as a whole. If you could leave recruiters and talent acquisition teams with a few parting words of advice as to how they move forward in 2026, can you share some of that knowledge?

Brian Fink (29:47):

Absolutely. I think that there are four core attributes that you have to have to be a great recruiter, a great sourcer, great talent architect, great talent strategist, curiosity, empathy, tenacity, and mischievousness. When we think about curiosity, I think of Steve Jobs who always asked all these difficult questions to get to simplistic answers. And that’s curiosity. When I think of empathy, I think of Steve Rath, who is actually a recruiter at Apple. Shout out to Steve and how he identifies with his candidates and makes sure that he moves them forward as well as moving the company forward. Tenacity. I think my dad. My dad built things and he didn’t just build them once. And when he got shut down, when he lost everything and he built it back again, that tenacity to get back up and to ask those curious questions and to act with empathy.

(30:38):

And then when I think of mischievousness, I think of Steve Levy because Steve Levy is one of the best sourcers out there and he asks difficult questions and looks for candidates in unusual places. So I think that you got to be curious, empathetic, tenacious, and mischievous. I guess you have to be for Steve’s.

Jeff Gill (30:54):

I love that you share your knowledge so willingly. As a matter of fact, you have a number of speaking events coming up. You recently spoke at Evolve in Atlanta, TA Week in San Diego, and you’ve got so many other events on your calendar this year. What other speaking engagements can we find you at this year?

Brian Fink (31:08):

Well, Jeff, that’s a TBD. All right. I will be with your team and our community from DirectEmployers Association in Indy and that’ll be in April. And then May, I will be doing SourceCon and then June, Craig Fisher has an event called TalentNet Live, and he will be taking it on the road to Chicago, and that’ll be on June the 1st. Jeff, back to the top of the conversation. I do what I do so I can strengthen companies. And so I am making sure that my daughter is a strong, dynamic woman. I limit the number of events. I know I just rattled off three in a row, but come fall when we start school again, I won’t be on the road. This summer, we’ll be taking some vacations and whatever city I’m in, she’s nine. She knows that dad is going to go do some recruiting with some people in that city.

(31:55):

So there may not be anything on the calendar per se, but if I’m coming to your city, I’d love to meet up and I’d love to have a conversation with any recruiters, talent acquisition professionals. Jeff, I just want to move our discipline forward.

Jeff Gill (32:09):

Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate your willingness to really engage the community of recruiters that are out there. I’m personally following you on LinkedIn. So as you sign up for those TBD speaking events, I’ll hear about those through LinkedIn, I’m sure. I want to take a moment and say thanks for sharing your time and your talent with us today, Brian. You’ve given us a lot to think about regarding both the tools we use and the teams we build. I’m super excited to connect with you at DEAMcon26. And for those of our listeners who would like to register for DEAMcon and connect with Brian and countless other HR professionals and executives in person in Indianapolis, visit us at deamcon.org, D-E-A-M-C-O-N dot O-R-G to see the full program and register to attend. Brian, if our listeners would like to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do that?

Brian Fink (32:55):

Send me a DM on LinkedIn. Send me a DM on Instagram. Those are the two or Substack where I hang out. Those are the three places that I’m most active.

Jeff Gill (33:05):

Fantastic. Thanks so much, Brian. Have a great afternoon.

Brian Fink (33:07):

Thanks, Jeff. You too. And I’ll see you in Indy.

Jeff Gill (33:10):

See you in Indy.

DirectEmployers (33:11):

Thank you for tuning in for another episode of the DE Talk podcast. Stay connected with DirectEmployers on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, or subscribe to receive updates straight to your inbox by visiting DirectEmployers.org/Subscribe where you’ll receive notifications of new episodes, webinars, events, and more.