Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell

Welcome to the ‘Hiring Excellence’ podcast, where each week, SocialTalent CEO and Co-Founder Johnny Campbell takes you on an insightful journey into the world of recruitment and talent acquisition. Join Johnny as he chats with industry thought-leaders, pioneering experts, and influential authors, exploring their unique insights and expertise. From groundbreaking strategies to the latest trends, ‘Hiring Excellence’ delivers actionable advice and innovative ideas to help you navigate and succeed in the ever-evolving landscape of work.

Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell is a business podcast hosted by SocialTalent, with 213 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

SocialTalent hosts Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell, a business show with 213 episodes published.

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  Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell

  Employer Branding on a Shoestring: What Works in 2026

  Sep 30, 202640 min

  Most employer brand teams are small and stretched. Hannah King, Head of Employer Brand and Recruitment Operations at Straumann Group, joins Johnny to share what drives results without a big budget. They cover measuring impact beyond vanity metrics, why recycling content beats chasing new ideas, and how one recruiter with a phone turned employee stories into higher reach and engagement. A practical listen for anyone who needs to prove employer brand isn't fluff. Download Hannah King's Top Tips: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HKm845-2NJ652nO2UIExrLAhqT1t2bBh/view?usp=sharing

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  Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell

  When Talent Acquisition Meets Talent Management

  Sep 23, 202644 min

  Most companies keep their high-potential lists and succession plans well away from recruiters. Merck opened both. Colleen Rush is Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt — around 11,000 hires a year across 60 countries. She joins Johnny to explain what changed when her team got access to that data, what recruiters now do with it, and the capacity, capability and internal agreement it took to get there.

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  Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell

  A Wake-Up Call on Attention

  Sep 9, 202640 min

  Johnny sits down with Mark Smith, SVP of Global Talent Acquisition at Cargill, for a conversation unlike any other on the show. A year ago, Johnny watched Mark tell a room at RecFest about a fall from a ladder that left him with a traumatic brain injury, and how recovering from it reshaped the way he works. Mark shares the six lessons on attention, focus and notifications that came out of it, and why protecting your attention is a skill any leader can build.

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  Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell

  The Four Pillars of a Modern Leader

  Sep 2, 202645 min

  https://www.socialtalent.com/resources/guides/dave-poling-modern-leadership Before 2020, a leader's job was mostly to drive performance and build culture. Dave Poling's view is that the lift has got a lot heavier since. Dave has spent 32 years inside Allegis Group and now leads a team of around 750 recruiters across the US and Canada as VP of Talent Delivery at TEKsystems. In this episode he makes a case that will sound soft until you hear the reasoning behind it: you cannot lead through this pace of change unless you are doing deliberate work on yourself — mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. He talks about the burnout that started him meditating, the 120-day challenge that changed his routine, why modelling good behaviour turned out to be useless on its own, and how he made personal development a non-negotiable for his leaders without losing them.

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  Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell

  Why Intake Is TA's Best AI Shop Window

  Aug 26, 202638 min

  Everyone wants to point AI at sourcing, screening and selection. Rob Devlin, senior global programme manager for TA technology at Synopsys, started somewhere quieter: the intake meeting. He tells Johnny why it's the lowest-risk, highest-leverage place to begin — how he ranked the recruitment process by risk, why legal and privacy were his first call rather than his last, and what changed in the hiring manager conversation once recruiters stopped taking notes.

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