Leaders in Talent Podcast with Adriaan Kolff

Leaders in Talent is a podcast for Talent Acquisition, People, and HR leaders who are building modern, scalable, high-impact talent functions. Each episode brings you in-depth conversations with the operators, founders, authors, and practitioners shaping how companies hire, develop, and retain talent. We go beyond theory. Guests share the decisions, playbooks, data, and lessons learned from scaling global teams, implementing new talent technologies, designing employer brands, building recruiting operations, and turning TA into a strategic business function. If you work in talent and are solving challenges around growth, capability, culture, or transformation, this podcast gives you practical insight you can apply today. Real conversations. Real operators. Real lessons.

Leaders in Talent Podcast with Adriaan Kolff is a business podcast hosted by Matchr, with 34 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Matchr hosts Leaders in Talent Podcast with Adriaan Kolff, a business show with 34 episodes published.

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  Episode #35

  Smaller Teams, Not Faster Recruiters: Andy Mountney, Elliptic

  Sep 29, 202644 min

  In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Andy Mountney, VP of Talent Acquisition & People Operations at Elliptic. Andy founded a recruiting agency early in a 25-year career in talent, then led global talent acquisition at Atlassian, where the ask was to go from fighting to hire 300 people a quarter to delivering 1,000. Today Andy runs a 10-person recruiting team at Elliptic with no coordinators, something he doesn't think could have worked two or three years ago. Yet he hasn't met a talent leader who has seen AI push productivity per recruiter through the roof: whole functions are getting smaller, the recruiter carrying the rec load simply does more things, and recruiter capacity is still capped by business and interviewer capacity. He also asks why Anthropic and OpenAI still appear to build their recruiting teams the SaaS and FAANG way, and why, in Anthropic's four Ds of AI fluency, it is discernment and diligence that make people stand out. Then the practical side. Andy shares where AI interviewers belong: clarifying fit for the 10% of applicants you can't place, or offering candidates a faster route, but not replacing the human conversation when you compete for high-value talent. He walks through buy versus build in the people tech stack, the four org design shifts he sees everywhere (from wider spans of control to headcount plans that stop at 12 months), and why he would rather throttle the inbound and speed up the ramp: it's always easier to build up recruiting output than to switch it off. Timecodes 01:18 Welcome: Andy's path from agency founder to Atlassian and Elliptic 05:37 Scaling Atlassian from 300 to 1,000 hires a quarter 07:16 Decoupling revenue from headcount 10:22 A recruiting team with no coordinators 13:20 Employer branding at AI speed, and why your values must be real 15:40 AI-made work and Anthropic's four Ds 18:10 AI-written CVs, inbound volume and AI interviewers 25:37 Why AI hasn't made recruiters more productive yet 27:45 Buy versus build in the people tech stack 32:23 Four org design shifts in the age of agents 36:13 Throttle the inbound, speed up the ramp 38:55 Andy's first 90 days at Elliptic ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://matchr.io/contact ___________________________ Connect with Andy Mountney: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymountney/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ Resources mentioned in this episode: Anthropic's AI Fluency course (the 4D framework): https://academy.claude.com/courses/ai-fluency-framework-foundations Dave Hazlehurst, co-founder of Agentic People: https://www.linkedin.com/in/googledave/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

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  Episode #34

  A New Colleague, Not PowerPoint 2.0: Annika in der Beek, Statista

  Sep 15, 202642 min

  In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Annika in der Beek, Chief People Officer at Statista. A psychologist who somehow went business, Annika started in M&A, moved into HR consulting at Accenture, and joined About You in 2020 at 700 people, leaving after the IPO at 1,600. Since early 2024 she has been Statista's first CPO, hired as the founders stepped out and a new CEO took over. Statista is moving from a media company to a data and software business, with its data now inside ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. Annika explains what that does to the org underneath: why silos made sense in hypergrowth, what she found on arrival (nine HR teams across 13 countries, no central HR beyond contracts and payroll), and why transformation does not end after the first restructuring. She is candid about closing offices, not being the most liked person in the company, and learning that her last employer's playbook, a 20 minute walk away, did not transfer. The second half is about AI as a new colleague rather than a better PowerPoint: remodelling the content department sub-process by sub-process, a SharePoint HR assistant in Langdock, and the performance coach agent she wrote herself, which prepares leaders but is not allowed to fill in the review or press submit. Plus the math on token costs, and why she blocks hours every week to write agents. Timecodes 00:00 Cold open 01:32 Welcome, and Annika's own podcast 02:56 Statista, and a psychologist who went business 06:02 From media company to data business: why silos made sense 11:21 Nine HR teams, one company 15:30 Transformation does not stop 18:33 Advice to her younger self, and the blueprint trap 23:56 AI urgency you can see in the revenue numbers 28:29 AI as a new colleague, not PowerPoint 2.0 29:32 Content department, Langdock, and token costs 33:39 The performance coach agent that never presses submit 38:14 Never say never, and the first AI-free retreat ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ ___________________________ Connect with Annika in der Beek: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annika-in-der-beek/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ Resources mentioned in this episode: HR ungeschminkt, der ehrliche Personal-Podcast (German), with Annika in der Beek and Anjuli Mauer: https://hr-ungeschminkt.podigee.io/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

