We were lucky to catch up with Zohra VEACH recently and have shared our conversation below.

Zohra, appreciate you joining us today. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?

Talent Acquisition is evolving like never before. AI and technology are rapidly transforming how we do just about anything and creating both opportunity and many challenges to the world of talent acquisition.

AI and automation are transforming recruitment in every way. Both from the applicant’s perspective with the ability to apply to hundreds of jobs instantly and with picture perfect resumes, overwhelming those charged with hiring with unseen before applicant volume, creating delays, more scrutiny and altimately resulting in less than ideal candidate and hiring experience across the board.

On the other hand we are in the beginning stages of AI tools automating a large portion of the hiring process creating opportunity to innovate as we continue to determine the role of recruiter AI agents. While some people will say we’re already there, the challenge I discussed above tells a different story.
AI will also streamline processes, help us focus on candidate qualifications and reduce human bias but since AI learns from the humans, we need to understand how much of that is realistic today and how much more learning it needs to do to weed through some of the biases and barriers. We don’t have enough data to confidently claim that today. Just like any technology, we need education, adoption and alignment to get it right. We will and the opportunities to redefine, revamp and innovate in TA, I find very exciting.
These are opportunities to improve our understanding, open doors with technology that we couldn’t imagine before.
Recruiting will change. No longer will recruiting be associated with posting jobs and matching keywords to skills because AI will do that for them.
Recruiters will need to be more strategic and take on the role of Talent Acquisition advisors and partners to stay relevant. They will have access to better data to influence and guide hiring teams and candidates. Their role will influence employee onboarding, development, as well as internal talent planning and recruiting. With AI, teams will be even leaner than we see today, giving way to a growing on-demand talent pool that is gaining popularity with the very senior choosing fractional roles vs the traditional employee roles with benefits, 401K, and what have you.

Zohra, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Like most people in my industry, recruiting is something I fell into and not something I planned for. Started as a sales rep on the agency side, but found myself not just interviewing clients but also candidates. I discovered that job matching wasn’t as black and white as matching candidate experience to jobs. People are more complex than that; they have goals, desires, and expectations for themselves and of the companies and people they work for. At this time, I was a new mom, and let’s just say flexibility was limited. When I asked for flexibility, I was told to put my premie newborn in day care like everyone else.
This changed my life because anyone who knows me knows that if you want me to do something, just tell me I can’t. I decided to start my first business on my terms and work from home doing the same thing I was doing, except for myself. It was exhilarating, I billed hundreds of thousands of dollars with large enterprises and loved every minute of it, but soon it came to an end with the financial market crisis of 2008
I then jumped in-house for the first video interview agency, helping them hire Sr. and director-level sales reps, and became really good at it by talent mapping. I would spend hours looking at organizations and career paths of the talent pool I was interested in and building relationships to help match the right talent to the right roles. Talent mapping led me to Google mapping executive talent and then to eBay and PayPal. I learned so much from my time at these iconic companies but wanted to be closer to the business and learn how thing work from an operational prospective, that is when I started my journey to startups and I have to say, I fell in love with the speed, the innovation and the ability to make decision and execute quickly.
I have spent over 10 years since that time building startups from the ground up, advising founders, partnering with leaders, and leading talent strategy, but something was missing. By the time I was brought in, the organizations were at least at series A and had over 20 employees. In some cases, they had already implemented an ATS, made foundational decisions without the help or benefit of a talent thought partner. I kept thinking and wondering how many startups could benefit from access to strategic resources and talent leadership. You see, hiring is one of the top 3 reasons startups fail, and a majority of startups fail. Inconsistent recruiting practices plus the lack of people infrastructure, Founder bandwidth, or experience in recruiting, hiring, and scalable people systems lead to job, interviewer, candidate, and employee misalignment, creating delays, missed product and revenue milestones, employee burnout, and failure if not corrected. One datapoint on this subject is that at least in the technology sector, which is where my focus has been, 50% of interviews fail to predict future performance, which is akin to a coin toss in deciding candidate fit through the interview process.
In 2024, I decided to start Talent Strategy Experts, providing fractional talent strategy and HR consulting to early-stage companies. Giving new founders and early-stage companies access to talent, thought leadership, and a full suite of HR consulting without the overhead of an in-house hire.

My company helps founders think through business needs, goals, and build talent strategies unique to their business from organizational design, job planning to competency planning, and job architecture. We work with our clients to implement scalable solutions that make sense for their size and stage, including recruiting, people and talent policies, recruiting tech stack, streamlining processes and alignment around hiring, onboarding, and employees, training interviewers, managing recruiting teams, implementing people programs, and manager enablement

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

This may sound cliché, but it’s true. Helping people is the reason I love what I do. I meet and help people every day. From advising pre-seed founders pro bono, sharing talent, making recommendations, to helping individuals with their search by reviewing resumes, discussing interview best practices, etc. without expectation. Just helping people.
Don’t get b wrong, we have a GTM plan, but I have to say, referrals from meetings and helping people are a large percentage of our clients.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Under promising and over delivering. Just like anything, reputation and trust are not these great big gestures. They are born out of genuine curiosity and interest, consistent actions, transparent and honest communication, and showing up. I have been fortunate to work with and learn from incredible mentors and leaders who are even better humans. I would not be here without that care and so I work every day to live up to the high bar and standard they continue to model.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.talentstrategyexperts.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zohraveach/