If AI can handle the screening and administrative work, what exactly makes a recruiter valuable?

Tom Lott has an answer—and it should get every TA leader’s attention.

In this episode of The Frontlines Podcast, Tim Sackett and Madeline Laurano sit down with Tom Lott, a recruiting leader now building out the talent acquisition function at law firm Klinedinst. From AI screening to hiring-manager expectations, this conversation tackles what happens when technology gives recruiters more time—and leaders have to decide what they should do with it.

Tom shares his experience introducing Talent Llama at his previous firm, BAL, where he reports approximately a 79% reduction in time to fill, a reduction of more than 60% in cost per hire, and millions in agency savings. Hiring-manager satisfaction also climbed from 3.1 to 4.6 on a five-point scale. But the surprising part? The people who needed the most convincing weren’t the hiring managers. They were the recruiters worried about being replaced.

His message: as AI takes on administrative tasks, recruiters need to demonstrate their value through building trust, understanding candidate motivations, advising managers, and selling opportunities. More technology makes emotional intelligence and business acumen even more important.

Supported by sponsors Workday and Paradox, this episode explores a question at the heart of recruiting transformation: how do you turn automation into better hiring and a stronger recruiting team?

Tim, Madeline, and Tom also dig into responsible AI, explainability, and the data foundation organizations need before scaling their processes. Tom explains why his team continued human screening after AI surfaced candidates. Madeline challenges the assumption that buying technology fixes unreliable data. Moving faster matters—but so does understanding what you’re moving forward.

The conversation then takes aim at TA’s obsession with filling requisitions. Tom argues that recruiters need to understand revenue, growth plans, turnover, and productivity. The real test comes after the offer: Did the person perform? Did they stay? Did they help the business?

You’ll hear the five traits Tom looks for in great recruiters: curiosity, emotional intelligence, business acumen, courage, and follow-through. Courage gets special attention, because telling a hiring manager their compensation is unrealistic or their process is costing them candidates requires more than being agreeable.

There’s also practical advice on separating must-haves from wish lists, looking beyond impressive employer names when hiring recruiters, and moving quickly enough to compete. Tom describes making interviews and offers happen on the same day—a reality check for employers taking weeks to offer someone an hourly job.

And the retention discussion gets personal: competitive pay matters, but so does making people feel seen. Madeline shares a football story that brings that lesson home.

If you’re rethinking your recruiters’ roles, evaluating AI, or trying to earn a stronger voice in business decisions, this episode gives you plenty to work with.

The Frontlines with Klinedinst's Tom Lott

What if your next great recruiter is already working behind the register? And what if your biggest recruiting expense isn’t advertising, but all those people who insist on interviewing every candidate?

In this episode of The Frontlines Podcast, Tim Sackett and Madeline Laurano get into the details of frontline hiring with Heather Hampton, Vice President of Talent at Global Partners. Recorded in Boston at the Workday Horizons event, this conversation delivers practical lessons for TA leaders managing high-volume hiring, competing with bigger brands, and trying to make every recruiting dollar count.

Global Partners hires roughly 3,000 people annually across a business that includes multiple convenience retail brands. Getting candidates to recognize those brands is a challenge. Getting interested candidates into an interview shouldn’t be.

Heather shares how her team implemented Paradox’s career site and high-volume scheduling capabilities in six months—and how, since January, monthly recruiting advertising spending has been approximately half of what she budgeted. The discussion explores why making it easier for candidates to apply, schedule, and connect with hiring managers can change the economics of recruiting. For sponsors Workday and Paradox, it’s a fitting conversation: their technology is part of the hiring and internal talent practices Heather describes throughout the episode.

But the story goes well beyond getting people through the door.

Heather explains how Global Partners encourages employees, including frontline workers, to complete career profiles in Workday so recruiters can search internal talent alongside external candidates. And she brings the receipts: one employee’s nine-year journey took her from cashier to general manager, recruiter, and ultimately senior talent development specialist, with tuition reimbursement helping along the way. That’s a career path candidates can actually believe in.

