Designing for Scale, Delivering with Care: How Talent Ops Work at Scale

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/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/] Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ [https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/] ___________________________ Connect with Syed Ali Abbas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/syedaliabbashr/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/syedaliabbashr/] Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/] ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml [https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml]

"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/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/] Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ [https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/] ___________________________ Connect with Karim Gharsallah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karimgharsallah/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karimgharsallah/] Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/] ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml [https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml]

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/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/] Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ [https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/] ___________________________ Connect with Tracy St.Dic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-stdic/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-stdic/] Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ [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/ [https://zapier.com/blog/raising-ai-fluency-bar-in-hiring/] ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml [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

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/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/] Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ [https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/] ___________________________ Connect with Marcus Pask: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuspask/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuspask/] Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ [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 [https://www.youtube.com/@talentunpluggedacrossthepond] Shaping Your Path, Marcus's job search and career coaching: https://shapingyourpath.com [https://shapingyourpath.com] ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml [https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml]

Hiring for Hypergrowth: Wesley Gilbert on Scaling Talent at On Running, Uber and Manychat

In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Wesley Gilbert, Head of Talent Acquisition at Manychat. Wesley's career has been built inside some of the most talked-about scale stories in tech: Google, four years at Uber as EMEA hyperscaled from 2,000 to 20,000 people, then four years at On Running, where he led global TA as the company grew from 300 to 3,000 employees and built the retail business from zero to around a thousand. Wesley walks through how On Running's founders refused to copy the Nike and Adidas playbook and instead built a two-tier hiring strategy: high-potential talent who would grow up inside the culture, and senior leaders pulled from tech, FMCG and luxury who shared the brand's passion but brought outside-industry thinking. He explains how the team broke down the company's values into an assessment model, why interview rounds were intentionally longer, how MetaView and structured debriefs raised interview quality at scale, and where On's approach differed from Uber's competency-first, talent-density model. Wesley also talks about the move to Manychat, where AI, the creator economy and a more competency-driven culture have shaped how he is rebuilding the TA function. He shares the leadership lessons that took him longest to learn: stepping back from being the expert in the room, the 'big rocks' framework his CEO at On gave him, and how to build a leadership team you can lean on when your function scales past what one person can hold. Timecodes 00:59 Welcome and Wesley's background: Google, Uber, On Running, ManyChat 02:22 Thriving in high-intensity, build-from-scratch environments 03:54 Joining On Running at 300 people: a Swiss startup with a culture-first vision 06:18 Why On refused to copy Nike and Adidas, and the two-tier hiring strategy 08:58 The three risks of hypergrowth: quality, culture and diversity 10:08 Scaling from 300 to 3,000: how to convince talent before the brand was known 11:05 Defining what "top talent" actually means and turning values into an assessment model 18:17 Why On's process had six to seven rounds, and the experience day in Zurich 20:43 What Uber did differently: competency over culture, and country-by-country startups 23:56 Joining ManyChat and what the platform does for content creators 27:20 Standardising and professionalising the ManyChat recruitment process 30:12 Lessons in hindsight: positioning TA as a strategic function, not an executional one 32:39 Learning to delegate, build a leadership team and stop being the expert in everything 35:24 The 'big rocks' framework Wesley's CEO Martin shared with him at On 37:35 Adriaan on his own move from day-to-day operator to founder on the balcony 42:16 Where to connect with Wesley ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/] Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ [https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/] ___________________________ Connect with Wesley Gilbert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wezgilbert/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/wezgilbert/] Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/] ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml [https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml]