The Hiring Truth: Why talent alone isn't enough in 2026

Create with Fran Sydney. Hello everyone and welcome to the show. We are very excited today to bring you an amazing, amazing guest all the way from Miami in Florida. So I'm gonna say first of all hello to Stephanie Michelle Pimentel. Hi Franz. Ciao. Thank you for having me. I'm excited and very thankful that you taking some time to talk to me because today you guys were talking about one of your big problems. And it's a problem that happens in this way. You apply for a role.

You send an amazing resume, you send a beautiful letter, and nothing happens. You're hitting a wall. Why? Why? What's going on? So you're kind of desperate and you're looking for maybe lesser roles, less pay. Or Second scenario, you apply for the role, get into get your interview, get inside your job, and then you got an amazing dream title. And then you realize your own company and leadership have no idea, no clarity on what you're suggesting.

And you know the this is actually more common than you think. Especially the hiring part is very here, very much um complex issue we are facing in 2020. So there is a little bit of a broken hiring culture. For this reason I go here The topic for today is the hiring truth because we have Steph who is a first generation Dominican American and she actually built a global advisory firm From zero, from Grand Zero, and she's helping US giants to expand in Latin America.

She's also an expert in forensic psychology and HR, so she can see right through this performative leadership of today's workplace. So, welcome again, and let's talk straight away of why. Are failing or actually are they actually failing? Do they lack talent? Or is there something there with a because we all think, you know, we're all going wrong. What's wrong with them? Not good enough now. So I passed the microphone.

Thank you, friends. Uh people aren't failing to get hired because they lack talent. They're failing because companies don't know how to define roles anymore. They don't know how to evaluate leadership or build trust anymore. So what's going on is that our systems are broken, right? We have to have leaders or leadership take accountability. And we don't give them those seats at the table anymore. We rush through higher.

what their role is really. And the company itself doesn't really know what it is. They know they need it. They know they want this this big big title. They hire the person, but in the Data they're the the role it's not defined in itself. I see massive hiring is scares me, right? Because what happens is you're

worried more about speed and not about quality. So you're not sitting with your leaders and really defining these roles before you start sourcing people, interviewing, going through resumes and filling them. So when they join on day one, they feel, okay, I finally got the company I wanted. I got the title I wanted. I got the pay I wanted.

Within four or five days, you realize they don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they want you to do. They want you to understand what the company's goal is and figure it out on your own. So is this like a guessing game? So when they do the in the hiring process, have they not listing there all the things that we want you to do? What's where is the broken chain here? No, most of those uh job descriptions are generic. And now ChatGPT wrote them. Right? So there is no human

connection to these hiring roles anymore. Chat GPT defined a role. This is what you're looking for. You s you slept it on LinkedIn. People started applying. Whatever matched the most b word for word is who goes to the top of the pile, you start interviewing them, and you hire whoever you think is best. But whoever you thought was best against what. You have no idea really what you wanted that role. From the beginning. I'm getting scared. It is worse than I thought.

Even the HR and even the leaders are now using Chat GBT. Everybody. Everybody. But over the past decade, hiring has shifted from intentional to reactional. We got all this money. We need to start filling these roles. We we we have these goals for this company, but it's very it's not operational. It's not strategic.

you know, um the leaders in the front forefront know what they want. We want more money, we want more revenue. So we need to fill these roles to get that revenue. And they tie it so much to to revenue and they forget what they actually need as as especially in leadership levels, right? So I've seen talented professionals given impressive titles without real authority. clear mandates or even structural support. No structural support. This creates fear in those leaders that they're hired.

So what happens to that leader? That leader is is fearful for not being able to deliver. They get burnt out and there's a short li job cycle there. So it damages both the career of that leader and also the company rep the company's reputation. And I don't know if it's it's something I can ask, but is there any example you can bring from a real company that you know, even small company? So that I can really understand how that happens.'Cause I I sometimes have ideas but otherwise no.

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Oh I can put I can I can I can give you a very good example, right? Women in leadership. And it's something that we spoke about briefly, right? We want to take that box as a company. We want that diversity box. Look, we have women in leaders. What happens after the leader is in that position? She has the leadership title, but no real authority. C-level doesn't trust her. The C-suite doesn't trust her. So what happens? They make her sit in a corner somewhere and just be quiet.

And without giving her any real authority. What happens to her team when the leader doesn't have real authority? There's no real way of of managing expectations, pumping the numbers the company wants. and and in showing that I know what I'm doing.

It's impossible because you don't have the real authority. They're they're taking your title and they're just putting it on paper on a website, but they're not really giving you any space to execute and show that that strategic uh knowledge that you have and the strategic power that you possess. Would this also be reflected onto all the DA and all these minorities so we have to interview a certain number of disabled people or young people or older people or something?

Is it the same that they don't really get the authority because people know why they're hired? I wouldn't say specifically that they were they're the D and I are getting hired more than the people with the talent are because I think they do once you know your goal you do a good you do a good job trying to I think the system itself is broken. It boils down to you're not understanding what the the clear role is from the beginning.

