Stacy Zapar spent almost 30 years teaching recruiters how to find great talent. She built the Zappos Insider program and trained teams at Amazon, Netflix, and Walmart. Now she's back from a multi-year hiatus with a new mission: helping recruiters catch candidate fraud before it costs them the hire.

Colleen and Stacy dig into how organized this fraud has gotten, why AI made it worse before it gets better, and Stacy's new model, "candidate curation," for blending attraction, assessment, and authentication into every stage of the funnel. Plus the origin story behind her new community, Fraud Squad, and a few personal detours involving Fireball shots and a serious game show obsession.

Takeaways:

• Fraud and volume are two sides of the same problem. Bots, auto apply, and AI written resumes have made every funnel noisier, so the real fix isn't more screening at the end, it's reducing junk at the front door.
• Assume sophistication on the other side. Fraud rings operate like businesses, with shared scripts, proxy interviewers, and laptop farms; recruiters who treat fraud as a one off problem will always be a step behind.
• Don't bolt AI onto a broken process. Layering automation on top of an outdated 2019 hiring funnel doesn't fix it, it just breaks it faster; redesign the process first, then apply AI.
• Build deterrents that are invisible to good candidates but costly for bad actors. Things like in person final rounds or small pre-screen tasks create friction for fraud without adding burden for legitimate applicants.
• Authentication isn't a final round checkbox, it's a continuous thread. Talent attraction, assessment, and authentication should run together at every candidate touchpoint, not in sequential funnel stages.

Quote of the Show:

• "We're not organized as an industry, but the fraud rings absolutely are. I just want us to be one step ahead for once." - Stacy Zapar

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacyzapar/
• Website: https://thisistenfold.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• Recruiters On The Rise Website: https://recruitersontherise.com/
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/recruiters-on-the-rise/id1891705495
• Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b7f77aa2-de4c-4e5c-b5de-cfe60fe39c77
• iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/328811219/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@recruitersontherise

In this episode of Recruiters on the Rise, host Colleen Gallagher sits down with John Curran, Director of Talent Acquisition at Hillendale Home Care. John has been in recruiting since the mid 1990s, back when Java was not yet a thing and Dice was the only way to find technical talent. He spent decades in tech and biotech at companies like Symantec, Invitae, and Genomic Health before making a deliberate pivot to in-home senior care closer to home. With seven years of sales experience in his back pocket, John brings a grounded, people first perspective to talent acquisition that is equal parts strategic and human.

Takeaways:

• Curiosity is the one thing that sets the best recruiters apart. The recruiters who truly stand out are the ones willing to lean into discomfort, challenge what is not working, and speak up in a professional and positive way. It is not about being formulaic. It is about being genuinely curious and unafraid to do things differently.

• Metrics are a diagnostic tool, not a report card. Conversion ratios, time to fill, and quality of hire numbers are most powerful when they reveal root causes rather than assign blame. At Danaher, tracking every stage of 435 manufacturing hires showed bottlenecks in interviewer availability, not recruiter performance. The data pointed the team to the real problem.

• Challenge the thought, not the person. When coaching hiring managers toward better decisions, the most effective recruiters reframe the conversation around outcomes rather than ego. Getting a peer to adopt a new process and seeing it succeed publicly can do more than any direct pushback ever could.

• Employer brand only works when it is authentic. At Genomic Health, John helped build a culture brand so genuine that alumni still gather for dinners today. From flash mobs to professionally produced culture videos, the goal was always to capture the real spirit of the place, not manufacture one.

• Non tech companies are an untapped opportunity right now. For recruiters who are displaced or burned out on long commutes and rigid structures, industries like senior care, manufacturing, and utilities are hungry for recruiting expertise and far more open to new ideas. The impact potential is enormous, and the appreciation is real.

Quote of the Show:

• "I just stopped being afraid. You just shake it off. There's a certain point where you're like, yeah, I don't care. Let's just do it. And I think it's very empowering if you can get beyond that point." - John Curran

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-curran-55600a1/
• Website: https://hillendalehomecare.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• Recruiters On The Rise Website: https://recruitersontherise.com/
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/recruiters-on-the-rise/id1891705495
• Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b7f77aa2-de4c-4e5c-b5de-cfe60fe39c77
• iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/328811219/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@recruitersontherise

Bruce Nichols didn't plan on a career in HR. He planned on jumping out of planes for 25 years and retiring at Home Depot. Life had other ideas. After leaving the 82nd Airborne, Bruce fell into recruiting, then into HR leadership, and spent the next few decades inside some of the most complex business environments around, including a $2 billion private equity acquisition where he ended up standing in a pile of soot in a Brooks Brothers suit, learning the most important lesson of his career. Now a Partner at the Human Resources Consortium, Bruce sits down with Colleen to talk about what it actually takes to be a great recruiter, why HR needs to stop playing the policy police, and how understanding a P&L changes everything about how you lead people.

Takeaways:

• The best recruiters know the business as well as the business does. Deep domain fluency means you are sourcing proactively before the job is even open, not scrambling after a req drops.
• Culture drives productivity. The most credentialed candidate in the room can be your worst hire if they do not fit how the team actually works. Diligence on culture fit is not optional.
• HR needs to move from reactive to predictive. Knowing which skills the business will need in three years and building pathways to get there saves money, preserves culture, and makes HR a strategic asset instead of a cost center.
• Sit with the CFO. If you want a seat at the table, you have to understand the financial mechanics of the business. The numbers are not someone else's job.
• Adaptability is the skill of the moment, and almost no one is assessing it well. The ability to learn, shift, and move forward in ambiguity is as important as any hard skill on a resume.

Quote of the Show:

• "Culture drives productivity. You can find the best candidates on paper, but if they don't fit the culture, you're wasting your time anyway." - Bruce Nichols

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucernichols/
• Website: https://thehrc.com/

Ways to Tune In:

• Recruiters On The Rise Website: https://recruitersontherise.com/
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6j8LK95YtqW7ZMU4kwBNgR
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/recruiters-on-the-rise/id1891705495
• Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b7f77aa2-de4c-4e5c-b5de-cfe60fe39c77
• iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/328811219/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@recruitersontherise