The team also tackles early turnover and why the first seven days deserve more attention. Sometimes the issue driving someone toward the exit is a scheduling concern. Sometimes it’s anxiety about operating equipment safely. Ask the question, have the conversation, and you may discover a problem you can solve before that employee disappears.

Then Tim, Madeline, and Heather take aim at the hidden costs of hiring: excessive interview rounds, expensive executive involvement, and approval chains that slow down routine offers. Does a vice president really need to interview that intern? Does a cashier’s offer need three layers of approval when the pay rate and budget are already established?

You’ll also hear actionable advice on choosing vendors, checking customer references, building a TA peer network, and getting field leaders involved before implementation begins. Heather’s approach to adoption includes ongoing training and support long after launch day.

If you’re looking for ideas you can take into your next budget meeting, hiring-manager conversation, or technology evaluation, this episode delivers. Better frontline hiring starts with understanding what your business needs—and giving candidates, employees, and managers a clearer path forward.

The Frontlines with Global Partners Heather Hampton

Hiring someone in four days sounds like a win. But what happens if they leave before they ever become productive?

That’s where this episode of The Frontlines Podcast gets interesting.

Recorded in Boston following the Workday Horizons frontline hiring event, Tim Sackett and Madeline Laurano sit down with Vinod, a PwC partner with more than 30 years of experience in HR technology and transformation. Together, they tackle a question every talent acquisition leader should be asking: Are we using AI to make individual tasks faster, or are we actually changing how hiring works?

Because buying the technology is the easy part. Rethinking your processes, preparing your people, and turning those investments into business results? That takes leadership.

Vinod makes the case for TA to lead AI transformation, with a strategy that connects technology, governance, change management, and how work gets delivered. The conversation also challenges the assumption that candidates need to be technically savvy to benefit from AI. For frontline workers across generations, the goal should be simple: make applying and interacting with an employer easier.

Then comes a metric that deserves a spot on your dashboard: time to yield. Time to fill tells you how quickly you hired someone. Time to yield asks how quickly that person becomes productive. And when you’re hiring thousands of frontline employees, shaving even one day off that journey can have a significant business impact. Lose someone before they reach productivity, and you’re paying to start the whole cycle again.

The discussion gets especially candid when Vinod shares lessons from PwC’s work with Chipotle, including how Workday and Paradox helped support a recruiting transformation that brought hiring time down from roughly 16–18 days to four. But faster hiring also raised questions about turnover, candidate commitment, and whether removing friction changes who enters the funnel. The team explores those questions without pretending the relationship between speed and retention is settled.

That leads to an essential distinction: unnecessary application hurdles versus meaningful steps that help employers and candidates make better decisions.

And if your retention strategy starts and ends with “we have great pay and culture,” prepare for some uncomfortable questions. Tim, Madeline, and Vinod explore the retention moat: what gives employees a compelling reason to stay? From scheduling flexibility to recognition and personalized development, they discuss how better data can help employers understand what matters to individual workers.

Supported by sponsors Workday and Paradox, this episode connects the frontline hiring technology conversation to the outcomes TA leaders need to deliver: productive employees, stronger retention, and measurable business value.

If your team is under pressure to hire faster and prove the return on AI, this conversation will give you plenty to bring back to your next leadership meeting.

The Frontlines with PwC's Vinod Bonthala 

Your company says it offers flexibility. Your frontline employees say they can’t change a shift. You say the benefits are available. They don’t know how to access them. And while leadership celebrates business results, some of the people delivering those results are borrowing money just to get to their next paycheck.

Houston, we have a frontline problem.

On this episode of The Frontlines, Tim Sackett and Madeline Laurano welcome Nehal Nangia, who leads talent management and frontline workforce research at The Josh Bersin Company, for a candid, sometimes uncomfortable, and surprisingly hopeful conversation about the gap between what employers promise and what hourly workers actually experience.

Using research from DailyPay and Workday featuring responses from more than 2,000 hourly workers, the trio digs into findings that should get every Talent Acquisition leader’s attention. One that hits especially hard: 46% of hourly workers report borrowing money between pay periods. Meanwhile, roughly half don’t expect their workplace experience to improve. These employees aren’t asking for extravagant perks. They want understandable pay, workable schedules, and someone who actually communicates with them.

For TA leaders, this conversation goes straight to the promises made during recruiting—and whether those promises survive the employee’s first shift. Madeline shares an example of a worker changing locations only to discover the pay was lower than expected. Tim challenges leaders to confront pay inequities that leave experienced employees earning less than brand-new hires. And Nehal explains why frontline flexibility means much more than convenience: it can determine whether someone can care for a sick child, pick up needed hours, or keep earning a living.

You’ll hear hot takes on:

 * Why offering a benefit doesn’t mean employees can use it, and how communication and enrollment can derail a good investment.
 * Who owns the frontline experience gap, including Tim’s direct challenge to CHROs to bring the business case to their CEO and CFO.
 * Why scheduling deserves a place in your recruiting strategy, especially when flexibility can influence whether someone accepts a job or stays.
 * What AI could make possible next, from easier shift changes to understanding team performance and rewarding results closer to the moment they happen.

With support from Workday and Paradox, The Frontlines brings these conversations to the leaders responsible for attracting and keeping the people who make businesses run. Workday’s scheduling capabilities also enter the discussion as an example of how technology can help address everyday worker friction.

There are laughs, Josh Bersin stories, and plenty of opinions. But the question underneath it all is serious: Are you recruiting people into an experience they’ll want to stay in—or recruiting replacements for problems your organization hasn’t fixed?

If you lead frontline hiring, this episode belongs on your listening list.

The Frontlines with Bersin Company's Nehal Nangia 

What happens when you combine one of the world’s most recognizable hospitality brands, more than 200,000 annual hires, an enormous frontline workforce, and a CHRO who has spent his career challenging conventional HR thinking? You get a can’t-miss episode of The Frontlines.

Hosts Tim Sackett and Madeline Laurano sit down with Kris Dunn, CHRO for Marriott International’s U.S. and Canada region, for a fast-moving conversation about frontline hiring, candidate experience, technology adoption, interviewing, and the recruiting data that never lies.

Kris takes listeners inside Marriott’s ongoing effort to make its frontline hiring machine faster, smarter, and more human. Marriott already possesses an extraordinary employment brand and attracts tremendous candidate interest, but demand alone doesn’t guarantee hiring success. The real challenge is converting that interest into quality hires quickly—without sacrificing the hospitality experience that defines the company.

One incredible proof point? Marriott’s post-interview candidate survey consistently generates a 93–94% positive rating. Kris explains why: The same hiring managers who create outstanding experiences for hotel guests bring that hospitality mindset into candidate interviews. Technology gets candidates through the door efficiently, while Marriott’s leaders provide the human connection.

The Frontlines with Marriott's Kris Dunn 

“The Gap is back!”—and in this episode of The Frontlines, we’re going behind the scenes with the talent acquisition leader helping the iconic retailer build the workforce behind its resurgence.

Hosts Tim Sackett and Madeline Laurano sit down with Steve White, Talent Acquisition Leader at Gap Inc., for an energetic conversation about frontline hiring, candidate experience, AI, employer brand, and the business impact of great recruiting. With more than 80,000 employees across Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta, Steve has a massive opportunity—and responsibility—to connect talent strategy directly to the growth of some of retail’s most recognizable brands.

Steve shares his playbook for entering a new TA leadership role, beginning with a deceptively simple question: How does the business make money? Instead of immediately obsessing over open requisitions, time-to-fill, and recruiting activity, he focuses on understanding the company’s strategy, building relationships, creating space for healthy conflict, and aligning TA around the business problems that matter most.

The conversation also tackles one of the biggest challenges in frontline hiring today: speed. Candidate expectations have fundamentally changed. People can order a product and receive it the next day, so why should they wait a week to hear back about a job? For today’s frontline candidates, hiring speed is no longer measured in days—it’s measured in minutes and hours.

Steve explains how Gap Inc. is using Paradox and its AI assistant, “Bridget,” to simplify hiring, engage candidates faster, and create more consistent experiences at scale. The group explores how technology can help employers treat every applicant fairly—even the 99% who may not receive an offer—and turn rejected candidates into future applicants, brand advocates, and loyal customers.

