EP 223: The Recruiter Who Learned to Look Past the Resume

Vincenzo Fasulo grew up in Benevento, Italy, a city older than Rome. After moving to the U.S. during one of the most uncertain chapters of his life, he built an unconventional path from receptionist to Head of Talent at SafeBreach. In this conversation, he shares how that journey shaped the way he leads TA today: looking past the resume, giving people a chance, and building recruiting systems that can keep up with AI.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Well, today we have a very exciting episode. We have Vincenzo Fasulo. Welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Thank you, James. It's um great to uh be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Yeah, it's great to have you. Um so Vincenzo is currently the head of talent over at Safe Breach, which is a it's a cybersecurity startup. It's a startup, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Yes, you could say we're still a startup. Yeah, we are 10 years young, uh 11 years young, actually. But yeah, we like to think that we are still like uh like a scrappy startup, yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Yeah, yeah. I guess it's just like I immediately assume like a tech company, like SB is like a startup. It doesn't, I guess you're right. I don't even check like how many years they've been in business. I'm just sort of like, yeah, it's a startup.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Right, yeah. But that's fair enough. Sometimes we still even use the term startup, so that's fair.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Right, right. Um, well, good stuff. So where are you from?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

I'm from uh Benamento, which uh will be unknown to almost everybody. It's a small town in Italy, uh about an hour away from Naples, uh and two hours from Rome. So right in the in the heart of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Well, is that so is it like a smaller town or it's a smaller town, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

It's about you know 50,000 people. Uh so like not like uh like a huge city, not like uh like a remote village either. So kind of like in in between.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah. Um what what's it uh what's it like there culturally, like compared to maybe the bigger cities in Italy?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Well, I always like to brag about that Benevento is actually 300

Growing Up In Benevento Italy

SPEAKER_00 1:30

years older than Rome, uh, which almost nobody knows outside of really my town, uh, but we always like to brag about it because when people think of Italy, they think, oh, Rome is definitely the oldest city uh to ever exist. And it's actually not. I think uh I don't know if Penamento is the oldest town in Italy all around, but it's older than Rome. So that's one thing that I keep repeating because I like to brag. But the culture is um, as you can imagine from a traditional town, it's what you would expect from a small, a small Italian town. It's very, you know, easy going, slow pace, uh kind of like life. So definitely the opposite of New Jersey, where I live today.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah, what a cultural difference. So I'm excited to talk about what that was like when we fast forward to today. But um, well, that's awesome. That's I'm really excited to learn more about that. Uh growing up as a kid, you let me know that you're pretty passionate about you said two things, right? Soccer and music, if not mistaken. Yes, yeah, yes, correct.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Uh, I think soccer um was kind of like my choice to get into because you know, as an Italian, if you're surrounded by soccer, either on TV or kids play in the street, and that's just like the way you grow up and you make friends, uh, that's the like the starting point of your like, you know, just being a happy kid. And the second one, uh, which is music, uh, as you mentioned, I was actually kind of forced into uh back when I was six years old. Um, my grandmother uh forced me into taking piano lessons and I hated it at the beginning. I thought it was so boring,

Music As A Lifelong Anchor

SPEAKER_00 3:12

a lot of theory, and you know, just too much to handle for a six-year-old kid, right? But I think uh to this day, I couldn't be uh more thankful to my grandmother for taking me to that first piano lesson because I've learned so much from music, not just about the music itself, but about life. It's cheesy hard to say, but it got me through some, you know, some hard moments of life and it keeps shaping who I am. I'm still playing it, I'm in a band right now. So I think that's uh you could say uh that's you know like one of the great things uh that happened to my life.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Well, it's interesting you say that, like in terms of music, getting you through hard times. Uh like I as a when I was growing up as a kid, I actually uh I played classical guitar. And uh it happened from actually when I went to a trip to uh Spain when I was a kid, and I was in Sevilla, and they had all the go-dancers uh and guitarists. And I was an eight-year-old boy, and I just saw that guitarist on stage with all the pretty women, and I was like, yes, whatever is happening up there, like that is that is that's it. Those those are goals. I don't even realize my brain didn't even realize what was happening. I was just like, that looks awesome! Like that guy has got it all figured out, and um, yeah, so I started playing classical guitar, and then as I get older, like I stopped playing, like I just got away from it. And when COVID happened, and you know, just all the challenges that happened with that, I started playing a lot, and it was like this amazing distraction, but also like just ignites your brain. And it's like really it's like positive, you know, it's like it's it's it's growth, right? It's not just uh a distraction that's unhealthy or kind of neutral, it's like actually really good for your your brain as well. So I don't know, I guess I could I'm just saying like I can relate to that. It was kind of there for me when I needed it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yeah, I think maybe the the only good thing that happened because of COVID is kind of like you know, the revival of some of our childhood memories and passions. Uh so by the way, great to hear that, you know, I would love to hear you play the the guitar. Maybe uh instead of the jingle for the podcast, you can have a solo flamenco on your guitar.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I don't know about all that, but uh yeah, man. Did you were you playing a lot during like COVID?

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Was that like one of your yeah, um more than like playing in a band because really there was no way that you could meet people. I was kind of like playing by myself, mostly the piano. I actually uh know how to play the drums too, and actually my band today I'm the drummer. Uh but the being the the piano being my kind of like first and main instrument kind of helped me uh because it's something that you know you enjoy even playing by yourself, and you know that playing piano daily kind of like was one of the things that got me through the pandemic, I would say. Um, and I even started to like even write some music um of my own. I've now gonna uh show you any of it because it's probably terrible, but uh it's uh it's definitely it's definitely uh it was definitely lovely to do that.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

That's awesome. I think piano is like the coolest instrument, man. Like I at this point in my life, I just don't have the bandwidth. I have this kind of dream of like selling my businesses and then being able to like focus on music again, like getting really good at the guitar. Um but uh the reality is I'd probably go stir crazy and start another company, but there's a big part of me that does want to do that. Um, but I just think if I could go back, you know, I can't do it now, I'm not going to rather, but like if I can go back, I think piano is just like it's the most beautiful and true. Like when I'm listening to classical music, it's usually piano, or even more than guitar, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's great. And you know, I I can relate to to what you said. You're a great entrepreneur, but you you have to constantly urge the fight between I want to be an entrepreneur and be successful. And but I also want to be good at uh arts and craft and playing the piano, playing the guitar. So that's uh becoming, you know, I think more and more challenging to live with, you know, like both urges at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

It's really hard. It's like um, yeah, because I feel like arts and music is also like it's like you, it's important to me. Maybe I maybe more for you, just actually because you follow through and do more of it today than I do. But it always seems like the corporate ambitious side, like it just kind of, you know, it's maybe it's just like what we have to do as adults, right? Like we have to go out and we have to, you know, make money and do these things and take care of our family. But yeah, it's like this, it's uh it's hard to maintain both, like to keep that creative artistic side and to be like super dialed into your career, like particularly for what we do and recruiting with all the changes to recruiting tech and like everything that's going as fast as it is, it's it's challenging to find that balance for sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Yeah, definitely. And you know, like you said, everything that's happening, especially in recruiting. Uh, I can think of the first four years of my career, everything was still advancing in terms of technology, but it was kind of like you know, a good pace, right? And then in the last year or two, uh, we're probably even I struggled even to take a breath and of how much everything is changing.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yeah, it's it's it's uh it's wild. It's a lot to keep up with. I don't think anyone's doing it perfectly. Like it's it's just we're all kind of like it, it's everybody feels like behind because it's like two weeks later, you're just like, oh wait, now there's a totally different way to do something, right? Exactly. Well, so, anyways, like so uh growing up as a kid, um, you know, you were like it sounds like you were always gravitating toward the arts, uh you know, really into music, and then you um also had fell in love with foreign languages, right? Like middle school, high school. You you speak several foreign languages, right? Or at least you studied them. I don't know if you still do.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

So today I speak, of course, Italian and English. I like to think that I speak pretty fluent English, uh, but when I was in middle school and uh even you know high school uh rather, I probably knew four languages, you know, pretty fluently, like some better than others, right? But I could speak Italian, English, uh, French, and German. Um, and at the same time, it was

Languages Travel And New Perspectives

SPEAKER_00 9:43

kind of like funny because I went to uh so in high in Italy, the way it works, you can pick your high school based on kind of like the profession you like to pursue. Um, which students get to decide. Students get to decide, yeah. That's uh which isn't an is an anomaly, uh you know, compared to the US, right? I think high school are high schools are pretty much the same here, and in college you decide your career. I think that happens a little earlier in Italy, and I decided to go to what is called like a modern language school, which is uh kind of like heavily focused on kind of like forming you into uh opening up your horizons on speaking more languages. And I think that's probably one of the primary reasons that I'm able I was able to move to a whole different country and speak the language and kind of like integrating myself into the culture. But uh what was funny of being in high school, I had to um so like English and French were like the must, you know, like you must learn those. And then the third one you could pick between German and Spanish. And I was like, okay, what's the hardest one of the two? I'm always being attracted by you know the hardest things and the most challenging uh stuff to learn. So I picked German. Um and that was that was my favorite subject in high school. Uh, I excelled at it, another thing that I like to brag about. Uh, but I sadly forgot all of it.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Uh it happens. I'm sure it'd come back to you really fast. I'm only super impressed by people who are really good at languages. It was never my my strength uh to learn several languages. My mom's super good at it, my dad is not. I think I got his brain.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Um, but uh I think it's because English is kind of like the international standard, uh so there's no incentive for uh an English speaking country to you know to prompt you to learn more languages, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:39

