Lean TA, Not Mean TA: How ERM Built Capacity Without the Chaos
Hiring Excellence with Johnny CampbellShow Notes
Lean TA isn’t about cutting for the sake of it. It’s about clarity, consistency, and focus.
In this episode of the Hiring Excellence podcast, Johnny speaks with Robert Rice, Global Head of TA at ERM, about reshaping a 70-person TA team into a more focused team of 40 while strengthening process, improving data integrity, and moving upstream into commercial workforce planning.
This is a grounded look at structure, discipline, and practical AI use in a global organisation.
More from Hiring Excellence with Johnny Campbell
HSBC hires 40,000 to 50,000 people a year. So how do you bring AI into that without losing what matters most? In this conversation from our recent SocialTalent Live webinar, Johnny sits down with Noel Brown, Global Head of Enterprise Talent at HSBC, to unpack their guiding principle: don’t automate trust. Noel shares how HSBC uses an AI interviewer to understand the career goals of its own workforce, why the “no” experience matters as much as the “yes”, and why every dollar spent on tech needs $3–4 more in change to land.
Johnny sits down with Nick Vitale, Head of Global Talent Acquisition and Mobile Strategy at Kenvue, the consumer health company spun out of Johnson & Johnson. Nick walks through standing up a global TA function from a near-blank sheet: staying lean on tech at day one, using RPO for flexibility, and fixing people and process before technology. He also covers building recruiter capacity for real talent advisory work, and why agentic AI needs intent, not just enthusiasm.
Most TA teams are using AI to cope with more volume. Fewer are asking where it belongs. This episode replays AI Native, Still Human, a conversation from our SocialTalent Live webinar in September. Johnny talks to Kyle, Director of Talent Acquisition at Grindr, and Mick, co-founder of Smart Jobs. Kyle explains how an AI chief of staff built by his own recruiters takes a role from kickoff to launch in five minutes. Mick brings a sales lens: not every candidate is equal, because of how they found you.
Most employer brand teams are small and stretched. Hannah King, Head of Employer Brand and Recruitment Operations at Straumann Group, joins Johnny to share what drives results without a big budget. They cover measuring impact beyond vanity metrics, why recycling content beats chasing new ideas, and how one recruiter with a phone turned employee stories into higher reach and engagement. A practical listen for anyone who needs to prove employer brand isn't fluff.
Most companies keep their high-potential lists and succession plans well away from recruiters. Merck opened both.