And that leads to one of the episode’s biggest ideas: You cannot separate the candidate from the consumer. Every recruiting interaction has the potential to strengthen—or damage—the company’s consumer brand, employer brand, and revenue. As Steve puts it, every open requisition is ultimately a business problem waiting to be solved.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

 * Why TA leaders must understand how their organization makes money
 * How to connect recruiting outcomes to revenue, margin, and growth
 * Why frontline candidates now expect answers within minutes or hours
 * How AI and automation can improve speed, consistency, and fairness
 * Why candidate experience and customer experience are inseparable
 * How to turn unsuccessful applicants into raving fans of your brand
 * Why TA needs to move beyond “filling seats” and solve real business problems

A special thank you to Workday and Paradox for sponsoring The Frontlines and supporting the conversations transforming frontline hiring.

If you lead talent acquisition, frontline recruiting, employer branding, or recruiting technology, this is an episode you do not want to miss.

The Frontlines with The Gap's Steve White

What happens when frontline recruiting isn’t just high volume—but every open role directly impacts revenue?

In this episode of The Frontlines, Tim Sackett sits down with Jim D’Amico, the longtime talent acquisition leader heading recruiting for Caliber Collision, the nation’s largest collision-repair provider. With nearly 1,900 locations across 43 states and approximately 34,000 employees, Caliber faces an enormous hiring challenge: finding highly skilled auto-body technicians in a market where virtually every qualified candidate already has a job—and plenty of options.

Jim takes us inside the recruiting operation Caliber has built to compete at that scale. He breaks down a technology ecosystem anchored by Workday and enhanced by CRM, messaging, interview-intelligence, and AI tools. You’ll hear how Caliber removes application friction with a fast-apply process, reaches candidates through the channels they actually use—including text, WhatsApp, iMessage, and social messaging—and keeps talented prospects engaged long after the initial “no.”

The conversation also digs into one of Tim’s favorite subjects: treating recruiting like a measurable, repeatable sales funnel. Jim explains why recruiter interviews are Caliber’s bellwether metric, how four recruiter interviews ultimately produce one hire, and why the organization aims to fill 40% of its openings every month. These numbers don’t exist to micromanage recruiters. They help leaders identify bottlenecks, forecast hiring capacity, justify additional resources, and protect teams from unsustainable workloads.

Jim and Tim also explore where AI is delivering real value—and where it still has room to improve. From using Claude for hyperlocal competitive research to creating AI-powered job simulations, the opportunity isn’t simply to automate recruiters’ work. It’s to give recruiters the time and intelligence to become better marketers, advisors, and persuaders.

Key takeaways include:

 * Why speed is everything when recruiting in-demand frontline talent
 * How to eliminate unnecessary application friction without losing candidate data
 * The recruiting-funnel metrics that predict hires weeks in advance
 * How data can increase recruiter capacity without creating a culture of micromanagement
 * Why job simulations may be one of AI’s most valuable hiring applications
 * How Caliber targets talent through radio, Spotify, WhatsApp, iMessage, and localized messaging
 * Why great recruiting is ultimately about attraction, persuasion, and long-term relationship-building

This episode is sponsored by Workday and Paradox, whose technology helps organizations modernize hiring, improve candidate experiences, and build more connected frontline workforces.

If you lead talent acquisition, recruit skilled frontline workers, or want to understand how technology, analytics, and human persuasion can work together, this episode is packed with ideas you can put to work immediately.

The Frontlines with Caliber's Jim D'Amico

What if your frontline hiring process could fill stores faster, improve candidate quality, and eliminate the need for managers to conduct most interviews? That’s exactly what Valvoline Instant Oil Change is doing—and in this episode of The Frontlines, Sarah Wright explains how they pulled it off.

Recorded live at Workday Horizons in Atlanta, Tim Sackett and Madeline Laurano sit down with Sarah, Head of Talent Acquisition at Valvoline Inc., to unpack the company’s remarkable transformation across recruiting, workforce scheduling, and frontline operations. With approximately 2,400 corporate and franchise locations across the United States and Canada—and no signs of slowing down—Valvoline needed a technology strategy capable of supporting serious growth at scale.

Sarah explains how Valvoline partnered with Workday and Paradox to automate the front end of its hiring process. Candidates visiting the company’s career site are greeted by “Megan,” Valvoline’s conversational chatbot, which engages applicants around the clock, asks initial screening questions, and moves qualified candidates forward. Instead of spending their days buried in administrative work, recruiters can concentrate on candidate quality and the conversations that matter.

Then Sarah reveals the part of Valvoline’s model that may leave TA leaders asking, “Wait—you can actually do that?”

For technician positions, Valvoline recruiters screen and interview candidates before sending hiring-ready talent to store managers for final approval—without requiring the manager to conduct another interview. This model is built on deep trust between recruiters and operations. Valvoline even tested whether returning to manager-led, in-person interviews would improve retention. It didn’t. It simply doubled the company’s time to hire, delayed staffing, and potentially affected store revenue.

Sarah shares how Valvoline builds that trust by embedding recruiters into the business. Recruiters visit stores, participate in weekly calls, develop strong relationships with operational leaders, and—in some cases—even become certified technicians themselves. They aren’t outsiders filling requisitions; they operate as true members of the operations team.

The conversation also explores how workforce data is helping Valvoline schedule employees around actual customer demand, reduce labor costs, create more accurate hiring forecasts, and give frontline managers valuable time back. Sarah offers an honest look at change management, including why executive sponsorship matters, how involving employees creates change champions, and why thoughtfully designed pilots are essential when introducing new technology.

This episode is sponsored by Paradox by Workday, helping organizations transform high-volume hiring with conversational AI, automated screening and scheduling, and faster, mobile-first candidate experiences.

For TA leaders trying to hire faster, earn the trust of operations, improve frontline recruiting, and turn automation into measurable business value, this episode is packed with practical ideas worth stealing.

The Frontlines with Valvoline Instant Oil's Sarah Wright

What happens when a 161-year-old iconic brand decides it’s time to reinvent how it hires? In this episode of The Frontlines, Tim Sackett and Madeline Laurano sit down—live from Workday Horizons in Atlanta—with Jason Smith, Director of Talent Acquisition at Carter’s, to talk about the company’s journey from decentralized recruiting to an AI-enabled hiring strategy spanning retail stores, distribution centers, and corporate teams.

Jason shares how Carter’s began using Paradox in 2022 to solve an urgent high-volume hiring challenge. During peak season, the company may need to hire hundreds of distribution center employees at once—and it competes for that talent with some of the largest employers in the country. Carter’s realized it couldn’t always win on pay, but it could win on speed. By automating candidate engagement and interview scheduling, the TA team can now move applicants from application to an in-person interview in as little as 24 to 48 hours. After proving the model in its distribution centers, Carter’s expanded it into corporate hiring and, most recently, across its retail stores.

But this conversation goes far beyond efficiency. Jason explains how Carter’s is deliberately choosing where automation belongs—and where human interaction still matters. Scheduling, routine communication, and other administrative tasks can be automated. Hiring decisions, meaningful candidate conversations, and the relationships between recruiters and business leaders remain human. The goal isn’t to remove recruiters; it’s to give them the capacity to become better talent advisors.

The group also tackles some of the most fascinating—and controversial—questions facing TA today. When Carter’s receives 20,000 applications for just 70 college hires, can traditional recruiting processes genuinely give every qualified candidate a fair chance? Is AI rejecting candidates, or can it actually help more people get considered? Should candidates be allowed to use ChatGPT to prepare for interviews, strengthen their resumes, or organize their responses? And where is the line between smart preparation and candidate fraud?

Jason also discusses the renewed importance of in-person campus recruiting, candidate expectations for speed and convenience, multilingual hiring experiences, and why even a part-time applicant still wants to speak with a real person before accepting a job.

This episode is sponsored by Paradox by Workday, helping organizations simplify high-volume hiring through conversational AI, mobile-first candidate experiences, automated scheduling, and faster connections between employers and talent.

