The Rebuild with Vikki Costello
#25

The Rebuild with Vikki Costello

Vikki Costello has spent nearly 15 years at Pariveda, growing through six different roles to become Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at the employee-owned tech consulting firm. In this episode, she talks with Colleen about what it took to rebuild her team from nearly 30 people down to eight, why curiosity and diagnostic thinking are the traits she looks for most in a recruiter, and how bringing in interview intelligence software and migrating ATS platforms helped her team scale without adding headcount. Vikki also shares how Pariveda's employee ownership shapes a culture of radical transparency, and why AI has made critical thinking, not automation, the skill that will set recruiters apart in the years ahead.

 
Takeaways:
  • Curiosity is the trait that separates good recruiters from great ones. Vikki looks for people who are diagnostic, who dig into why something is happening instead of letting it slide. In a field as unpredictable as recruiting, that instinct to ask "why" catches problems before they become bigger ones.
  • Rebuilding a team is a chance to build utility players, not just replace headcount. When Vikki's team shrank from nearly 30 to eight, she cross-trained everyone to run and cover multiple functions instead of simply backfilling roles. That flexibility is what let the team scale again without ballooning in size.
  • Build the business case before you build the tool. Before bringing in interview intelligence software, Vikki mapped out interview counts and time to hire so leadership could see exactly where the investment would pay off. Running a pilot with senior stakeholders first turned early skeptics into advocates.
  • Partner fit matters as much as product fit. When Vikki's team evaluated new platforms, they weighed vendor relationship and hand-holding just as heavily as features, especially as a smaller organization. Choosing a partner who can grow with you beats chasing the flashiest tool on the market.
  • AI can speed up screening, but critical thinking is what will set recruiters apart. Vikki's team uses AI carefully, with guardrails, to manage volume like 8,000 applicants for a single role. She believes the recruiters who can think critically about fraud, fit, and candidate behavior are the ones who will matter most as AI reshapes hiring.




Quote of the Show:
  • "Critical thinking is what's probably gonna help set us apart as a recruiting team in this next wave of work." - Vikki Costello

Links:

Ways to Tune In: