Hiring Smarter, Not Harder: What Every Manager Should Know (with Joel Schwann)
LEADERish: leadership lessons, straight up
Release Date: 10/10/2025
LEADERish: leadership lessons, straight up
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Episode: S4E20 – Hiring Smarter, Not Harder: What Every Manager Should Know Guest: Joel Schwann, Founder of Schwann Stratifier In this follow-up to one of our most popular job-seeker episode, we flip the script. This week, Leaderish co-hosts Doris Dunn and Regina Taute welcome back Joel Schwann to explore the other side of the hiring equation — what hiring managers can do to find, evaluate, and retain great talent more effectively. Joel brings nearly a decade of experience in HR, recruiting, and workforce planning. Together, they dig into the practical and often...
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Summary: In this powerful and compassionate episode, Lauren Kiproff-Downer returns to Leaderish for a heartfelt and strategic conversation about caregiving in the workplace. Whether you’re caring for aging parents, children, or someone else in your life, or leading teams who are, this episode is for you. Lauren, an organizational psychologist and founder of Perpara Organizational Development Consulting, shares insights on how leaders and organizations can better support employees who are caregivers—an often invisible but growing demographic. From practical workplace policies to...
info_outlineEpisode: S4E20 – Hiring Smarter, Not Harder: What Every Manager Should Know
Guest: Joel Schwann, Founder of Schwann Stratifier
In this follow-up to one of our most popular job-seeker episode, we flip the script. This week, Leaderish co-hosts Doris Dunn and Regina Taute welcome back Joel Schwann to explore the other side of the hiring equation — what hiring managers can do to find, evaluate, and retain great talent more effectively.
Joel brings nearly a decade of experience in HR, recruiting, and workforce planning. Together, they dig into the practical and often overlooked parts of hiring that make or break the process — from writing a solid job description to avoiding “permanent contractors” and ensuring fairness across interviews.
💡 Highlights:
- The power of a strong job description and why most companies skip this critical step.
- How to determine whether you really need a contractor or a full-time employee.
- The importance of setting clear non-negotiables (and stopping at five).
- Why structured interviews matter — and how to avoid bias.
- How many interviews are too many (hint: fewer than you think).
- Real talk about AI screening, candidate experience, and ghosting.
- What organizations like Amazon are getting wrong about unpaid interview projects.
Whether you’re leading a team or building one, this episode is packed with practical strategies to help you hire smarter, faster, and more humanely.
Sequence:
00:00 Introduction and Welcome Back
00:38 Discussing Job Market Trends
01:44 Introducing Joel Schwan and Workforce Planning
02:16 Challenges for Hiring Managers
04:58 Importance of Job Descriptions
07:16 Evaluating Resumes and Skills
14:18 Interview Questions and Techniques
18:37 Structured Interviews and Fairness
19:41 How Many Interviews Are Necessary?
19:56 The Ideal Interview Process
20:20 Panel Interviews and Exceptions
20:42 Candidate Experience Matters
21:39 Interviewing for Different Levels
26:18 Efficient Interview Scheduling
32:05 The Role of Assessments
36:44 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up
🎧 Available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.
📩 Want to be a guest? Email us at leaderishpodcast@gmail.com
We'd love to connect! You can find us in all of these places:
- Regina
- Email: regina@collectivegrowthcc.com
- Website: https://www.collectivegrowthcc.com
- Newsletter subscription: https://collectivegrowthcc.com/resources#blog
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginataute
- Free Coaching Session: https://calendly.com/collective_growth/complimentary-30-min-coaching-session
- Doris
- Email: doris@dunnwise.com
- Website: https://www.dunnwise.com
- Newsletter subscription: https://www.dunnwise.com/blog
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doris-dunn
- Schedule a Discovery Call: https://calendly.com/dunnwise-consulting/30min_discovery_call
- Joel:
- Website: https://www.schwanstratifyr.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelschwan/
- Free Resume Template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16yPPIAnFpzM1Xfc-BdGMnByM19wgsUqe/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114233432138195416514&rtpof=true&sd=true
- Free AI Resume Assistant: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-ldX568rNT-schwan-stratifyr-resume-assistant