Its All Recruiting

AI is transforming hiring—but it’s also enabling a new wave of candidate fraud. In this episode of The Jim Stroud Podcast, Jim speaks with Maryam Mahdaviani, founder of Attesto, about how AI tools, deepfakes, and identity impersonation are reshaping the hiring process. Some candidates now use AI to generate resumes, get real-time interview answers, or even appear on camera using face and voice filters. In extreme cases, one person interviews, another person gets hired, and someone else does the job. Maryam explains why this problem is spreading beyond tech into industries like healthcare, engineering, and business development—and the real security risks companies face when fraudsters gain access to internal systems. They also discuss how organizations can detect suspicious candidates and rethink hiring practices in the age of AI. Learn more: attesto.com Connect with Maryam on LinkedIn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast brought to you by: "Career Intelligence Weekly" - the newsletter that tracks the invisible job market for smarter career decisions. https://newsletter.jimstroud.com In this episode: At a recent conference, I sat down with recruitment marketing expert Jim Durbin, also known as the “Indeed Whisperer.” With 25+ years in staffing, headhunting, RPO, and internal TA, Durbin shares blunt insights on how hiring really works. We discuss why recruiters underuse Indeed’s resume database, why mass-applying with AI-generated resumes can hurt job seekers, and whether “ghost jobs” are as common as people think. Durbin also explains why both companies and candidates share responsibility for fixing today’s broken hiring experience. A candid conversation about recruiting myths, job search strategy, and how respect and intention can improve hiring on both sides. Connect with Jim Durbin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimdurbin/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It started with a single research memo. In February 2026, a scenario paper from a macro firm called Citrini Research sent the Dow plummeting 800 points and triggered phrases like "AI Doomsday" across financial media. But the crash wasn't really about artificial intelligence. It was about something far more personal — the kind of work you do every day. In this episode, Jim Stroud breaks down the concept of the Intelligence Displacement Spiral: the cold, mechanical logic by which AI advancement could quietly dismantle white-collar careers from the inside out. Analysts. Managers. Recruiters. Knowledge workers. The people whose jobs are built on moving, interpreting, and routing information. Sound familiar? This isn't a conversation about factory floors or truck drivers. This is about spreadsheets. About your job description. About the moment you realize that the skills that earned you a premium in the economy for the last 150 years may be the very skills most at risk. But this episode isn't a doom spiral —

What if everything you believed about how hiring works… was only half the story? The job market has always had rules. Apply. Interview. Get picked. Simple, right? But something is quietly changing beneath the surface — and it's making a lot of people uncomfortable. Job seekers are now paying recruiters. Not to polish their résumé. Not to prep for interviews. They're paying someone to pitch them — to walk into companies and say, this person is worth your time. Is that exploitation? Is it strategy? Or is it just the job market finally dropping the pretense that the best candidate always wins? In this special report, we're pulling back the curtain on reverse recruiting, the rise of AI-managed job applications, and a parallel labor economy that's already reshaping how opportunity gets distributed — whether you're paying attention or not. This one hits differently. If you work in recruiting, lead a hiring team, or you're out there trying to land your next role — this conversation is already affecting you. Y

The factory runs perfectly. The robots work tirelessly. Production costs plummet. And then someone asks the question that breaks the entire model: Who's buying the cars? This episode examines the economic paradox no one wants to name. Companies don't survive on efficiency alone—they survive on customers with money. If automation displaces massive amounts of human labor, the math breaks. Not morally. Mechanically. We explore what happens when the economy can produce value without you but hasn't figured out the consequences yet. How does purchasing power flow when work stops being the gatekeeper? What futures are being quietly debated behind closed doors? And why does your anxiety as a job seeker feel less like a skills gap and more like existential irrelevance? The rules are changing. The system is stalling. And the answer to one old factory joke might determine what comes next. ... Subscribe to The Recruiting Life newsletter https://jimstroud.beehiiv.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone

There's a social network you're not allowed to post on. No account. No comments. No ability to clarify context. But your company's employees are already active there—not the human ones, the digital ones. In January 2026, a machine-only social network called Moltbook quietly went live, and within weeks, more than a million AI agents showed up. What happened next should make every leader uncomfortable. Because the most important thing Moltbook reveals isn't that AI agents can socialize—it's that we've crossed a line most organizations didn't even realize existed. AI didn't just automate work. It joined the workforce. And then it wandered into the breakroom. ||| Subscribe to The Recruiting Life newsletter at https://jimstroud.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By 2027, not knowing how to work with AI won’t get you fired — it’ll get you quietly excluded. In this episode, we unpack why AI literacy is no longer a skill, but a signal. A test of trust, judgment, and who gets a voice inside AI-mediated workplaces. This isn’t about prompts or tools. It’s about power, credibility, and what happens when human judgment starts getting audited. If work feels different lately, this episode explains why — and why it matters more than you think. ||| If you want clarity on what's happening now and next in the world of work, subscribe to The Recruiting Life newsletter over at https://jimstroud.beehiiv.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode brought to you by ProvenBase: https://provenbase.com ... On this episode of the Jim Stroud Podcast, Jim sits down with Michelle Cass, global talent acquisition leader and author of Hired by Humanity, to cut through the AI hype in recruiting. Michelle shares why AI doesn’t fix broken processes or culture—it exposes them. Together, they unpack how automation should amplify recruiters (not replace them), what’s driving recruiter burnout, where efficiency starts harming candidate experience, and which parts of recruiting should never be fully automated. A must-listen for HR, TA, and business leaders navigating AI-driven hiring without losing the human touch.

This episode brought to you by: Job Search 3.0 and The Recruiting Life newsletter. Links below. ... You walk into your review prepared to discuss your metrics. But there’s a new name on the dashboard. It’s not a peer. It’s not a hire. It’s an AI recruiting agent—with a title, a scorecard, and a seat on the org chart next to yours. The moment your KPIs are placed side-by-side, everything changes. This isn’t about working smarter with AI. This is about being measured against it—on speed, cost, reply rates, and conversion. While you sleep, it works. While you train, it self-optimizes. While you build relationships, it delivers numbers that make finance lean in. If your value was once defined by hustle, insight, and human touch—what happens when the system does it faster, cheaper, and without fatigue? Worse: what happens when your next career move depends on outscoring a tool that never stops improving? This episode isn’t speculation. It’s a wake-up call built on data, deployments, and the uncomfortable m

This episode of The Jim Stroud Podcast is brought to you by ProvenBase - an AI-powered talent acquisition and Deep Search sourcing platform that helps organizations find, engage, and hire hard-to-find candidates from thousands of real-time online sources. See it in action for yourself by visiting - https://provenbase.com ... In this episode: Are pharmacy benefits actually helping employers and employees—or has the system become a costly black box? Jim Stroud sits down with Alan Pannier, Chief Strategy Officer at SmithRx, to unpack how the U.S. pharmacy benefit ecosystem really works and why it can feel “scammy” even when it’s legal. Alan explains how PBMs were originally built to simplify pharmacy access, and how the model evolved into opaque pricing practices that can drive costs higher. In this episode, we break down spread pricing, rebate incentives, and why the “middle layer” of healthcare may be the biggest winner when no one can see the real numbers. Jim also presses for practical guidance: what HR

This episode brought to you by "The Career Intelligence System" at https://ci.jimstroud.com ... Everyone keeps saying career coaching is booming. You hear it on podcasts. You see it on LinkedIn. You see screenshots, sold-out programs, and bold income claims. But if that’s true… why does the market feel crowded? Why does demand feel real—but uneven? In this episode, we strip away the hype and look at what’s actually growing, what’s being mislabeled as a “boom,” and why that distinction matters if you’re a coach—or thinking about becoming one. This isn’t a takedown or a pep talk. It’s a clear-eyed look at what’s really happening beneath the headlines.

Everyone keeps asking if the job market is broken. It’s not that simple. Hiring didn’t disappear—it changed. Quieter. More selective. Less forgiving of guesswork. In this episode, Jim Stroud unpacks why the market feels confusing, why familiar strategies stopped working, and what’s really driving hiring decisions right now. If your experience suddenly feels harder to translate—or the rules feel different without warning—this conversation will help you see what’s actually happening beneath the noise. | This episode brought to you by: Job Search 3.0 - Stop endlessly applying for jobs. Start attracting them instead. https://jobsearch.jimstroud.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Companies aren’t failing at AI because the tech isn’t ready—they’re failing because they’ve underinvested in the humans expected to make it work. | Subscribe to "The Recruiting Life" newsletter at JimStroud.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jim Stroud shares a special message of thanks to everyone who supported him online. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recruiting is crossing a line from AI support to AI execution, and the winners won’t be the fastest adopters—but the ones who pair automation with accountability and governance. | Subscribe to "The Recruiting Life" newsletter at JimStroud.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Long searches, low response rates, and widespread burnout reveal a hiring system optimized for volume over clarity—leaving job seekers exhausted and trust eroding fast. | Subscribe to "The Recruiting Life" newsletter at JimStroud.com Read the report that inspired my rant - "Job Seeker Survey: 76% Burned Out by Job Hunt" https://www.howdy.com/blog/job-hunter-survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The global labor market isn’t breaking, but the data shows employers quietly shifting from hiring at scale to hiring with intent—while U.S. metrics remain temporarily distorted by missing government data. | Subscribe to "The Recruiting Life" newsletter at JimStroud.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new Stanford study reveals that nearly half of today’s AI tools are automating tasks workers don’t want automated—so why is Silicon Valley racing to replace judgment and creativity while employees are still drowning in expense reports? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly half of employees—and even more executives—are secretly using AI at work, so what happens to trust, risk, and leadership when the future of work is something no one is willing to admit out loud? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A former U.S. consular officer claims up to 90% of H-1B visa applications she reviewed were fraudulent—so what does that mean for American workers, global talent, and a system that may be breaking in plain sight? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices