Week of September 8th, 2025
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Why the Details Matter Now More Than Ever by Jeremy Lyons
Within RecOps, the devil is always in the details. The ability to exorcise those devils to turn work from tactical to strategic used to be the way you moved from IC to Manager and up. But, with our need to understand our tech stacks to build GPTs, agents, and automations, it is imperative to take it even further, especially because the more detailed you are with AI, the better the results. Now, this mindset of taking it further has been collectively called “the product manager mindset” by those in our space, as a nod to the skills product managers need for orchestrating engineering resources. What we are going to talk about here is both PM mindset and systems thinking.
I’ve heard the PM Mindset and systems thinking things before but I don’t know where to start. What is your recommendation?
These are a few tactical recommendations I have:
Learn to read product notes - Product release notes are typically written in straightforward language to quickly and effectively convey information to users. Before jumping into building an add-on to another tool, read the product release notes to see if they are already working on a way to address what you are trying to build. Additionally, if you are a team that releases update notes to your stakeholders (e.g., updates to your interviewers, recruiters, etc), you can take inspiration for style and delivery method.
Develop a personal framework - In an effort to help, RecOps teams jump into action. The problem with this approach is that it establishes reactivity from the start, when you should be proactive. So what do you do? Create a system or method for yourself that you can make a habit.
Change the language - Words invoke emotions. If people think you are moving slowly and they don’t understand why, they will come for you. Use your words to change thinking. For example, methodical doesn’t mean inaction; it means you follow a systematic or established form of procedure. Now, you probably jumped on “systematic,” “established,” and “procedure” there, and it conjured an image of something slow and monolithic, which are usually the reasons people like startups over established legacy companies. But you can find your methodical and structured even when things are going fast. Create two lists: one for things you can do quickly and another for those that take time. Then work on moving items from takes time to done quickly. Here is the thing - without a procedure, everything is different every time. Which leads us into this next point…
Solutions/outcomes only happen when the success criteria have been defined upfront - Personally, I despise the phrase, “You can’t change what you can’t measure.” I think it creates analysis paralysis and can also complicate a building. But if you define the success criteria upfront, then as you are building, you can create space for the data points you know you will need to measure. For example, say you want to create an agent that reduces time to fill. To be effective and methodical in your build, you would need to break down all the elements that contribute to time to fill (e.g., processes, number of touch points, who is involved) since it is a multifactor problem for the agent. You don’t necessarily need to give the agent data but you do need to provide the agent with the instances where there are datapoints.
These are all things PMs have to do day in and day out when balancing teams and stakeholders, while also creating flexibility for elements to be added.
Nominate yourself and nominate your professional colleagues in the ROCAs
RecOps Collective Corner
RecOps, The GPT - Available in the OpenAI store and free to use.
Prompt You Can Use Today:
Before you close a chat, ask the LLM you are using the following question to improve your speed and accuracy for the next time:
How could have I gotten to the final result faster? What could have I thought about sooner? What should I consider structurally and procedurally in the future to be more effective and pointed?
Articles / Industry News
📖 🎧 Articles/Graphics/Podcasts/Posts On Our Radar (sorted by type - Bolded denotes individuals)
Cronofy’s How developers can use ChatGPT’s calendar connectors to streamline appointment booking (article)
Laura Lockwood’s Recruiter’s Playbook: Fix the JD Before It Breaks Your Search (1/7) (article & guide)
John Vlastelica’s Ready, Fire, Aim? Why Great TA Teams Pause to Aim First (article)
Eploy’s ATS Buyer’s Guide (guide)
Offer Accepted with Shannon Ogborn and Ari Garcia on Minimizing Candidate Fraud in Hiring with Internal Partnerships (podcast)
Joel Lalgee and Adam Stokar’s Episode #113: AI and the Future of Recruitment: Solving Talent Acquisition Challenges (podcast)
Gem and Growth by Design’s 2025 Recruiting Trends Report - Talent acquisition in 2025: The efficiency imperative (report)
Employ’s The True AI Revolution in Talent Acquisition (whitepaper)
📰 Product News (sorted alphabetically)
Attesto (Candidate Evaluation) - Product Launch: Attesto Trust Layer for Candidate Detection
Brighthire (Hiring Intelligence) - Announcement: New Era of Brighthire
Dover (ATS/Screening) - Product Update: Job boards just got way better and See recruiter costs for hiring similar roles
Gem (AiO) - Product Update: AI Company Description
GoodTime (Scheduling) - Product Update: August 2025, Updates to Orchestra AI Agent
Greenhouse (ATS) - Product Update: Waitlist for Real Talent goes live, Big Update on product Sept 16
iCIMS (ATS) - Acquisition: Apli, a fast-growing, AI-powered recruitment automation innovator focused on the frontline hiring experience
Juicebox (Sourcing/CRM) - Product Update: Your Shortlists Now Have Automatic Notes, Autopilot Reviews Just Got Lightning Fast, Switching Agent Owners Between Users, Log Social Profile Activities in Profiles
Kula (AiO) - Product Update: Schedule All feature
LinkedIn (Job Board) - Product Release: AI Assistant
Metaview (AI Recruitment Platform) - Award: AI Europe 100 winners, Announcement: AI Sourcing Agent in beta
ModernLoop (Hiring Experience Platform) - Product Launch: Taylor AI
Pin (Recruiting Automation) - Product Update: August 2025. Integration: Ashby
Pinpoint (ATS) - Announcement: G2 Leaders Fall 2025
Poetry (Hiring Enablement) - Integration: Pointpoint v1 White Label
SCALIS (ATS / Job Board) - Produce Update: Bella 2.0 released
SmartRecruiters (ATS) - Announcement: Officially acquired by SAP
Permanent Articles
Recruiting Operations: Dictionary & Resources
Events
Week of September 15th
Recruiting Brainfood’s New Recruitment KPI's for Tomorrow’s Talent Acquisition Adriano Herdman (We Are Move), Emma Mirrington (The Talent Labs), Alan Price (Deel), and Neil Morelli (Workplace Labs)
Pinpoint’s Do More With Less: Four Proven Ways to Maximise TA Impact
Nate Wylie (Infinate Talent) and Recruit CRM’s Is your recruitment tech stack ready for 2026?
Gem’s Supercharge Your Workday ATS with Gem: Strategies from Cushman & Wakefield with Natasja B., Zach Miller, and Joshua Lensmire
Week of September 22nd
hireEZ’s Data in Action: Driving Talent Strategy with Performance Reports and Strategic Analytics
Warden AI’s California’s New Rules on AI in Employment: What Employers and Vendors Need to Know
Recruiting Brainfood’s Ghosting: Job Applicant Tsunami is No Excuse! with Daniel Chait (Greenhouse) and Kevin Grossman
Brighthire and GoodTime’s How HubSpot is reimagining recruiting with AI with Becky McCullough, VP of Talent Acquisition at HubSpot
Week of September 29th
SoCal RecOps Meet-Up - DM Jeremy or Melissa Willis if you want more details :)
Week of October 20th
Week of November 3rd
Job Search
Here is the list of previously listed jobs, which may or may not be available.
Additional Resource
We consolidated this section into job search resources on our Linktree.
Boolean Strings for Specific ATS Job Search
We’ve consolidated our list of Boolean search strings for RecOps professionals to make them more accessible for everyone. Check out the list here. Kaitlyn Elting also built a generator for you if you are worried about your attention to detail.
Thank you to Steve Levy for contributing so many beautiful and Gabi Preston-Phypers for QA help. Follow both of them for excellent Boolean and sourcing content.
#YourNextHire / People Looking In the RecOps Community
Are you a RecOps professional looking for work? If you have 5 minutes, take the opportunity to complete this quick questionnaire. Not only will you be featured in an upcoming Roundup, it will also help us mention your name when people ask for referrals.
Here is a Google Sheet View for a list of people who were previously featured and are still looking.
🎉 Reminders and Disclaimers 🎉
If you’d like to contribute a job, an article (one you found or wrote), or if you are a company and have a product update you want featured, contact Jeremy Lyons.
Please use this form if you or someone you know would like to be featured in our #YourNextHire section. The only condition is that you are a RecOps professional.
Disclaimer #1: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and they do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis do not reflect the position of any entity other than the author. As critically thinking professionals, these views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time. They are not to be held in perpetuity.
Disclaimer #2: We are sponsor-free. No company below has paid us to advertise their products or share their open jobs. If that changes, we will deliberately call out where we stand to benefit. Additionally, sharing these opportunities and information does not imply support for these companies or their practices. Regarding jobs, we share these opportunities with the community and only post roles from the company's website. We encourage possible candidates to research each one, as their inclusion does not mean we support the companies or their values.
Until next week, Regulators 😊