If you’re trying to balance AI, automation, candidate experience, recruiter capacity, and the human moments that make hiring work, this episode delivers a refreshingly practical look at how one of America’s most recognized brands is doing it on the frontlines.

The Frontlines with Carter's Jason Smith

In this episode of The Frontlines Podcast, host Tim Sackett sits down with Chris Bodlovic, Head of Talent Acquisition Strategy and Systems at Discount Tire, to explore how one of America’s largest tire retailers is rethinking hourly hiring across more than 1,100 locations. Drawing on leadership experience at Discount Tire, Cisco Systems, and Amazon, Chris shares a practical, data-driven perspective on recruiting frontline talent at scale while preserving the human experience that defines the company’s culture.

Chris takes listeners inside Discount Tire’s effort to compete for talent in a challenging hourly labor market. The company hires people without prior tire experience, trains them from the ground up, and offers a legitimate path from an entry-level store position to running a location with significant earning potential. The challenge is communicating that career opportunity to candidates who may see only a physically demanding hourly job—and who can often earn similar wages doing easier work elsewhere.

Tim and Chris dig into how Discount Tire is reducing time to contact, using conversational automation to engage candidates whenever they are ready, and giving local managers the flexibility to move quickly. Chris reveals that nearly 90% of candidates offered an automated conversational path choose it, approximately 88% complete it, and more than 40% engage outside normal business hours. The goal isn’t to eliminate recruiters or managers—it’s to use technology to get qualified, interested candidates to meaningful human conversations faster.

The conversation also challenges talent acquisition leaders to stop treating retention as someone else’s problem. Discount Tire’s workforce data uncovered a striking connection between scheduled hours and turnover: retention peaked at roughly 21.2 hours per week, while employees receiving 15 hours or fewer experienced dramatically higher attrition. That discovery reframed a perceived recruiting problem as a workforce planning and scheduling problem.

Finally, Tim and Chris look ahead at AI’s role in frontline talent acquisition—from intelligent scheduling and automated interviewing to personal career agents that may eventually bring jobs directly to workers. Chris also warns against “artificial expertise”: AI tools built by people who don’t understand recruiting, selection, bias, or the quality of the underlying data.

For TA leaders working in retail, hospitality, manufacturing, distribution, healthcare, or any high-volume environment, this episode offers a powerful reminder: recruiting technology only creates value when it solves the right business problem. If you want to hire faster, retain longer, improve workforce planning, and prepare for the next generation of AI-powered talent marketplaces, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.

The Frontlines with Discount Tire's Chris Bodlovic

Welcome to The Frontlines, the podcast that finally shines a spotlight on the most overlooked and most essential part of our workforce: frontline, high-volume hourly workers.

Hosted by industry insid

The Frontlines · Zencastr

The Frontlines

Welcome to The Frontlines, the podcast that finally shines a spotlight on the most overlooked and most essential part of our workforce: frontline, high-volume hourly workers.

Hosted by industry insiders Tim Sackett and Madeline Laurano, The Frontlines dives into the real-world challenges, frustrations, and opportunities shaping how organizations hire and how people experience the hiring process. Because let’s be honest—this is the part of hiring we’ve ignored for decades. We post jobs and hope people show up. That doesn’t cut it anymore.

Each episode brings a raw, unfiltered look at what’s really happening, from broken application processes that take weeks (for jobs people need today), to outdated hiring systems designed for corporate roles but forced onto hourly workers. Tim and Madeline combine decades of hands-on experience with real stories from the field, both from employers trying to hire at scale and from workers navigating a system that often feels stacked against them.

But this isn’t just another HR podcast full of executive interviews. The Frontlines goes deeper. You’ll hear directly from the people living it, the candidates, the workers, the managers, alongside data, research, and practical insights on what’s actually working (and what’s not).

From AI-driven hiring transformations to mobile-first application experiences, from workforce demographics to the realities of shift work and internal mobility, this podcast tackles the conversations our industry hasn’t been having… but should.

If you care about hiring, retention, or just building a better experience for the people who keep your business running, this is your front-row seat to the future of work.