TTB - Karin Wagner
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[00:00:00]
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode of The Talent Bar. I have such a great guest with us today. She has been building operational engines behind talent acquisition for over 20 years. She started in accounting, so we have a little bit of commonality there. Uh, got her MBA, and then spent the next couple, uh, of decades designing systems, technology, processes that really make hiring work at scale.
Um, at her last corporate role, she was responsible for recruiting operations across hundreds of thousands of hires a year. Uh, she actually built her own, uh, AI first model in recruiting [00:01:00] back in 2016, years before most people in TA were even thinking about it. Now she's leading TA ops at a fast-scaling national pharmacy with an AI-forward CEO, and she has some strong opinions on, you know, where teams are applying AI in the right and wrong ways.
And, um, also talks a little bit about why she wanted to see inside the black box of hiring manager interviews. So really excited to have her today. She's, excuse me, she's the VP of Talent Oper- Acquisition Operations at Empower Pharmacy. Karen Wagner, welcome to the show.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be here
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: So, um, the, the question I love to ask to start off is, uh, what's the one thing or one action that sets the best recruiters apart from the rest?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Recruiters that really, um, are in tune and understand their business has been, in my entire career, some of the recruiters that set themselves apart. They understand what the business need [00:02:00] is, they understand what the business tries to do and why they're trying to do it, and the value it can provide. And then they translate that into the type of candidates they go after.
They're deeply embedded in knowing the market and understanding what the market availability is of that talent, and then are able to go out and find them and convert them into hires. So really deep SME experts in their business areas,
understanding the business deeply, using data to help convince and convert those, that talent into the organization would be, by and large, the top recruiters I've ever worked with in, in all of my different enterprise organizations
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: what's the best way to do that? Or like what advice would you have around how, how to get yourself to be embedded with the business or know about it a little bit more and, and especially when you might have, you know, folks who you're helping that may not even, may not be as interested in you, in you learning about their business or may say, "I don't have time for [00:03:00] that."
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Honestly, in today's day and age with AI, I mean, you can do so much research on businesses that you can get educated more quickly and expediently than you could five, 10, 15 years ago. So understand what the business is by maybe doing some research on it. Who are the top competitors? Why do they win business?
Why do we win business? Uh, I have found many, many business partners are more than happy to talk about what their business is. Uh, they want you as a recruiter to understand the business. So asking your business partners a little bit at a time every time you meet with them, like, "What's the next goal you're trying to achieve?"
Or, "What's the big project on the horizon?" Or, "If we land X, Y, and Z client, what does that mean for outcomes in your business?" so I, I
think between research using AI, you can get a lot of information quickly. Talking to the business leaders, they're almost always willing to talk to you about it. Um, talking to your TA colleagues who have [00:04:00] recruited for these businesses in the past, if it's a new business for you. are usually as equipped to give you business insights as, um, business leaders as well because they wanted to recruit great talent for them. So those are a couple of ways you can do it. I'm sure there's smart people that have had other ways they've done it, but that's a, a few quick tips on how to do it efficiently.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: So talking about AI, I mentioned this in your intro, you were building with AI, you know, back in 2016, which is, you know, long before a lot of people were even thinking about it. What was the problem you were trying to solve?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Uh, we were trying to solve, and I didn't personally build it. There was a data scientist that was way smarter than I was that built it. Um, we were trying to solve where we landed labor in the many different geographies we had. Uh, our business partners were seeing open seats in their locations and saying, "Put them here because I have an open seat.
Put them here because I have an open seat." And yet the labor market availability and the performance of those employees, like their actual [00:05:00] performance on their job wasn't very strong. And so the data scientist and I were talking about it. He basically built a self-learning model to, um, predict where the next hire should be because of, um, labor market availability, quality of the talent, uh, how their business metrics were performing in that market area, and said based on next, um, available talent, it should go in, three top markets.
And it would continue to learn as more and more data was fed into it. It's not nearly as sophisticated as some of the AI today, but the same premise of machine learning and learning as it went with data fed into it was there. And yeah, that was 2016. I say I did AI before AI was cool
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Before AI was being even used as a term, right? It was like m- machine learning. Um, I'm curious, like, when you went back to some of the stakeholders who were saying, "Well, I have an open seat here, so fill the role here," like, how did you make the case to them or [00:06:00] how did you get them on board with, "Well, actually, like, don't hire those folks in Chicago, hire them in Denver"?