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  Episode #33

  Hiring Is the Last Step: Nancy Martinez, Relativity Space

  Sep 8, 202633 min

  In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Nancy Martinez, former Head of Talent at Relativity Space and now Head of Talent at Machina Labs. Nancy spent 17 years in talent acquisition, starting at Google as a technical sourcer and scaling Facebook and Twitter when both were under 500 people, before moving into hardware. She joined Relativity at 600 people, eight months before its first rocket launched, and left when the company was 2,100. When Eric Schmidt invested and became CEO, the Terran R timeline moved up and the team had to hire roughly 1,000 people in nine months. Nancy's first instinct was to ask how to hire faster, how many recruiters and sourcers to add. She decided those were the wrong questions. Instead she asked where the real bottlenecks were, whether leaders could absorb that pace of hiring, whether interviewers were trained and calibrated, and which roles would actually move the business forward fastest. Nancy explains why she tells people hiring is the last step, and infrastructure comes first: the tech stack, the data, interviewer training, employer brand, and a recruiting operations person hired before more recruiters. She also covers what surprised her moving from software to hardware, where TA becomes the bottleneck for the whole business, how she got the CFO, COO and CTO personally closing candidates, how she protected her team from burnout through periods of extreme intensity, and why she builds talent roadmaps instead of hiring plans. Timecodes 01:11 Welcome and Nancy's background 02:13 17 years in TA: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Honey 02:51 What Relativity Space is building 03:24 Joining at 600 people, eight months before Terran 1 04:13 Engineering products are an organizational challenge 05:02 Eric Schmidt arrives and the timeline accelerates 06:34 From 600 to 2,100: hiring 1,000 people in nine months 08:18 The wrong questions, and the ones she asked instead 10:52 If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority 12:41 Why hiring people is the last step 15:19 Educating leaders who only knew the SpaceX way 16:34 What surprised her moving from software to hardware 19:13 Competing for talent without winning on compensation 20:24 Getting the CFO, COO and CTO closing candidates 22:10 Urgency without burning the team out 24:52 How she handles the pressure herself 25:50 Joining Machina Labs 27:16 What she would do differently from day one 28:56 The hiring engine: tech, employer brand, data, recruiting ops 30:33 The three buckets of data she watches 31:44 Talent roadmaps instead of hiring plans 32:51 Where to find Nancy ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://matchr.io/contact ___________________________ Connect with Nancy Martinez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancymartinez/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

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  Episode #31

  Start With the Pain, Not the Tool: John Keenan, Gong

  Aug 4, 202628 min

  In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with John Keenan, Director of International Talent Acquisition at Gong, the revenue AI company, where he leads recruiting across EMEA and APAC from Dublin. He has spent nearly 20 years in TA, from agency recruiting to LinkedIn, Pluralsight and now Gong, and he is also an executive coach. John's rule for AI in recruiting is to start with the pain point, not the tool. He walks through how he runs his week through Claude as an operating system, connectors and MCPs feeding a weekly-planning agent off a now.md file, why ATS data integrity now decides the quality of every insight, and the RAPID decision framework he uses to give hiring managers clear ownership. He and Adriaan get into the moment AI-generated content started irritating everyone, hiring for AI literacy, and where AI interviewers actually fit: useful for junior and volume screening, off the table for senior hiring. Timecodes 01:09 Welcome and John's background 02:17 What Gong does: revenue AI, 1,400 people 03:14 Don't start with the technology, start with the pain points 05:17 Claude as an operating system: connectors, MCPs, a weekly agent 07:14 Building the planning agent and the human stack 09:05 Why ATS data integrity now decides everything 10:03 Rolling Claude out to the team: licenses, training, AI for coaches 12:34 The AI-generated proposal that irritated everyone 14:07 An agent for mid-year reviews from 1:1 recordings 15:39 AI literacy as a hiring signal 16:18 Fake and AI-polished candidates: is inbound a bottleneck? 18:03 The RAPID framework: clarity on who decides 20:07 AI for bias mitigation and interview consistency 22:03 Will AI interviewers replace recruiters? 24:54 The mobile-phone news clip, and what normalises 25:45 Making time to think and build with AI 27:04 Where to find John ___________________________ Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/ Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/ ___________________________ Connect with John Keenan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkeenanlinkedin/ Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/ ___________________________ RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/leaders-in-talent/feed.xml

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  Episode #30

  The AI Question HR Keeps Getting Wrong: Syed Ali Abbas on Impact Over Efficiency at HelloFresh

  Jul 21, 202642 min

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

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