Jim Conti

📉 VC’s Diversity Problem: Black Investors Severely Underrepresented (Shocking Stats!) with Evan Poncelet, Founding Managing Partner @ Dreamward Ventures & Executive Director @ Venture Black The data is staggering—and the consequences are real. In this urgent episode of The Jason Cavness Experience, Evan Poncelet breaks down the systemic barriers keeping Black investors out of venture capital and how that disconnect stifles innovation, equity, and economic growth for all. 📊 What we covered: 🔹 Shocking diversity stats from the VC world 🔹 How access, networks, and biases compound the gap 🔹 Why equity in capital allocation is essential—not optional This conversation isn’t about guilt. It’s about urgency and action. Breeze Docs uses Generative AI to automate complex RFP responses and provides easy-to-use collaboration tools. If your organization would like to reduce RFP response times by up to 80%, the answer is Breeze Docs. 👉 https://lnkd.in/gZxAxJwQ 💬 What would real inclusion in venture capital look like to you? #EvanPoncelet #TheJasonCavnessExperience #VentureCapital #DiversityInVC #BreezeDocs #BlackInvestors #EconomicEquity #StartupEcosystem

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Gen Z is redefining what trust means in recruiting. Rewriting the Code surveyed 3,400 student members to understand what’s really shaping today’s tech recruiting experience and what employers can do to build stronger connections with early talent. 💡 Interns are chasing growth. 🌱 New grads are ready to plant roots. ⚡ And across every stage, trust is the deciding factor. This year’s Recruiting Experience Report goes beyond data; it offers a roadmap for rethinking your early talent strategy. From transparency and accessibility to reneges and retention, learn the trust signals that strengthen offers and the strategies that reduce risk. 🔒 Explore the actionable insights inside the 2025 Recruiting Experience Report at https://teamrtc.co/49huesN #recruiting #reneges #retention #womenintech #earlycareer

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If you have ever been to an HR Tech conference and looked at the TA tech, you know exactly what I am talking about. Hundreds of vendors. Almost all of them selling the same thing. AI-powered candidate matching. Smarter screening. Faster shortlists. One or two features nobody else has. Rinse and repeat. And the whole time I keep thinking: does anyone actually see what is happening here? - Companies deployed AI to screen candidates. - Candidates deployed AI to beat the screens. - Companies deployed AI to detect that. - Candidates deployed AI to beat the detection. Round and round. At every iteration the signal gets weaker. What you end up with is AI talking to AI. Every match is technically perfect. Every match is also completely meaningless. This is not a feature problem. You cannot algorithm your way out of a broken model. Here is the part nobody wants to say out loud: AI matching works great. Just not for hiring people. It works perfectly for hiring AI agents, where there is no adversarial dynamic, no gaming, no arms race. Clean signal. Real match. For hiring actual humans, a completely different model is needed. One built around trust, culture fit before the first interview, and the one channel that has always outperformed everything else: people vouching for people. The technology to do that at scale does not exist yet. I wrote about what it needs to look like, and why building it is the only hiring problem worth solving right now. #HRTech #FutureOfWork #TalentAcquisition #AIAgents #Recruiting https://lnkd.in/dEzaVDwY

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If your company's team building exercises are so cutthroat that payoffs are involved...you might be doing it wrong. This week on The New Talent Playbook Podcast, David Goldstein, Founder of TeamBonding, shares with us how the right team building exercises can unlock better collaboration, improve alignment, and create the kind of team chemistry that shows up in day-to-day performance. Catch the episode to hear David Goldstein share with Rob Levin: ✔️ Why the “trust falls” era of team building is long gone ✔️ How the power of play strengthens culture and retention ✔️ The biggest mistakes companies make when planning team events ✔️ How to integrate remote and international team members so they truly feel included If building a stronger, more connected team is on your 2026 agenda, you’ll want to hear this conversation. Don’t miss this week's episode of 🎙️ The New Talent Playbook Podcast: “Beyond Trust Falls: Team Building with the Power of Play” 🎧 Search for it on your favorite podcast platform. #podcast #newtalentplaybook #leadership #teambuilding

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🌍 The Foundation Is Moving. Is Your Hiring Strategy Adaptive or Static? 🚀 Founders and TA leaders across the US are feeling that the ground has shifted. This isn’t incremental change. It’s a structural rewrite of how work, talent, and value are created. Here’s what we’re seeing firsthand in the hiring market: 🔹 AI has replaced labor arbitrage — productivity now comes from intelligence, not headcount 🔹 Traditional hiring models are breaking — slow, rigid, and overbuilt for a fast market 🔹 The talent market has split — adaptive recruiters + candidates are outperforming static job-bound models 🔹 Speed + clarity now beat scale — the winners synthesize, execute, and iterate faster 🔹 Sensemaking is scarce — clients don’t need more resumes; they need a better signal. This is why RPO can no longer be a purely transactional approach. At SKILLECTS, we’ve redesigned RPO for the Expertise-on-Demand era: ✔ AI-enabled, domain-trained recruiters ✔ Plug-and-play offshore recruiter seats (no long ramp, no overhead) ✔ Output-driven SLAs (submissions, interviews, offers—not hours) ✔ Proven ROI in ≤90 days, with risk-free pilots The question for 2026 isn’t “Who can we hire?”. It’s “How fast can we adapt our hiring engine to the new reality?” If your recruiting foundation still belongs to the Industrial Era, it may be time to rebuild before market forces compel you to do so. 📩 Let’s talk if you’re ready to move from static hiring to adaptive talent execution. #FutureOfWork #RPO #AdaptiveHiring #AIEra #TalentStrategy #USStaffing #Leadership #DigitalTransformation #SKILLECTS #TechTrends2026

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In 2025, women are launching startups with less capital, more autonomy, and GenAI at the core. In my latest for Forbes, I unpack findings from Gusto’s 2025 New Business Trends report and spotlight how female founders are rewriting the startup playbook. They’re skipping VC dependency, building lean, and prioritizing flexibility and long-term sustainability over blitzscaling. 📈 Accelerators like Slauson & Co., Gold House's Gold House Ventures and South Park Commons are writing meaningful checks for women, immigrants, and nontraditional tech founders. 🤝 Communities like Supermomos, The AI Furnace 🧨, DOERS AND DREAMERS LIMITED, and Jadeva are reshaping what early-stage support looks like—with real community, mentorship, and thoughtful content. This isn’t a side hustle—it’s the start of something bigger. 📖 Read the full article: 👉 https://lnkd.in/e38WM9dY #FemaleFounders #GenAI #StartupCulture #GustoReport #VentureCapital #WomenInTech #AIStartups #Forbes #Supermomos #AIFurnace #JADEVA #DoersAndDreamers #SlausonAndCo #SPC #FounderCommunities

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A pattern I keep hearing from Early Career Recruiting leaders: “We’re drowning in applications, but struggling to identify top talent with confidence.” At Veris Insights, we’ve just launched a new research initiative to help teams navigate what we’re calling The Application Avalanche (check out the comments to learn a bit more about the details of this work) - the collision of rising application volume, unreliable candidate signals, and mounting pressure to make the right hire, fast. Here’s what we’re unpacking with TA and UR teams: 🔍 How to distinguish real potential when resumes start to blend 🤖 What rigor looks like when GenAI and candidate misrepresentation are real risks 🤝 How to maintain hiring manager trust when the stakes are high and the timelines are tight This work is grounded in one goal: to equip you with the tools, data, and confidence to hire fairly and effectively—even when the volume feels overwhelming. If your team is feeling this pressure, I’d love to connect and share what we’re learning—or just trade notes on what’s working. Let’s navigate this together. #UniversityRecruiting #EarlyTalent #TACommunity #HiringConfidence #VerisInsights

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Each week, I round up a few standout news stories shaping the world of hiring and talent. Here are three that caught my attention: 💌 Referrals aren’t the silver bullet. Ashby analysed 38M applications and found inbound still drives most hires. Referrals help – but they’re not everything. Loads of insight here for anyone shaping their hiring strategy. 🔎 Zuckerberg’s personally recruiting AI talent. He’s offering $100M packages and messaging candidates himself. When founders get that hands-on, it says a lot. Maybe we need more hiring managers doing the same? 💪 Workday’s AI rollout is worth copying. They focused on mindset, habits, and manager accountability – not just tools. It’s now their biggest L&D push in 20 years. Smart, simple, and effective. Full breakdown in this week’s Talent News Round-Up: https://lnkd.in/dZ4Wm39v

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