That it's that, and it's also when you travel. I was building a subsidiary company in Romania many, many years ago, and uh probably about a decade ago, and I was learning Romanian, but like as soon as I opened my mouth, people were just like, stop, like, just we'll speak English. Everybody always wanted to like to to practice their English too, and they didn't want to hear me stumbling around the language too much. But uh no, I don't know. I mean, like, for instance, my um my stepbrother is brilliant when it comes to languages, he studied Russian and Arabic at UVA, and wow, uh, you know, he read a book and learned French, like just like that, like kind of his brain just works that way. And I do think you're right, like English, it is like the fortunately for somebody who's not strong at learning several languages, like I got the you know, the one that's probably used the most. But uh, but yeah, I just I find it super impressive when when people can just be like fluent and multiple languages.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Like, there's actually a there's actually a fifth language I almost learned. I was for a study abroad program in Lithuania for about seven months, and one of the classes was about learning the basics of Lithuanian, which is um a very, very uh interesting language. It's a mix of Russian and German, in you know, like in some weird way. And that sounds complicated. It was very complicated. Uh, all I learned was a yes or no at the supermarket, or that's it, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Yeah, you were just like, I'm not doing this. Like, no, I'm not yeah, yeah, that sounds uh brutal. Um did you spend any time in Germany?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

I actually uh not not a long time, but in high school we took a one-week trip to uh Berlin. Um that's uh yes, that's about my only experience in in Germany, which I loved by the way. Uh very fascinating, but uh I didn't go back ever since.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

I I went to Berlin for uh a handful of days. It's uh there's a lot of places I've been for an extended period of time, which is really my preference. Uh I I didn't get to do that in Berlin. I it was interesting, culturally, it was interesting. I don't know, I'd have to think about it a little bit to figure out how exactly to explain it, but uh yeah, it's a it's a fascinating country. I I also had a chance to go to Munich. Um, but uh I again I didn't spend a whole lot of time in in Germany.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

But yeah, I think interesting is the right word for it. Um there's a lot to unpack there, but yeah, there's a lot to unpack. I don't think we we have the the time to do that today.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Um, but but yeah, it's definitely a different vibe than anywhere else I've been in Europe.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, definitely. I think it's good, not that I know that for experience, but it's good if you like you know radius and parties, uh Berlin is it's the place to be for that.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Apparently, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's uh it could be a kind of a pretty wild city, that's for sure. Yeah. And travel was a big part, you know, even as you got into college, a big part of your life. Like what are you know what are some of your favorite places that you've been to?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

That's a good question. Um, I've been to a lot of places. I was fortunate enough. I mentioned, you know, being uh in Germany as part of a high school trip and doing a study abroad program in Lithuania, and also traveling in you know the UK, Wales, France. So pretty much in a lot of countries within Europe, uh, when I was still living in Italy, I think one of my favorite places, it's actually definitely you know Berlin. Uh, I like the vibe that we just talked about. And um, I didn't expect to like Lithuania as much as I did. Uh, I think that was also very fascinating for kind of like a country that was still decades after you know the Soviet Union disappeared, it was still trying to like become, you know, have an identity, like kind of like rebuild itself into having like abandoning those roots and being like a new country. So I was uh the architecture was definitely uh reminiscent of you know like their earlier past, but I I think the god it was like communist blocks. Yeah, the architecture was was definitely uh reminiscent of that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Yeah, it's uh it's interesting. So like um I spent off and on over like a three-year period, a year and a half in Romania. I was building out uh my RPO and a better recruiting firm, Secure Vision, had an office in Romania. This was before deal and remote and all these companies that you could just like have an entity essentially through them, yeah, kind of like an international TEO. Um, so I had like a business, like an actual business in the country. And in Bucharest, like it's sort of like what you were saying, you get a lot of like the architecture from that's been around since the communist days, but it's interesting you go out to the cities, like other cities in the country, and they're just like gorgeous. Yeah, the architecture is just absolutely beautiful. Yeah, it's always interesting to see the roots, right? Like where you see like a lot of these countries are still going through that kind of transition. I think they've made a lot of progress over the past decade.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Um, yeah, there is you know, there's so many countries in my bucket list, but um, I even haven't seen uh all of Italy, and I was born and I was raised there, and there's still a lot of stuff that I haven't seen. I haven't been to Venice. Can you believe that in my entire life?

SPEAKER_01 17:03

How the hell have I been to Venice, man? How have you not been to Venice?

SPEAKER_00 17:07

I don't know. It could be the fact that uh Benevento, the city where I was born and lived my almost my entire life, uh, is like a 12-hour drive to Venice. So wow, um, a chess of it just of kind of never happened, never had a chance to go that far.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

This is gonna sound sort of stupid, but I didn't know you would have a 12-hour drive within Italy.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Yeah, uh you know, it's it's it's hard to believe, uh, but I think from top to bottom you could be in a car for like you know 16, 17 hours season. Really? Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Okay, I gotta, I gotta check that out. Wow, I didn't realize that. That's um, yeah, it's uh well maybe you also didn't go because I'm sure it's like it's like super touristy, right? Like it's just constantly packed with like foreigners, which is I don't know, probably at times get a little bit old, right? Living in a country.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah, and and what I'm about to say is probably going to upset some people that have loved Venice, but I've never seen like all the charm that you know it gets, uh draws a lot of people to visit. Uh I'm always being more drawn to other cities in Italy, like Florence or Rome, um, or even like you know, like smaller realities like the Amalficos or Cinguaterra, like more of the natural places. Yeah. Uh I I just never I haven't been fascinated by Venice, but you know, I will go there one day, uh hopefully before it uh since change.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Right, right. Yeah, Florence is really cool. It's also, I guess, like everywhere in Italy is like super touristy at this point. Rome is really cool, like despite there being a lot of tourism, it still has this like very original, kind of unique feel culturally. Yeah, um, so I've been there a handful of times and I've always enjoyed it. And there's still always ways to get off like the beaten path as a tourist and like have a more local experience.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Yeah, yeah, it's true. And uh when I travel to Italy now, it's uh most of the time it's with my wife, and so I get to be her guide, and I am you know kind of like a tourist in my own like birth country. Um uh and as a proof that I haven't still seen all of Italy, uh in uh a week's time, we're gonna travel to the Dolomites in the very north of Italy, like almost bordering Austria, which I've also never been to. I'm looking forward to it because it's a much less touristy place and it's uh more uh into nature, uh, which I love. We love hiking. And we're also gonna uh take a trip down to Ischia, which is an island off the coast of Naples, which I've also never been to. I think the more I would say I grow or I age rather, the more I'm starting to appreciate, you know, less crowds and more natural, natural places. I can tell you my favorite places in the United States uh that I've been to are Montana, especially Glacier National Park. I've I've been there last year and it was absolutely unreal. And also uh San Diego. So you can't be you can't beat San Diego in the US, it's just the best.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

San Diego is for me. I went to San Diego for the first time, like uh man, time's flying like a year and a half ago for work. But whenever I do a work trip, I try to like my girlfriend will come out and then we'll have like a long weekend and turn it into like a little penny vacation. Yeah, and yeah, but it's just like it's hard to beat. Like we had a hotel that was like right on the beach, weather was perfect, everybody just seems so happy.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Like, yeah, it's like I know it's it's a different reality. I think all of California shares that kind of vibe, right? Um, and again, I don't want to upset some of the audience that lives in LA, for example, but between LA and San Diego, it's to me, it's just night and day in terms of you know what I've experienced, you know.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

So yeah, Santa Monica's pretty cool, still really nice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. It's nice, but yeah, San Diego definitely has a slightly different vibe, a little more laid back than obviously LA. It's a little crazy, but uh cool, cool. And so you um big life event decided to move uh to the United States in 2020, right? Yes, 2020. Uh great timing. Yeah, that must have been uh what was that like? That must have been a really uh challenging time to move to another continent.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

It was challenging, not for the reasons you'd expect necessarily, because when I took uh a flight to the United States, it was before uh the pandemic outburst, right? It was in the very early days of that February of 2020. And you know, the world was still a regular place, it wasn't ending. But after I think a few weeks,

Moving To The US In 2020

SPEAKER_00 21:50

by the way, let me pause for a second. I moved to the US uh because mostly because of my wife. Uh we met back in 2016. Uh, we were both. working at uh Disney World in Orlando back then and uh we kind of like fell in love with each other um and that was the you know like how we came to know and to fall in love with each other and back then I had you know my time was limited I was uh with the one year visa uh in the United States which ended and then I had to go back to Italy uh I had to finish my studies you know take my degree in economics and during those you know like two or three years that I was I went back to Italy we kind of like had to date long distance which is probably one of the hardest things that I have that I have ever had to do in my life. It's not easy to you know be so far away and kind of like having to visit you know once twice a year if you're lucky but uh that's the reason why you know like the relationship lasts and and in 2020 I kind of decided okay this is the the big the lifetime decision that I have to make and you know like I think I'm ready and I moved to the US um as you said 2020 right so I like a lot of people sadly I lost my job because of the pandemic um back in 2020 and I was um I was a server back then restaurant server char or recruiting hadn't even like you know like been in my life at all uh until then and when I lost my job uh coincidentally I also lost my eligibility to work in the United States uh because I wasn't a citizen just yet or a permanent resident so for 18 months almost two years I had no job I was unemployed I was just unfortunately sitting at home and my wife was you know working night and day for us to be able to be able to afford really like living on on one paycheck. So I uh kind of like started instead of like doing nothing and sitting around all day I kind of like started you know taking some classes in HR and studying for some certifications. I took some certifications to try and break into the industry um that's I chose HR because I have a degree in economics and you know HR is the one um I would say aspects of the the business world where I was I could most relate to I love working with people I'm a people person so that's what uh kind of like drew me into it. Um and at the same time in those like 18 months of void of not being able to work uh my mom back in Italy was battling cancer. Um so for those almost two years I was unable to travel uh unable to really go see her go see my entire family and that was one of the most formative periods of my life and it it shaped who I am now as a person and as a professional as well. In 2021 I was hired for my first corporate job in the United States I became a receptionist for a manufacturing company uh and from then it would just you know like my career just like kicked off and I was recruited by Safe Breach and that's where I am today I've been here for four and a half years and counting. So uh that's about you know what happened in 2020 and kind of like my big life change in a nutshell but yeah that's that's it.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

So when you say it's like one of the most formative experiences of your life like what do you feel are like the top takeaways from that chapter and that transition and moving the states getting married and everything that transpired with your mom and not being able to visit like how did that change you?

SPEAKER_00 25:43

It's really hard to say to find like one one word to say it but I think it was so deeply challenging on one hand to not have a job and like kind of like feeling for I don't know a lot of times like a burden to my wife as well. She was doing all the work and I was unable to um and on the other hand I was constantly worried you know about will my mom you know make it will I be able to go see her in time you know like if something really bad had to happen. So when I think about my profession, my career as a recruiter um every day uh I always think about who I was you know back then and kind of like how I got into recruiting and um I I'm always thankful for the people that took a chance on me uh because both in my job and Nylabone which was the manufacturing company that I was hired as my first corporate job and at Safebreach there were people that you know uh kind of like took a chance in a leap of faith uh in in me because I had a very unconventional background I wasn't born in this country I was kind of like a like a fish in the pond right so um someone had to take a chance at my unconventional background unconventional resume uh really no resume back then uh other than my degree so I think that has shaped a lot of who I am as a recruiter um I try to give people a chance right that's that's what I centered my job and my career around uh I want to look past the document the PDF the the the Word document and try to understand who that person is and kind of like uh what they have been through and what they're going through in order to find a job and kind of like have a good life. So I think that's uh what every day I think about when I you know scroll through resumes or talk to people I always see the the person behind it. And that's not to say that I wouldn't have become this person if it weren't for my kind of like big life change and what happened in 2020 but that definitely helped me become more empathetic and more understanding of people's each unique path right I think of okay I I was born and raised in Italy uh I came here in a different country you know I was back then I was barely you know speaking fluent English I was you know like you know a stranger in this country and that helps you know traveling in general but especially moving to a different country helps you you know kind of like understand and be more understanding of uh other people I think about you know sometimes you know in a in a fictional world like let's let's take someone that has never traveled in their life right they live in a remote village uh in any country that you can imagine and they become a recruiter right they they will not have the same lens in understanding other people because not because it's their fault or they're like uh you know like voluntarily biased towards it but because they have never experienced what it means to have a different path. So I think if I can give one piece of advice that has been given a million of times you know by other people is travel as much as you can meet as many people as you can because after you do that uh you'll become a little bit more selfless and empathetic towards the the world and the people that surround you. It's good advice yeah than let's talk a little bit about where you are today professionally you've come a long way in a very short amount of time it's very very impressive starting out as a talent acquisition coordinator for the end of 2022 to October 2024 being promoted to head of talent uh you don't see that very often that's really fast that's one of the fastest progressions I've seen actually I'm just I you know getting into where you are today what's your obsession for 2026 what are you focused on right now so that's that's a good question so I want to um expand a little more on my career trajectory because you're right it is an anomaly right it is very unusual to have such

Rapid Career Growth At SafeBreach

SPEAKER_00 30:08

a quick career progression from being a coordinator uh to managing an entire talent function uh globally for a company right I think there's a couple of aspects to untangle there uh first uh because Safe Bridge is a small reality uh it's not like a huge corporation I was able to uh make things happen fast and you know like get my hands dirty with a lot of different things within uh the recruiting realm but if even in other aspects of HR right uh today I'm the head of talent meaning that uh 80% of my job is talent acquisition and recruiting but I also manage the entire company's employee experience budget and activities and strategy. So uh I was the fact that I was able to uh touch so many areas within the human resources talent operations you know people of ops world in the company kind of like helped me progress in my career and I started as a coordinator I think only a few months in uh the company went through some like structural changes and back then I was promoted to recruiter and for a period of time I was the only talent acquisition person in the company I had no manager for for a few months and I was kind of like a rogue kind of like solo uh talent person in the company so to this day I'm still glad that I didn't let fear you know take over and run away and look for another opportunity because that allowed me to be really the head of talent that I am today. Right. So I took that leap of faith I stuck around uh and from kind of like being a recruiter um I evolved into what I am today which is as you said the head of talent so awesome I I think uh and not to mention for the most part of my journey as Safebridge I've had you know great uh leaders and mentors all around me one of them being my direct manager Fallon uh she's uh you know one of the uh primary reasons that I thrive and I'm the best version of myself at Safebridge and again uh sometimes I like to be cheesy but uh this is just like the reality of you know of my job and the fact that I'm able to be my best self um because of uh having a great leader uh looking out for me and I think there's not a lot of people are as lucky to have you know great managers throughout their career I think the opposite happens more often than not unfortunately and I really I'm really grateful to you know to to be under such great leadership so I think the other question that you had was what um I'm kind of like obsessed um yeah I mean maybe maybe we jump before we jump into that I'm just curious like from your perspective what makes a great manager a leader like what's the most important thing there I think there's a couple things right there's on one hand always having your back no matter what uh I think that the saying that says compliment in public and recommend in in private that's that's a mantra that you know I uh I go by and I think having always having your back in front of the people at the company and in front of leaders that's uh that's one thing but at the same time not becoming an aggressive micromanager right still giving you the space to make your own decision to be autonomous uh in your role um and I think we kind of like find the perfect synergy the the perfect balance between feeling like I'm empowered enough to make my own decisions uh to kind of like shape my own role and my own career path and um at the same time when something happens or when times get challenging I have her back and I feel like her support uh and her mentorship so I think that's the the most important balance which is incredibly hard to find in any corporate job really and I never take that for granted.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Yeah thanks I just want to slow down on that before we move on but yeah let's um let's talk a little bit about uh your obsession for 2026 like what are you really laser focused on right now so um I think if I uh scroll through my career safe breach um I think there were some pivotal moments where the job of being a recruiter stopped being coordination and it started being more judgment focused right so every TA function has an unconscious bias to keep going you know more loops more candidates more uh steps in the process uh I think the takeaway from uh many years in this career is that

Great Managers And Hard Calls

SPEAKER_00 35:11

the the highest leverage thing that a TA leader does is sometimes to stop the process is to sometimes make that judgment call. And one of the things that shaped that the recruiter that I am today and the head of town that I am today was um one time I was recruiting for a leader in our accounting division and that candidate that final candidate had gone through I think eight rounds of interviews right something like that and um I had to say something at that point because the CFO which was recruiting for their role and being the hiring manager wanted the candidate to uh speak to more people than more than eight people so I was like you know like we need to you know we're gonna lose you know our top candidates if we continue this route you know like how many more judgments you need uh for for this person uh and that was kind of like the the call that I had that was the first time by the way that I had to stand up in front of a C level executive and um that was the moment the pivotal moment when I realized that my job wasn't just being a doer but also you know having those judgment calls and you know stand up for myself and stand up for the candidates that I was recruiting. So that was a pivotal moment that I always like to reflect to I think my obsessions I'm obsessed with what a recruiter and a recruited job will become when AI will do 80% of the sourcing right so it's easy to say that I'm obsessed with AI and what the future holds for us but that's everybody is obsessed with AI. So that's not probably what you like to hear. I think the interesting question is when the sourcing layer and the operational layer is automated, what does the human still do? Right. So I think what I answer myself and I hope that's a real answer is you know you have to become a closer translator a system designer more than just a doer and someone that just uh is an operator right so you're literally living this you know like I'm literally living this right now all of us are um there's I can give you an example um the coordinator in my team Nama she started exploring autonomous uh agents that are building a sourcing function right now and you know when she presented that idea to me I was like geez we better not show this to anybody or we'll both get fired right so but that's that's what a bad leader would do right so back to you know examples of great leadership instead what I did with that is I sent a nomination for a uh you know flagship recruiting conference for us to be speakers and present this original research that we did with uh the autonomous sourcing agent and I can't tell you 100% uh am full confidence but we are probably going to be selected and speak you know on a global recruiting stage about this tool so that's awesome and by the way if if that happens you gotta send me uh let me know where it is I'll try to make it if I can't make it um I'll at least promote if you share the link or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

Of course and it's going to be in San Diego so you oh okay I'm gonna want to miss that. Okay so let me know for real I'm gonna try to make no that would that'd be cool. I mean we already met in New York we should you know we gotta yeah it'd be cool to meet up in uh San Diego for sure.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Yeah that sounds like fun are you guys using like so what are you using to build the agents is it like what are you building on top of so um there's a few layers but this came after you know months of experimenting on a variety of AI tools right I used I started with ChatGPT that's what probably uh everybody started with um and then with the company we got a corporate uh Gemini license so I experimented with Gemini uh which by the way it's very underrated there's a lot of negativity that that goes around it but it actually gives pretty decent results uh but what we eventually landed on is a uh using Claude right uh claude has a uh desktop desktop version which is called Claude CoWork and that's what enabled you to uh really build something that runs on itself autonomous and they have this um they have a couple ways by means of which you can automate things one being their connectors what's called like an MCP which uh they you know allow you to connect with any different tools that you have your ATS your uh LinkedIn recruiter um and such but for any other app that doesn't have a connector what they do is that they build a crow a simple Chrome extension that can uh basically debug your screen and like kind of like use your computer as if it was you so now this has a lot of like privacy and legal implications and um I want to to reiterate that we covered all that with our legal team we're not infringing any law but at the same time we're fortunate enough to be able to experiment with this because I talked to some of my peers who are working at you know bigger companies like you know even not not as big as Microsoft but even like as you know like big bigger companies and safe bridge it they're not allowed to use such tools because of how layered their data protection and privacy policies are so I told you know my team let's make sure that we take this time to experiment and you know learn as much as possible because not a lot of people are as fortunate as we are for sure and in one way like um so one of the companies I own is June it's called June not the month it's called June um and it's which is an awesome name except when you're in June uh which is coming up so I'm like I know for the next month everybody's gonna be confused but uh yeah I love I love the name but um anyways it's an AI interviewer and so we for instance I actually haven't publicly announced this the first time I'll say it actually is on the show we just signed Task Rabbit up which is really exciting and we've got an uh verbal approval from another like a lot of other uh great growth stage companies one that's not like a little lesser known is called Augury uh but they probably have a billion dollar valuation based in New York and Tel Aviv um you know so like a lot of cool companies and one thing from a data privacy and compliance thing that makes it a little easier is we're only doing AI interviews for US based candidates.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

So like even for international firms like when we as we sign like some of these bigger companies like Task Rep there's an a desire for us to go international but we're kind of like well let's just focus on the US market for now because we do there's it's a lot considered a lot riskier than like doing this in Europe, right? Or like understanding compliance and data privacy and all these other areas right so it just makes it a lot easier like for us to collaborate with our attorneys and with task grab as uh external counsel and to be like hey like you know what do we need to what are like are we missing anything like let's cover all of our bases um yeah which can be a workaround for larger just like if you're I'm just saying for like head of TAs tuning in that you're like a larger org like specifically ask legal and procurement like if you can trial these products or or even build your own agent specifically for markets within the US that that's good advice because once you start getting in the weeds of yeah GDPR in Europe that's uh that's the end of it. Dude I when GDPR first came out this is when I still had the subsidiary in Romania good lord we had to become compliant we were like a small business and we had to do like a ton of paperwork man like an absolute ton. Yeah it was crazy. So yeah it's it's a lot complicated and like you know regardless of like whether or not those are good rules to have it's like the US market is like the best place to experiment this type of new tech, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:25

Yeah. So yeah yeah but uh yeah to so to go back to your question so that's one thing that I'm excited and obsessed about to figure out what us recruiters and talent leaders will become uh once the rest will be automated, right? Another thing is um I wonder whether um really anybody in our profession can build a TA function that will survive us, that will go beyond us as like you know individuals and last even after we left the company. Right. So what I Been uh experimenting and focusing a lot about here safe breach specifically is how do I build a knowledge base and a set of procedures and processes that can be used, you know, even after I take on my next chapter, you know, hopefully after like many years from now, but like you know, anything can happen. So I want to make sure that all the knowledge and the experience and the skills that I built for myself uh don't get lost when I leave, right? So uh we

AI Agents And The Future Recruiter

SPEAKER_00 44:29

use a variety of tools. For example, we found a lot of success in using confluence uh from uh Jira as like one source of truth for the company. But again, with AI being more and more powerful, um, there's also another module you can use in Claude that actually lets you build custom skills. So I think that's going to be the new era of you know, like a shared knowledge base. Um just to give you like a brief example, um, I'm building a skill of focused on talent acquisition, right specifically. And that uh is that includes basically all of the um sourcing, you know, um JD creation, you know, scorecards, interview uh prep that I do uh on a day-to-day. And it's built in into a skill um that you know my coordinator or my VP of HR or even anybody outside of our team can use if plugged into Plaud, into an AI tool. And I think that will be the future of making sure that uh the knowledge and uh really the the outcome and the output that you build throughout the years outlasts you. Another thing is um being a leader, and I've only started being a people leader for less than a year now, uh, but I'm already you know obsessed with mentoring for, right? Specifically with creating the conditions for the people that are mentoring to outpace me. And some of it is already happening, by the way. Uh, the example that I gave you before, uh Namah, the coordinator in my team, building a sourcing automation agent, that's uh something that I even had figured out yet. So, which is I think one of the most perfect examples of great leadership. Not to say that you know I'm a great leader or I'm a perfect leader just yet. I'm I'm very early in my journey, but but you know it's important to you. Like you know, yeah. If someone junior in your team comes to you with you know something that advanced that you didn't ask her to do, that probably means that you're doing something right. And um I think that also allows you to put your ego aside and think of the team as the most important thing rather than your own um ego. So that's that's what I've been you know heavily focused on. And one final thing is, and this is specifically to uh to cybersecurity, right? And this will probably be interesting. Uh, and I would love to hear if anybody else in the cybersecurity industry of my fellow cyber recruiters has any thoughts on this. But I don't think cyber has figured out early career just yet. Like how to get people to start a career in cyber and and give people a chance when they're early in their career. How do they break into cybersecurity? It there's very high barriers to entry to the cyberspace uh because of its nature, right? It's very technical, and you do need some foundational knowledge to get into it. But maybe this is where campus recruiting might come into play, right? And that's something that I've been picking the brains of my leaders about as safe race, right? How maybe do we break into that and try to bring some early career people into the company? Um and I think that will probably come in handy, especially in periods where there's like talent shortage and the war for talent is ruthless than ever. Maybe betting on some of these, you know, incredibly you know, uh skillful and you know, people with great potential that will probably like probably not solve the the war for talent, but definitely you know put a big patch on it.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

Yeah, I mean, I think uh too with AI, right? Like in certain ways it raises the bar, and but in certain ways it can lower the barrier to entry. Like it kind of does both depending on the situation, but uh you know, it enables people that are adaptable and sharp to move through the ranks faster and acquire knowledge that they need to be successful in roles, right? Um, and it also gives an opportunity for I think employers to further focus on behavioral fits, um, you know, and helping people focus opposed to administrative tasks to really develop on honing in on the core skill set.

unknown 49:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

Hopefully accelerating faster, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:03

Yeah, and not just on that, but even on even like more uh technical aspects of the job, like even coding, right? So there's a lot of AI tools that can do coding for you now, and uh that raises the questions to what will help us to engineers, you know, to developers, you know, but what we're also um doing when it comes to uh developers and safe breach, and uh we have we've been trying to experiment with kind of like lowering the bar and uh not in terms of talent or quality, but um maybe you know in terms of like hard requirements, right? If before we when we hired for our engineering team, we thought, okay, this person needs to be able to produce clean code in Python or or C. Uh now we're able to maybe hire someone more junior, but that can you know have uh can be adaptable and can use AI tools to produce the same kind of output. So that's the possibilities are endless. And yeah, so that's um that that's about it.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

I love it. I love it, man. That's uh it's really good stuff here. And you know, I as we're kind of entering the final segment of our conversation, I would love to just I'd love to be a little bit forward-focused. And you know, we start off the conversation talking it's more personally focused, and we dive into career, and then I'd like to end with sort of a blend of the two, right? Um I I I suppose you can start, we can start professionally, we could start personally, it could be some maybe it's like one and the same to some extent. But when you think about the person you're becoming, the professional you're becoming, like talk to me about like what the next several years like you're gonna be focused on, and what maybe, as I like to say, like what the next best version of yourself looks like.

SPEAKER_00 50:51

Good question. Um, so you you kind of like give me an option between personal and professional. I'll do both, right? Yeah, it's wherever your height goes, right? Yeah, yeah. So I think this touches on both the personal and professional aspects of my life. Is I want to take everything, every good thing that I've learned from good leadership and apply it to me as a human being and as a people leader, right? I've had the opportunity throughout my career uh to have terrible managers and to have incredibly amazing managers. And I think it's important to experience both, right? Uh, I think uh a lot of the good comes from you know failures and you know, like uh learning lessons. But having great mentors and managers uh in your life is definitely a game changer. So what I want to do is I you know hopefully I'll have the chance to continue pursuing a career in child acquisition and become a more you know senior leader and having an entire team under my umbrella, right? That I can um I can you know mentor and train and kind of like let them become and give them a chance, like like somebody gave a chance to me when I was junior in my career. Um so that's one thing. The other thing is it's more professional, is it has a couple aspects. One is I kind of like want to figure out whether recruiting is still a service desk or is it a strategic discipline in the business, right? So I've had I've been fortunate enough to be in a company where HR and recruiting are seen as you know business partners and strategic advisors, but I know that uh there are companies out there and teams out there where uh they this experience does not translate in the same way. There are some you know recruiters and teams that are still seen as transactional, and I think what uh I would love to see uh in the future in recruiting and in HR is you know solidifying our profession as that strategic business uh leaders, kind of like status, like any other uh any other team in an organization.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

Yeah, I I totally agree. I love that. Well, look, is there anything else you want to add on that front? Um it looked like I just I didn't want to cut you off. It looked like you're about to say that.

SPEAKER_00 53:24

No, no, that's the the last thing I wanted to mention is more I would say personal, and um we always joke, my wife and I always joke about you know the advancements in you know corporate, you know, the corporate world and AI is just going so fast that sometimes you know we realize that human brains were really not designed to handle this much at once. So sometimes we just dream and wonder like, you know, what if we just sold fruit on the beach and just you know abandoned all this and became informants or anything, being more in touch with nature than something like that. So that's what I want to close with.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

Yeah, yeah,

Building Teams That Outgrow You

SPEAKER_01 54:11

for sure. It's important to find balance, particularly when you're in tech, right? Yeah, gotta get outside a little bit. Yeah, for sure. For sure, man. Well, hey, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you coming on the show today and just having this like very genuine uh down to earth conversation together. And I uh it's been awesome getting to know you and talking shop as well. So thanks for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Yeah, thanks, James. It's uh it's been amazing. This is the the first podcast that I've been invited to, and it's been it's been a great ride, right? Since the first time we met in New York and kind of like you know talked through it. Um, also, I'm I didn't know I hadn't in me to go as deep into my you know life experiences and talk at length about it. So I'm impressed that I was able to do it. Uh, and I hope that the other people will find my life story interesting in some way or another.

SPEAKER_01 55:06

So for sure, it's definitely very interesting. It's always nice to get to know people. It's like we're in this, uh, I think we were talking about before we hit record, it's like we're in this people business, and I think it's important to not forget that, you know, to not see people through like Zoom or through a title or their employer, but like try to understand and get to know the whole person, right?

SPEAKER_00 55:24

Yeah, I think one line uh one liner that I can give to close this out is give people a chance. That's all they all they need. I love it.