I don't know, I'm making, I'm making up locations, right? But like, especially sort of pre-pandemic where people were a little bit more attached to like physical locations of folks, like what were some of the challenges and how did you overcome them?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: A lot of the challenges was believing the data. So one thing to always-- uh, most business folks in the, especially in the operations space, are very data-driven. So when you bring the data, which is what we did, here's what the data would say, you're most likely going to be successful if you place the talent in this market. then you bring the data, uh, and how to persuade the business partners on it. So the data was the number one thing. Getting them to believe it was another thing. Uh, how I went about doing that was, one, bring the data scientist with. They can speak to the data, to be honest, way more elegantly than maybe you can at times in [00:07:00] TA.
So bring the data expert with. Um, I had some alliances I created with workforce planning at that point, um, and workforce planning experts who understood, all right, here's all the data inputs that went into this model, and they were able to advocate on behalf of it. So my strategy was, one, have data. Two, have the data expert speak to the data.
And three, bring a few alliances along with you, some advocates in the room that are able to, um, also expand on the value of it. So it's not just you, uh, trying to convince them of a hard story.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Mm-hmm.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: An easy win-win story, any business leader will take an easy win-win story. Oh, you have open seats and the labor ma- market availability is great?
And you're saying to put it there? Let's do it, right? That's the easy one. But the tougher cases, that's when you bring in some, some alliances or advocates with you, and then bring the data expert with you to the conversation
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: One of the things you said to me was AI has sped up the good and the bad. I'm curious like what you mean by that and how, how that's, how you're seeing that play out
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Well, I [00:08:00] think a lot of people are starting to see this play out. Uh, I've said AI does speed up both the good and the bad, it's when in-- when you've had a process or a standard or an approach, and then you apply AI to it, it's still applying the same kind of mindset that you designed. So if your process is unnecessarily long because you have three too many stages, all AI is doing is speeding up a bad process, and that bad process is gonna have the same bad outcome. So if you haven't written a job description or a job posting that's what the actual job is, all it's gonna do is get you faster to a, a hire that doesn't actually meet the job requirements because the job wasn't defined well. So that's what I mean about what it speeds up poorly. Um, when it speeds up good, I mean, there's a lot of examples of that, where if you are scheduling in a 24-hour window today, and then you apply AI to it and it takes it down to a [00:09:00] 12-hour window, process was good to start with, that'll speed it up and save you time there.
So it'll speed up the good, like things that are working really well, the process is designed well, the intent, the quality outcome of it is there and designed well. But it'll really speed up the bad too, and you'll see it fast, and it'll be like, "Oof, that is not what we wanted."
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah, that's so true. I l- I-- That's such a good, um, framing of it too, right? Is sort of like make sure you're building off of a, of a good foundation like you would for anything, um, and how important it is to think about that. You know, I was, I was at a talent conference in San Francisco earlier this week, and they were talking about how, um, right now it feels, you know...
There was a lot of talk about agents and, you know, you can have all these agents in your organization, and it was like, i-t-it's almost creating a lot more work for folks 'cause it's like now you, uh, you know, every-- A lot of agents today are just, like, very junior employees, [00:10:00] and instead of, like, coming to you once every couple days with, like, "Now what?"
They're coming to you every hour with, "Now what?" And you've got 20 of them. Um, and so it, it can create, you know, a lot of just, like, mental stress and tax on somebody who's using it in a way to be more productive. But at the same time, if you're not telling it exactly what you want it to do, um, it-
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: know, you spark a thought. I remember, um, this in some of the early work around AI, is that you actually have to design our jobs differently within TA, right? Like, you need to have an agent manager, somebody whose full-time job is to oversee those entry-level agents.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: And that's a different skill set than a recruiter who's overseeing an agent working, or a different skill set than maybe even a TA manager that does DA- uh, day-to-day delivery.
So you have to redefine some of the jobs in your org. I mean, somebody who's overseeing those agents would have a different skill set and accountability [00:11:00] and outcome than a recruiter. And I, I do-- I think, heck, I think I've even done that, where we're assigning this work to a recruiter to do, and you're right, it's a distraction day in and day out because they don't quite know how to manage an entry-level employee or an
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Agent.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: I mean, is it the new like systems op- uh, system admin sort of n- the new evolution of somebody like that? Like you often, you know, depending on your technology stack, right, you would have people whose job it was or, and still is in, in a lot of places to be the person that maintains your Workday ATS or your Workday HRIS, like the whole thing.
You have a whole team of people. Is it somewhat similar to that?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: I like that. I think the struggle though is that you have to have somebody who has really solid talent acquisition fundamentals,
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: As well as the ability to read the tech. And so it's almost like a, I don't know, a business analyst that became good at translating a business need into a systems need, [00:12:00] right?
