Katrina Collier is a recruiting keynote speaker and author of Reboot Hiring and The Robot-Proof Recruiter, focused on restoring human connection to the hiring process.

As AI changes recruiting, the value of the recruiter is changing with it. The differentiator is no longer simply finding candidates, but understanding the business, challenging assumptions, and helping hiring managers make better decisions.

Katrina Collier joins Denise Chaffin to explore how talent acquisition can move from order-taking to true business partnership. They discuss recruitment alignment, hiring-manager relationships, employer reputation, AI-generated resumes and bias, candidate engagement, and why technology can amplify broken hiring processes instead of fixing them.

Listeners will be talking about what makes recruitersvaluable now: stronger business acumen, better questions, human judgment, and the confidence to challenge whether a role should even be filled before recruiting begins.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Why Recruiter Value Is Changing(01:17) Meet Katrina Collier(02:29) Reboot Hiring and the Robot-Proof Recruiter(04:33) Why Talent Acquisition Still Struggles for Influence(08:00) Should You Even Be Hiring?(10:29) Becoming a Business Partner(14:03) Rethinking Common Hiring Assumptions(15:29) Why Human Outreach Still Matters(21:13) Top Talent Doesn't Need Your Job(23:01) Reputation Over Employer Brand(24:00) AI Resumes and Recruiting Bias(29:27) Articulating the Real Hiring Need(38:04) Speaking the Language of Business(39:00) Three Takeaways for Recruiters

Drea Codispoti is Director of Network Operations at Top Echelon, where he helps recruiting agencies build stronger partnerships and use their networks more productively and profitably.

Recruiting is getting harder, and Drea Codispoti explains why the people who survive will rely on grit, collaboration, creativity, sales discipline and human judgment, not simply more outreach.

Recruiting is getting harder, even for industry veterans. Drea Codispoti joins Denise Chaffin to examine which recruiters will survive the shift and why grit alone is not enough. They explore candidate attention, recruiter collaboration, silver-medalist talent, changing industry demand, AI’s limits, and the leap from corporate recruiting to agency ownership. The conversation reveals why relationships, creativity, training, sales ability, and a strong professional network remain the recruiter’s most durable competitive advantages in a changing market.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Meet Drea Codispoti

(01:47) Why Recruiting Is Getting Harder

(03:42) The Strong Will Survive

(04:55) Where Hiring Demand Is Moving

(07:07) The Surprising Growth of Legal Recruiting

(10:57) What Happens to the Candidates You Do Not Hire?

(14:10) Competition or Collaboration?

(15:41) Candidate Attention Is the New Bottleneck

(19:15) Are You Made of Steel?

(21:25) Is AI Really a Threat to Recruiters?

(24:21) Who Thrives Outside Corporate Recruiting?

(27:59) Recruiting’s Three-Headed Sales Monster

(29:18) What to Know Before Starting an Agency

(30:49) Why Your Digital Footprint Matters

Amy Oxley, Chief of Staff, Product at SmartRecruiters, joins Talking TA Tech Stack to discuss why AI adoption in hiring depends on usability, trust, and how well technology fits into the everyday recruiting workflow.

AI is entering talent acquisition fast, but the harder question is not whether teams have access to AI. It is whether they can use it consistently, safely, and meaningfully inside the hiring process.

This episode explores ATS fatigue, AI adoption, recruiting operations, governance, user experience, and what TA and HR leaders should consider when evaluating AI-enabled hiring technology. The conversation uses SmartRecruiters and Winston as a practical lens for understanding how AI can support recruiters, hiring managers, and global hiring teams without becoming another unused layer in the tech stack.

Listeners will walk away thinking less about AI as a feature and more about AI as an operating decision: who controls it, how teams adopt it, and whether it actually improves the way hiring gets done.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Why AI Tools Still Go Unused

(02:25) Why Teams Buy AI They Don’t Use

(04:17) Where Recruiting Breaks Down

(07:45) The Candidate Experience Problem

(09:04) Introducing Winston

(15:21) AI That Guides, Not Decides

(18:08) Why AI Needs Better Context

(21:02) How Winston Supports TA Practitioners

(23:00) Demo: Finding the Right Candidates Faster

(30:03) Giving Teams Flexibility and Control

(40:40) What Leaders Need From AI Adoption

(42:01) Governance, Compliance, and Global Hiring

(46:04) Where AI in Hiring Goes Next

(47:19) From AI Fatigue to Tools That Work