There’s a tension in recruiting right now between two realities. Some roles demand volume. Other roles require a high-touch approach. Here’s what I see too often: organizations pick one approach and apply it to everything.

Think about a sophomore in high school. They’re figuring out who their friends are, whether they like chemistry, how to parallel park. And we’re asking them to narrow down a career direction? What if we gave them space to explore instead?

We talk a lot about pipelines in recruiting. But a pipeline assumes there are people in it. If students don’t know a career exists, they can’t pursue the education or training to get there. It’s that simple.

Spring cleaning isn’t just about throwing things out — it’s also about deciding what’s still earning its place. Your hiring process deserves the same honest look.

Four years ago, on April 15, I officially launched Sunflower Talent Strategies. Looking back, the work has taken shapes I didn’t fully anticipate, but the thread that ties it all together is a belief that the status quo isn’t good enough.

Job descriptions fail when they’re written for legal compliance or to make the company sound impressive. They work when they’re honest about the actual work and why someone talented would want to do it. Read on for tips.

We all know speed matters in hiring. But I don’t think we talk honestly enough about what slow hiring actually costs — not just in lost candidates, but in the damage it does to the team you already have.

“They’re not a culture fit,” has become the polite way to reject candidates we don’t click with. But the uncomfortable truth: our obsession with culture fit often leads us to hire people who think, look, and act exactly like we do — and that’s not doing anyone any favors.

We like to talk about how much recruiting has evolved, but you know what really happened? We moved ads from newspapers to the internet. That’s it. So what’s the actual disruption that would make it all work differently?

We love to blame the skills gap for our hiring struggles, but, after spending years in this business, I’ve learned it’s often not a skills gap at all. A lot of times, the problem is a motivation gap, and we’re the ones creating it.

Most candidate ghosting isn’t personal. It’s predictable. And that means it’s something you can fix. Here’s where to focus.

Everyone’s talking about skills-based hiring like it’s revolutionary. But here’s the dirty secret: most organizations that claim to do skills-based hiring have just swapped one lazy proxy for another.

Recruitment systems fail silently. Here’s what to look for — and what to do about it.

Your AI keeps optimizing the time-to-hire. Meanwhile, your 90-day retention just dropped 15%. Here’s the disconnect: AI optimizes for whatever you tell it to. It can’t question whether those metrics matter. Try this instead.

Short answer: Probably. Here’s what to fix today.

Most organizations say they value curiosity. Then they reward people who execute without pushing back. But in 2026, with AI executing faster than ever, we need the people who slow down and ask: Should we even be doing this?

AI hiring isn’t going to go way. Used well, it helps find great candidates faster and can reduce some human biases. But the hidden nature is the problem.

The most valuable workplace skills in 2026 are exactly what AI can’t detect. Is your system screening out people with the wrong degree but the right mindset?

At the start of the year, many companies post the same roles they couldn’t fill the year before. Same requirements. Same hope that this time will be different. Spoiler alert: It won’t. Here’s what to do instead.

Most people wait until the week before their annual review to think about what they’ve accomplished. Then they panic, try to remember everything, and end up underselling themselves. Do this, instead.