So how do you have somebody who has really good TA fundamentals and then can have the technology or technical acumen to ensure it's doing those TA fundamentals? And I, I do think that's one of the bigger gaps I see in TA, is a lot of folks don't actually have a solid understanding of what TA fundamentals are, good discovery, and what job requirements are, and defining the jobs.
And, um, AI can speed it up, but if you don't know how to do it in the first place, you're not gonna get a good outcome,
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: so true. And I, you know, I think it also is like, Thinking through what the goal is of the, of the implementation of the AI, right? And I think something solving for efficiency versus quality is, like, very different, and that's probably where that skill set, like having a TA background and understanding it, excuse me, is so much more important because I think a lot of times the, the initial step people are taking right now with AI is, like, it's all about efficiency.[00:13:00]
And, you know, e-efficiency for s- like efficiency's sake is just not a real thing, right? Like, it doesn't matter if you've sped up time to hire if you're not hiring the right people
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: No, you're exactly right. That is the number one we talk-- And I even put that in a, a recent LinkedIn post, which is I, I have made the same mistake. I talked about the number of hours saved, and then I'm like, isn't about the hours saved. It's about where do we put that time? Where do we put that energy that we got out of those hours saved?
Do we put it on consulting with the hiring manager more? Do we put it on a better candidate experience? Do we put it at selecting talent better or evaluating talent better? Um, do we put it on pipelining or sourcing talent better, right? So the real story behind AI is what are you doing with the hours you are saving? How are you reinvesting it? How are you deciding what to reinvest in? Um, and the other story is, is it actually producing the outcome you want?
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Right.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Did you speed up a bad process
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: one of the things, um, [00:14:00] we, we shared was you shared this analogy, um, with me around comparing hiring managers to bad drivers, and I'd love for you to, to talk a little bit more about that
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Now, I didn't say hiring managers are bad drivers. My analogy was that everybody thinks they're a good driver,
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: everybody thinks they're a good interviewer. But the law of numbers, if you will, is that not everybody's a good driver. In fact, you as a driver, anybody who's driven recently will point to about 10 cars that are really bad drivers. person behind the wheel really thinks they're a good driver. So every hiring manager thinks they're a good interviewer, and some of them are, and some of them are not
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: what made you want to sort of dig into that and, and see inside the interviews and, and how have you learned more? What, what process are you using to try and improve that?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Uh, prior to AI, I will say that, um, it was almost impossible. You had to try [00:15:00] to sit on all the different hiring manager interviewer interviews and, and have a point. All you had was self-reported capability, which if you think you're a good driver, you're gonna say, "I'm a good interviewer," right? and with AI, there are tools out there, and I'll keep the tools agnostic.
You can name whatever tool you would like to, but there are tools out there where you get a look in that black box of hiring manager interviews. You get to see the transcript. You get to see the questions they asked. You get to see if they asked every candidate the same set of questions. You get to see if they asked past behavior, 'cause past behavior is a better predictor than a hypothetical, right? So what, what always made me interested in it was there's no operationally scalable or economic way to go out and monitor hiring manager interviewing capability prior to AR- AI. It didn't exist. It would be so labor-intensive, and then all you had was self-reported results. with AI coming into the play and tools that are out there and built to do transcription and [00:16:00] evaluation and seeing if we're asking the same questions of every candidate, you get a look in that black box for the first time ever.
And I am intrigued to keep looking at it and in it, as you're seeing some really interesting things. I mean, you're seeing some bad behaviors.
You're seeing people that don't actually ask candidates the same questions. You're seeing some differences based on or race or ethnicity that even hiring managers weren't really-- And by the way, recruiters, this is not just
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Weren't even aware they
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: So we have greater transparency and visibility into what I call it the black box, but you can call it whatever you want, about what's actually being done in interviews, and we've just tapped the surface of it, honestly. Just tapped the surface of it. With the tools coming out and people starting to implement, now there's gonna be a lot of opportunity to research and understanding and greater capability building in recruiters, hiring managers, interviewers alike
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah, I mean, I [00:17:00] think it's, um, you know, we have some research that we've done on this topic recently, and it's interesting because you're seeing, I think, much broader adoption around what I'm ca- you know, what we're calling, like, interview capture, which is, like, getting the transcription and maybe the summary.
Um, and I think unfortunately, though, people think that that's enough. Like, a- and it sort of goes back into the efficiency thing because the problem they're trying to solve is, well, I couldn't get a hiring manager to write, um, you know, give me feedback and a scorecard, or, um, it w- I could, but it was taking four or five days, and I have to give feedback to the, you know, I need to get feedback to the candidate, or we need to move forward and make a decision.
