In the fast-changing world of recruitment, staying inspired and informed is no longer optional—it’s essential. The best hiring professionals today don’t just fill roles; they build brands, nurture talent communities, and drive measurable business impact. To keep pace, recruiters need fresh ideas, tested frameworks, and voices that challenge the status quo. That’s where hiring influencers come in. These thought leaders share proven strategies, data-backed insights, and candid advice on everything from sourcing automation to candidate experience. In this article, we’ve rounded up 10 of the most influential voices shaping modern recruiting—people who consistently deliver actionable insights to help you hire smarter, faster, and more humanly.
1) Hung Lee — Curator of Talent’s smartest ideas
- Why follow: Hung is the force behind a beloved weekly TA digest and an ever-curious host who pulls fresh, global perspectives into one place. If you want a reliable pulse on what’s changing in sourcing, AI for recruiting, and hiring ops, he’s your signal-to-noise filter.
- What you’ll learn: Practical takes on new tooling, the economics of recruiting, candidate behavior shifts, and where the industry is actually heading (not just the hype).
- Steal-and-apply: Use his weekly themes to plan internal “micro-workshops” with your team. Pick one idea—e.g., a new sourcing workflow or interview tactic—and trial it for 14 days with a simple before/after metric (responses, qualified interviews, or time-to-first-reply).
2) Stacy Zapar — Candidate experience and recruiter enablement
- Why follow: One of the most respected practitioner voices on candidate experience, intake strategy, and recruiter productivity. She translates “do the right thing” into checklists teams can actually run.
- What you’ll learn: Structured intake, expectation setting with hiring managers, humane automation, and high-touch communication that scales.
- Steal-and-apply: Implement her intake doc approach: one page capturing role outcomes, non-negotiables, trade-offs, and first-month deliverables. It cuts back-and-forth and raises submittal-to-interview ratio.
3) Glen Cathey — Boolean Black Belt meets modern sourcing
- Why follow: Glen is the OG of precision search logic who also embraces today’s data and AI reality. He shows how to blend human reasoning with powerful search strategies.
- What you’ll learn: Advanced search strings, calibration tactics, and analytical thinking for talent mapping—without drowning in complexity.
- Steal-and-apply: Run a “sourcing patterns retro” each Friday: log the top 3 query patterns that yielded replies, where they worked, and why. Build a reusable library for the team.
4) Katrina Collier — The candidate-first conscience
- Why follow: Author and speaker focused on fixing broken hiring conversations and restoring trust between recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates. Zero tolerance for ghosting or shallow intake.
- What you’ll learn: How to get hiring managers truly engaged, ruthless clarity in job definitions, and practical boundary-setting to protect the candidate experience.
- Steal-and-apply: Add a “candidate reality check” to every kickoff: three candid questions you’ll ask real prospects in week one to validate the role’s market fit. Share findings with the hiring manager before you advertise.
5) Shally Steckerl — Sourcing innovation and talent hacking
- Why follow: Known for turning unconventional web tactics into repeatable sourcing workflows. He often finds talent where others aren’t even looking.
- What you’ll learn: Internet research methods, contact discovery, messaging angles that get replies, and process design that scales across teams.
- Steal-and-apply: Stand up a “three-source rule”: for every niche role, identify three non-obvious platforms or communities to source from and track yield separately. It diversifies pipelines fast.
6) Dean Da Costa — Tools, automation, and hands-on demos
- Why follow: If you love seeing tools in action, Dean is your guide. He stress-tests extensions, enrichment services, and workflows so you don’t have to.
- What you’ll learn: Tactical tool stacks, enrichment hygiene, and small automations that save hours each week.
- Steal-and-apply: Create a quarterly “tool diet.” For each step (discover → engage → schedule), list your tools, identify duplication, keep one primary and one backup, and sunset the rest. Fewer tools, better execution.
7) Lou Adler — Performance-based hiring and manager alignment
- Why follow: Lou reframes jobs around measurable outcomes rather than laundry-list requirements. His frameworks align hiring managers and recruiters around what success actually looks like.
- What you’ll learn: Performance profiles, evidence-based interviews, and decision-making that reduces bias and mis-hires.
- Steal-and-apply: Swap “requirements” for “success criteria” in your JDs: five outcomes the hire will deliver in months 1–12. Track interview questions back to those outcomes only.
8) Adam Karpiak — The real talk of candidate markets
- Why follow: Adam’s plain-spoken commentary on compensation, expectations, and recruiter ethics keeps teams grounded in candidate reality. He’s a barometer for what jobseekers love and hate.
- What you’ll learn: Market sentiment, messaging that respects candidates’ time, and why transparency beats spin.
- Steal-and-apply: Run a monthly “candidate cringe audit.” Review your automated emails and job posts. Kill buzzwords, add salary ranges, and write like a human. Measure reply rate and opt-in quality after edits.
9) Greg Savage — Agency leadership and business rigor
- Why follow: Greg blends agency-owner pragmatism with decades of market cycles. He talks pipeline discipline, client selection, fees, and how to build a resilient desk.
- What you’ll learn: Business development, account management, recruiter KPI design, and the habits that compound over time.
- Steal-and-apply: Adopt a “weekly revenue storyboard”: active jobs, forecasted submittals, interviews, offers, and risks. Use it to drive stand-ups and spot stalls early.
10) Lars Schmidt — Modern TA/HR operating models and employer brand
- Why follow: Lars connects TA with broader people strategy: org design, EVP, skills-based hiring, and the systems that let recruiting scale sustainably.
- What you’ll learn: Building TA like a product: roadmaps, stakeholder comms, and brand storytelling that actually resonates with talent.
- Steal-and-apply: Draft a lightweight TA roadmap: quarter by quarter, list three initiatives max (e.g., interview training, structured scorecards, content library). Tie each to a business metric.
How We Chose These Influencers
- Practicality over theory: They publish playbooks, not platitudes—and practitioners cite their work.
- Breadth with depth: Together they cover sourcing, candidate experience, employer brand, hiring manager enablement, tools/automation, and TA leadership.
- Proven adoption: Their ideas routinely show up in real teams’ processes, not just in conference slides.
- Signal over noise: They enable you to make one change this week that measurably improves your funnel.
Fast Ways to Put Their Ideas to Work
1) Turn content into experiments
Don’t “follow”—pilot. Pick one tactic per week (new outreach pattern, intake template, or interview question set). Define a simple success metric (e.g., reply rate from 18% → 25%) and run a two-week A/B test. Share results in a 5-slide internal recap so the team can adopt winners quickly.
2) Build a recruiting “playbook hub”
Centralize the best templates you collect—intake doc, performance profile, scorecards, outreach messages—into a shared folder. Tag each asset with role type, stage, and owner. Review quarterly and prune what’s stale.
3) Improve hiring manager alignment
Borrow performance-based role framing and candidate-reality checks. Add a one-page kickoff doc to every req and use it as the single source of truth. Track two KPIs: submittal-to-interview and interview-to-offer. If either lags, revisit success criteria or calibration.
4) Upgrade candidate communications
Apply the real-talk ethos: salary ranges, timelines, and what the assessment actually tests. Trim automated emails to the essentials and personalize the first line with a proof you read their profile (recent project, publication, or repo).
5) Tooling sanity checks
Once a quarter, do a tool stack cleanup inspired by the tooling experts above. Consolidate overlapping tools, renegotiate licenses, and document the “happy path” workflow so new recruiters can be productive in week one.
Collaboration Playbook: Partnering With Influencers
When to partner:
- You have data or a case study that advances the conversation (e.g., how structured scorecards improved quality of hire).
- You’re launching a resource recruiters genuinely need (free templates, calibration workshop, or research).
- You can add practitioner voices—hiring managers and candidates—to the story.
Ways to collaborate:
- Co-created guides/webinars: You bring the dataset or case study, they bring reach and credibility.
- Template swaps: Offer a polished, reusable resource in exchange for feedback and distribution.
- Roundtables: Convene a small group (recruiter + hiring manager + candidate advocate) to surface diverse perspectives on one topic (e.g., skills-based screening).
Dos & Don’ts:
- Do send a crisp one-pager: audience, problem, proposed angle, what you’re contributing, and what you’re asking.
- Do anchor on outcomes (what recruiters can do next Monday morning).
- Don’t pitch thin product demos or generic “thought leadership.”
- Don’t over-script—leave room for candid disagreement.
Metrics: How to Measure the Impact of Influencer-Driven Changes
1. Top-of-funnel efficiency
- Reply rate to cold outreach
- Qualified intro call rate
- Sourcing channel yield (by community/platform)
2. Mid-funnel quality
- Submittal-to-interview ratio
- Interview-to-offer ratio
- Candidate satisfaction (short pulse survey after on-site or final round)
3. Time & cost
- Time-to-first-interview
- Time-to-offer
- Tools consolidation savings (licenses, duplicate steps removed)
4. Hiring manager alignment
- Kickoff doc adoption rate
- Calibration cycles needed per role
- HM satisfaction score post-hire
Set baselines, run 30-day experiments inspired by one influencer at a time, and report the deltas. The win isn’t “we followed X”—it’s “we shortened time-to-offer by 5 days using X’s intake method.”
A Mini-Toolkit You Can Copy
One-page intake template
- Role outcomes (5) for months 1–12
- Non-negotiables vs. nice-to-haves
- First-month deliverables
- Interview panel + scorecard criteria
- Candidate reality check plan (3 questions to validate market fit)
Sourcing experiment log
- Role & market
- Query pattern tested
- Channel/community
- Replies / interviews / offers
- Notes on candidate feedback
Candidate communication revamp
- JD with salary range and success criteria
- Short outreach with a specific hook
- Transparent timeline and assessment steps
- “What to expect” prep sheet before final round
Final Word
Great recruiting gets built in the messy middle—where ideas meet process. The ten influencers above will help you sharpen every stage of the funnel: aligning with hiring managers on outcomes, sourcing beyond the obvious, communicating with radical clarity, and running TA like a product. Don’t try to absorb everything. Pick one voice, one idea, one metric—ship an experiment this week, measure it next week, and keep what works.
If you want, I can also tailor this list to your niche (e.g., tech, healthcare, industrial, early-stage startups) and turn the “Steal-and-apply” items into a 90-day execution plan for your team.