And I think that that is, to your point, like, now you have efficiency for efficiency's sake, but I've talked to a lot of leaders who are saying, like, actually, all that that has done is make everyone a little bit more passive in the process rather than, because like, oh, [00:18:00] now the scorecard's filled out for me or the, or the summary is done.
And it's like, no, the thing you actually need to do is use it as a way to remove some of the bias, um, actually document whether somebody has the skills, and still make sure that, you know, the human is actually thinking through a little bit more. Uh, you know, for me, a big, um, benefit obviously is you can actually pay attention during the interview.
You're not writing notes the entire time. Um,
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Uh
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: but it's just not about capturing it. It's about what you do with it next, I think.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: That's where I think in the next two to three years, TA leaders and, um, business leaders will become very, very interested in studying these transcripts, if you will, this capture, the interview capture deeply. Like, are these the actual skills we needed on the job? We're gonna have enough history and data to say two years out, was that the actual skills required
for that job? And [00:19:00] it, it will transform how we recruit this type of data to help us really understand the job, the requirements of the job, the skills needed to, to do the job. I'm hoping, my hope, this is a hope, I've had a hope for my entire 20-year career in the space of talent acquisition, it will help match candidates better at jobs beyond just the resume, right?
Where it's really what is the right person for the job, and we still have this weird little magic box that is how does somebody get selected into a role? How do I get hired into a job? that I'm hoping kind of continues to unpack in the next couple years as more and more data comes through to, to the process
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah, I mean, I think there's so many opportunities in exactly what you're saying, which is like right now, even when you, you think about where this data lands, it, it sort of goes into this ... Even if it gets put into a system of record, it sort of lands in that, and it's in the abyss and nobody's looking at it.
No one's [00:20:00] taking into account for an onboarding plan. Nobody's actually looking at like, you know, we ... Skills-based hiring has been, you know, a, a thing for decades. Um, but if you actually look, like nobody is really capturing skills of their employee base in a consistent way, um, or even a verifiable way, right?
When you think even about how people do, um, reviews, right? You, you're not saying, uh, "Colleen is very analytical," or, "Colleen is good at dealing with ambiguity." You're like, "C- Colleen was supposed to execute on these, you know, KPIs, and did she do it or not?" And that's important information for the business, and as we think about how business is changing so rapidly and roles are changing, we just talked about how it's changing with, um, even what you want out of a, a person in recruiting operations.
You have no [00:21:00] accurate information in, in a lot of companies around what are the skills somebody actually has, other than like if you have people who are proactively going in and putting it into whatever system you might have.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Yeah. The, the data we're going to have in two, three, four years should be able to transform what talent acquisition does for consulting with the business on their labor supply and their labor force in, in ways that we can't even imagine today. Because the data will be so deep and rich, from skills to tying it to business metrics. If you have assessments in play, personality, I mean, there's going to be so much data. Um, you have folks that are amassing it outside of an individual company, right? So if you think across a lawyer. Lawyers are fun people. Everybody likes lawyers, right? If you amass it across all lawyers across the U.S.,
right, you're going to... Sorry, I shouldn't pick on lawyers. Um, you're going to
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Give me target
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: data that, that used to be the [00:22:00] talent intelligence about what labor supply and availability is. It might go straight to what are the skills actually needed for somebody to be successful in as a lawyer.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Mm-hmm.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Early enough in a career so somebody doesn't start as a accountant or a CPA and then get into talent acquisition.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Which we will get to, um, 'cause I'm very interested in that. Um, I guess, you know, we, I, I talked a little bit about early in your intro, you know, obviously you were at an organization prior to your current one where you were, you know, doing tens of thousands of hires a year, and now you're at one that's doing, you know, hiring at a much smaller scale.
Like, how have you changed both your just, you know, overall recruiting strategy or how you're bringing AI in and, and does it change, has it changed a lot based on the scale?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: This is-- I, I would say yes and no. I mean, it changes because the scale is smaller that you're applying it to, and this is where the fundamentals are something I talked about earlier, where if you have [00:23:00] really solid TA fundamentals, right? is the good discovery and what is the role and what is it about the role that makes somebody successful?
And you understand the, the culture and what makes somebody successful in the culture at the initial start of a job, and then understand what selection means and how many steps in a selection process is predictive of, of performance on the job. And you understand that as well as the components of how to go out and source and recruit and, and seek talent, then scale becomes a little bit less of a differentiator because the, the fundamentals should drive organizations, medium organizations, which is what I was at before, and then the smaller organizations. And every small organ-- every small organization I know of is aspiring to be a bigger organization. So you're always building a solid foundation for that scale and
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: that every business leader is anticipating. uh, yeah, scale matters. I mean, sometimes the, [00:24:00] the size of your tech stack and the, ability of your tech stack to work with large volumes being put through it matters, right?
Especially with the bigger companies and kind of the medium-sized companies. And smaller companies, you can have a little less resilient tech stack because you're not putting as much through the
pipe. Um, so it does matter, but it doesn't change a lot of the foundation on how you build your to support your, your organization size now and for whatever future growth you're predicting.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: [00:25:00] there's a lot of ways AI can be brought into a tech stack right now, and there's also a lot of things that are changing from a candidate perspective in terms of like applicant volume and fraud and all these things. Like how do you think about bringing AI into your tech stack and what are you, what are some like core principles or, or things that you're thinking about,
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Yeah, that's a, a great question. Um, a few things I think about when I'm bringing AI into the tech stack is can it prove itself? So it must have some sort of outcome that we're measuring, so does it prove itself at the end? Uh, recently I, I was talking to somebody and sharing, like, we're actually changing a little bit about how we source some of our AI, um, tech stack because it's so new in the AI space, agentic sourcing, if you will.
W- there's been a lot of stops and starts I've tried over it, and none of them have proven out, and so we're going with the pilot prove it [00:26:00] before we buy it kind of mindset,
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Mm-hmm.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Which is different than an applicant tracking system, right? Which has AI embedded into it a lot of times. Um, so how do I think about AI in my tech stack?
Um, some of it depends on where in the process step it is. It depends on how mature the AI sophistication is. can I prove something with it? Is it a business problem we're trying to solve? I don't like a complicated tech stack, so I'm more in line with finding a tech that has multiple kind of opportunities
to use AI in it. Um, when I'm buying tech, I almost always ask what their innovation roadmap is. Like, where on your roadmap are you? 'Cause if they, they don't have anything that's gonna be valuable in a year that they're developing now, it doesn't help you continue to evolve with the market. So that's some of the things I think about. What is the governance of it? I mean, there's like, there's a lot of call hastily thrown together AI,
and doesn't always have, [00:27:00] um, kind of staying power,
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Mm-hmm.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Um, and some validity behind it.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah. AI makes it easier to build, um, faster. Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: It can be built faster, but does it-- is it gonna stand the test of time? Um, some of it is, like, to your colleagues and peers, like where are they looking at AI investments? What are they seeing? 'Cause there's so... I mean, I don't know if my numbers are right on this, but there is a ton of private equity investment in TA tech for the last four or five years, and it's like doubled in five years, it's only gonna grow.
And so now there's this, all this investment in building new things. It's hard to keep up with the different places
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: are investing in. so keeping a pulse on the market through your network is another way to look at how you look at your AI tech stack.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: I, I guess the last thing I would say is that choose two or three things to focus on really getting better at when you look at your AI em-embedded in your tech [00:28:00] stack. 'cause trying to do everything will kill you
and will kill your recruiters.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: I saw this writeup recently on like all the solutions for fraud in the s- the tech stack, and like it segmented, like it sort of looked at it by, you know, the pipeline and the different stages of recruiting. And I think there were like It was almost like there was one for each element.
And I looked at this and I'm like, "Who's... Nobody's implementing this. This is like, there's like 35 distinct, um, solutions on this page." Like that's, y- that can't be, that's not, it's not gonna be enduring to your point.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: nobody wants to pull out, rip out, replace, rip out, replace, rip out, replace all the time. That, that it is one of the reasons why I almost always ask for an innovation roadmap, because if they're keeping pulse with where the market's evolving to, then you have a hope of keeping up with all the technical changes.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: I guess shifting gears a little bit, you know, um, [00:29:00] there's a big conversation right now around whether TA should own quality of hire, and I'm, I'm curious to get your take. Like, what do you think about when you hear a question like that?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: My immediate response is everybody, and I mean everybody should own quality of hire. Uh, I've-- Quality of hire has been a topic at all three of the organizations I've worked at in the last 15, 20 years, right? And I do think there is a movement towards TA owning more of the quality of hire. Um, I think HR has many things on its plate, and it's one more thing that they have limited time and capacity to truly own.
And so I do think there is a shift towards TA owning it. Um, teams have a tendency to say TA should own it, and TA has a tendency to say hiring manager should own it. And I'm like, "You both own it." It's a shared metric because no individual in that process, um, is, is without accountability to ensure that you have the [00:30:00] right people on board.
So TA can set up a lot of the infrastructure. We can do some of the initial vetting, but the hiring manager knows the actual job better than anybody,
right? So it can't be just TA, and it can't just be the hiring manager 'cause TA is outsourcing the talent, identifying who to put in the slate, screening candidates in and out. and so they're putting the, the people in front of the hiring manager. So there is a joint accountability between the hiring manager and the recruiting team or the talent acquisition team to ensure that quality of hire is a metric that's, that's delivered. I, I think everybody owns quality of hire.
Heck, quality of hire could be onboarding. Like my-- many people don't remember, but there's a lot of studies done that how well you onboard talks about how well you perform in the job and how well you retain with an organization. So maybe onboarding should own quality of hire.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Like that is an answer I've never gotten before, so that's an interesting
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Look at the research on that. If somebody onboards well, and they, they're more likely to stay and more likely to perform well
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: [00:31:00] So interesting. Um, I guess, uh, you know, I, I do think that, I think you're right, um, around this. I also think, like, there's some... Part of it is, like, I think the question is m- probably not totally fair in terms of, like, who owns this one thing? 'Cause it's like, To your point, there's just so many people in the chain. I think the thing that I more, uh, you know, strongly react to in, in sort of an, a different way, which you didn't say, i- is, well, ultimately it's the hiring manager. I like... I, I don't like that attitude either because for the, all the same reasons you just articulated.
Because, um, you know, and I think the, as you even talked about at the top of the show, it's like the more and more a TA leader or recruiter can know the business that they're supporting, it helps them understand earlier and earlier in the process, like [00:32:00] what it is that the hiring manager actually needs in the role to be that advisor, the strategic, you know, the strategic advisor, uh, alongside all the data that is potentially coming to, to the top in terms of having more visibility of that over the next few years.
So I do think there is a really strong opportunity for people in, you know, for really good recruiters and really strong TA leaders to have, um... I, I don't like to use the word control, right? But to have more of the, the partnership and visibility within the organization to say like, you know, "We really know what's going on.
We can really help lead the organization." And it, it makes me think of like y- you shared that, you know, in your current company, y- there's a chief talent officer that reports to the CEO and, and, and the way talent is looked at, and HR are, you know, separate functions with separate budgets. Like, uh, what do you think [00:33:00] that has changed?
Um, what do you like about that?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Yeah. Um, I think you've hit on an important point around this quality of hire, how it translates, how TA can be more of a strategic impact on the organization. I want to share a quick story before I answer your
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: talent officer and how that plays out. Um, it was a recent example, and I won't name the org it was at, but, uh, somebody had shared with me some commentary from a business leader, and it was a sales org that was struggling, um, historically.
And this new recruiter we'd hired came in and was very aware of sales hiring, understood the landscape, understood go-to-market, understood the dynamics of our industry, as well as the roles of sales. Deep SME
expert, and received, uh, an email from the head of sales for this organization, and was talking about how, what a difference the quality recruiter made in their sales organization and what it's going to do to help their sales organization leapfrog into the future. So if a recruiter ever [00:34:00] doesn't realize what the impact of their role is on the overall organization, I mean, sometimes it's absolutely transformational. If the recruiter understands the business, understands the roles, understands the impact, and then translates that into great hires for an organization, it can literally, literally cause an, a greater pace of growth at an organization.
So recruiters are, are absolutely fundamental to a business if they do it well. Um, I do think that does lead to the comment about the chief talent officer.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: first time I've been in a structure where the chief talent officer and the chief human resources officers were two distinct roles and both reported to the CEO. It was the CEO's vision, from what I understand, um, and that he thinks talent is so important to the organization that he wanted that to be a
distinct entity that was very much focused on talent as, as part of the organization. and, and the differences I'm seeing is that we're, we're talking a lot more about workforce planning and headcount planning.
What are the types of skills we need in the organization in the future? We have a seat [00:35:00] at the C-suite table, if you will, talking about things like candidate value propositions, and we're talking about what it means to have good candidate experience and what that does to the outcome of, um, candidates, the quality of candidates that we're attracting. We're talking about things that are getting better talent in the door, I think that it's also a better translation of what the business needs are down into the recruiting org 'cause we're not going through other filters.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Mm-hmm.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: The filters of the, the HR professional or the human capital partner, whatever your org calls it, something out of it that you just miss that direct line of communication.
And that's not speaking ill of anybody in the HR field. They have 70,000 things on their plate, and this is one more thing that they're trying to be an expert
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: It's hard to be an expert on TA. Um, I can probably share this from one of my organizations a couple back. Uh, I had some HR, or human capital partners, who came in to lead talent acquisition, [00:36:00] and they had this kind of notion of what it would be. And about a year after they had started leading it and they're like, "I had no idea how hard it was to do talent acquisition. I had no idea." And the comment I remember the one, um, professional saying was that I think many human capital partners or HR partners think they can do and many cannot. And similarly, many TA people think they can do HR and many cannot. The people who can do both are actually small, and that tells you maybe why it's so powerful to have the two distinct, 'cause having those domain expertises kind of
together in the same person, it's actually a very small number of people. so
that, that's the power it's brought to our organization. We understand the business better. We're more deeply embedded within the business. We are able to translate it into the recruiting and talent, and we're having important conversations about what it means for their quality of talent coming into the organization
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: when I hear you talk [00:37:00] about it more, I think a bit of the light bulb moment for me around this is
When there is... When the CEO cares so much about that and wants to hear directly from the people who are dealing with that on a day-to-day basis, it just removes the layer that often exists between, you know, that person who's, who's doing it and living it on a day-to-day basis and, and their, their boss who sits between them and the c- the CEO on it pretty often.
And what you end up then talking about, I imagine, as a, as a CHRO or, um, chief people officer, if you have, you know, all of the functions rolling into you, is you probably end up getting, you know, what boils to the top is often more about, like, what's happening with our existing employees, you know, compliance, lawsuits.
Like, you know, there's... And, and, and just work-
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: what's
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: workforce management. Um,
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Yeah. yeah
what boils to the top for TA is when [00:38:00] it's not working, when it's under a subset of HR. That's when TA becomes a conversation. Otherwise, it's not usually a conversation, would be my suspicion.
You'd probably have to ask some CHROs about that, to be
honest with you. Um, but what boils to the top at a CHRO having a conversation with CEO when you have talent acquisition, talent development, you have performance management, you have comp, et cetera, when TA is not working and workforce management, not the actual fundamentals of hiring great, high-quality talent. You're not having the quality of talent conversation at that point coming in the door. And what's bigger on a, a balance sheet-- I'm sorry, on a P&L? Your head count is usually one of your top two or three things, and here we are investing the least in making sure the right people are coming in the door. I don't know.
Might be a place or space to spend a little more time and energy
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yep. I couldn't agree with you more. Um, okay. Well, uh, I guess I want... You, you mentioned, you teased this earlier in the episode, but how does somebody go from being an [00:39:00] accountant to where you are now?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Uh, interesting. Uh, I actually started my career as a CPA because it was the most stable role that I knew coming out of high
school, and I just grew up a poor farm kid type of thing, and so I wanted financial security would be the number one thing I was looking for coming out of high school. And I even alluded this, like, maybe we get into this black box of people and matching roles that when I'm coming out of high school, I know better what the right career fit is for me.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Mm-hmm.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Um, I did that for three or four years, I'll be honest with you, accounting and finance. I was doing tax and audit. God love you people who do that, because that is some boring and dry stuff for some of us, like me. Really boring and dry. And, uh, I was looking for a little bit more intrigue in the day-to-day of, of
business, if you will. Uh, and I kept seeing the things that got a lot of interest in it were people. was always something interesting happening around people, if I'm honest with you, bad or good. [00:40:00] performance issues, people doing crazy things on the job. so I, I used an MBA to transition into HR, to be honest with you.
I used an educational or, uh, MBA degree to, to make that transition to HR. Started as a generalist, ironically, HR in that space and place, and I kept gravitating to the TA stuff because it was so interesting trying to match people to jobs and make it
the right fit. And 20 years later, I still find it incredibly interesting to figure out whether that match is right or not. So that's probably why I've stayed with it so
long. Uh, leading large operations and all the process improvement and AI and all that kind of stuff has been fun, but at the core of it, it's really neat to try to figure out, is this the right match for this job? And then I guess the other thing I say a lot is that there's very few things you impact in life at such a magnitude if you think about
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: and people passing and a home and new jobs.
I mean, you're really impacting major life decisions when you think about matching people to [00:41:00] jobs. So
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: That's so true. I mean, I love hearing that because when we think about and talk about a lot of the metrics around TA, right, it's often like time to fill and just making... And I think people such as yourself who really take a step back and think about like It's important to not just make sure that you get a butt in the seat.
It's that you get a butt in the seat that wants to be there and can see the growth and, like, it's going to be enduring and, um, you know, keeping that in mind and making sure that that's coming to fruition is so important. So I love, I love hearing that. That's, that's such a fun story. And I can agree with you on the, you know, I, I similarly, um, my degree is in finance, but I started with one of the big, big five at the time it was, and, um, largely because my parents were very, you know, they had not graduated [00:42:00] college and they wanted me to go into something that I-- they knew I would have a job, you know?
And so, you know, people often are like, "How did you go from being, like, finance to where you are now?" Um, even though I spent a lot more of my career under the finance, um, you know, umbrella, but I was doing consulting for 13 years and I got to see so many different companies and so that was kind of fun for me and I learned a lot.
Um, but, but I, you know, I share a similar, um, sort of origin story around, around how I got into the profession my degrees are in.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Yeah. That-- It does sound like we have a lot in common
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: It was a great foundation though. I mean, it has been a tremendous foundation for my career. I've really enjoyed it. But yeah, that was not the long-term career for
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah, but I, it like to your point, I think, you know, as monotonous as some of the stuff was,
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Yeah
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: I think one of the best ways to [00:43:00] know how a business works and how it operates and what, you know, people care about, what a hiring manager cares about is like you have to understand a P&L. You have to understand like, you know, ultimately it is the set of metrics that like people look at the most to understand what's happening in a business.
Um, and obviously I'm a little biased 'cause I spent time there, but like I remember, you know, fresh out of college I was doing invoice testing and I would go to these businesses and I'm like, 'They do what?' And it was like, how did I learn how, you know, what did they do? I looked at the invoice. Like if I understood how they were like billing and collecting money,
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Mm-hmm.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Able to understand the business much faster than any other way.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Yeah. No, that's a, it's a solid, like, translation of what that experience is. It gives you such a good understanding of the business.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Does.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: so I, I saw this on your, uh, on your LinkedIn. Y- you mention on there that you host elite figure skaters from the rou- around the [00:44:00] world. Like, how did that start? What's the, what's the backstory there?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Well, I, I usually say it's 'cause I'm a sucker, but, uh, my daughter started figure skating at five and, uh, the coach that she was with had been hosting or had, uh, has, um, I don't know what I'd call the very, um, talented skaters that, that skate at levels,
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Mm-hmm.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Below the Olympics and, uh, often are aspiring to go to the Olympics.
And, uh, one day she's like, "Would you happen to be able to host one of them 'cause they're from X, Y,
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: I think it was Ukraine at the time. "And they don't have a place to stay." And I'm like, "Sure. For a month or two it'll be fine. No big deal." kids later, I mean, we've hosted 15-plus kids from countries as far away as Peru.
We have three kids in our house right now, one from the United Kingdom, one from, um, Slovakia, have a, a young lady from California. Um, and it-- my daughter still skates today, so she's out there trying to, to be her best figure skating [00:45:00] self. I don't think she has any aspiration to be at the Olympic level.
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: um, that's how it can be. I think it's because I'm a sucker. Uh, it's good energy. They really are modeling excellent behaviors for my
daughter I bet
solid work ethic or trying to eat healthy, work hard, pursuing their dreams and goals, sometimes at the sacrifice of not spending time with their own family, right?
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: that's so unique. Yeah, I mean, I think, um, you know, Minnesota has probably some of the best training grounds for, for elite skaters, so, um, I, I used to work with somebody who did, you know, figure skating, uh, well into her 20s, which I guess sounds a little bit weird 'cause that's not very old.
But obviously for such a demanding physical sport, um, as we know, that, that's often where people go. But yeah, uh, that's so cool. What a, what an interesting thing. Um-
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Yeah. They're amazing kids. It's really been a fun experience at the house. We've been doing it for [00:46:00] about three years now, and I love the energy. I love it. I'm glad I can support these kids. I- honestly, it goes back to some of my talk about TA and, like, the how you match people to jobs. I love supporting these kids trying to s- achieve their goals.
They wouldn't be able to probably do this without a, a host family to be able to host them and yeah, so
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Well, this has been so fun. I love, I, you know, just e-exactly what you just said, I think has been, um, y- obviously you've done some incredible operational improvements and, and you've been really forward-thinking a lot of stuff, so it's, it was so great to hear that. But also just at the heart of it being around making sure people end up in something they love.
It's, it's the, the core reason a, a lot of people get into recruiting and, um, it's just nice to hear how enduring it has been for you. And so, so thank you so much for sharing that.
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. I loved having the conversation with you
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Yeah. And if people wanna, uh, find you, where's the best place to do that?
karin-wagner_1_10-07-2026_131115: Yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn, I would say. I'm out there and, and happy to answer [00:47:00] to InMails and things like that if it's somehow important to connect with me and want to chat more. Always willing to share best practices and learn from others, to be honest with you
colleen-gallagher_8_10-07-2026_111115: Awesome. Well, well again, thank you so much for doing this, and thank you to everyone who's listening. If you learned something new or laughed today, please share this with a friend. Talk to you again soon