So you're working off of generic uh generic job descriptions and you're just hiring people onto these roles, but it's not really what the company needs because you're not telling the person what they really need to do, what you really need them to do. So it's like a secret for if they don't want you to know. Some of them are gatekeepers, yes, I would say. Some of them are gatekeepers or some of them just really are uh worried about the outcome that they want to control.

of what actually happens and they don't trust their leaders enough. Mm-hmm. So you sorry. Mm-hmm. It's like if you can't do something right, you know, I'd rather do it. So they don't they don't trust their leaders enough to let them execute. You hired them for a reason, let them execute. Mm-hmm. And that's a big problem. I remember interviewing a guy, I can't remember the name now, I can't believe it, hundreds of people. And um Jimmy Carlo, how can I forget his name? It was a

About a month ago and he was talking exactly about that. We hire the people and they're like floating there and we're trying to do all the job for them'cause we don't really trust them and then so they cannot grow and then we go into burnout completely. And then the one guy did I interview two hours before you say And he was talking about another aspect he was saying we're going autopilot so

And it's not really listening to his people, so it becomes controlling, demanding and the people leave. And then the the company has Explained by Jim Carl and you people who listen to the past will remember the company has to hire new people which it costs millions and one or two years of retraining because they can find a person but the leadership is just sitting there doing exactly the same thing.

without changing, without looking inside and so we've got looking at their own mindset as well. So We now see why there are these unclear roles and this performative lead leadership today. The real reason why we cannot have a right person or the person goes there and is not doing well. So you talked about your bio, about your cultural intelligence, a human-first relationship and leadership.

the beat automation. Can you explain that how how we can beat this automation and AI we search for a real job where we can give our talent And see something growing other days, instead of feeling like resentful and we're not used or something, you know, very frustrating I think for most people. So let's let's give you all the solution time here.

Uh clarity before speed is my solution, right? AI can't do that for you. AI is very speedy and it just throws information at you and you feel that that's the way and because AI said it, right? But if you don't have boots on the ground, right, when companies expand, let's say globally.

any gaps that you have in your leadership, in your structure, in your strategy, in your culture is gonna be amplified with this expansion, right? Because you don't understand the culture where you're em you're expanding to. You don't understand You don't know the expectation of the expansion once you're in that market, right? And it often gets misunderstood or ignored. So these are the things that you need people for. You need to build relationships. You need to you need to be able to

It down for you a bit, right? We're going so fast now because of AI. When companies slow down to define roles specifically, decision rights and culture context, right? Hiring outcomes, improving meetings. Immediately. You start because you're taking your time to tailor your needs, to understand the culture, to your company's culture, and to understand who has the decision right. in your company, right? So when when that happens, like I said, hiring um outcomes improve immediately, right?

From an HR and operational standpoint, the people getting hired and retained in 2016 are those who can translate strategy into execution. Right. So AI can pump out a strategy for you, but who's going to execute? Right. And plus the strategy is probably a clone of a clone who knows what. You have to know how to use AI because you're just gonna throw back to you. It's like a mirror, isn't it?

You know, give it back to you all well written and think, oh that sounds good, press a button, send it over this newsletter to everyone in in the company and then they're like, What is this? They're probably putting it to AI to understand what it means. So if you want to be retained in 2026, you got hired and you want to be retained, you don't want to burn out.

You have to be a str you have to be able to execute that strategy because AI is a tool. It's gonna give you that strategy. But if you can lead across cultures and operate with accountability. instead of just performative leadership, like you mentioned earlier, you know, you're the one that's going to stand out above the rest. Be able to really execute that strategy that AI is pumping out. Yeah, and that requires a lot of layering of understanding.

understanding skills, experience. It is very hard to get so I can see what's going on here because I send my resume and nowadays people will use AI to When AI is filtering the resume on the other side, they probably talk to themselves because as you know now all these um AI agents they have it on social media so they're talking to themselves and laughing at us.

because you're just using us like idiots, right? And then all this stuff that's been churned out, you you m perhaps talk about it in the interview, but then when you are there on your desk No, on your disc. By your desk, because you cannot sit on your desk on day one. You're there and you have all these problems to solve and you're like Oh, I don't even know where to turn for this because yeah, I'm not a strategist, I'm not an engineer.

And so you get laid off because after two weeks nothing happened there. So there must be a way there to come out of this. Tell me more, tell me more. I'm I'm very curious to see how I came out of this problem. I mean that's what my work focuses on. My work focuses on helping organizations rebuild that trust through structure, not the hype, not the AI hype. So people are set so people are set up from the beginning to succeed rather than quietly pushing them out because they didn't

they didn't meet your expectation. But the problem is this person joined not knowing your expectation because that the that role was not defined properly because you didn't even know what you wanted. So organizations like Ryan come in and they help you define that first. So from day one, you build that trust with your team. and they're able to build onto and and and improve your structure.

So I think that is what's the most important thing is really sitting down and defining what you want for your company, what you want as a for your leaders, what you want them to and really define that step by step the way it was done before. So you have a rewiring of a mindset. So moving from this survival role and uh we're thinking more about what's your identity as a company, where are you going, what's what is important for you.

And um we have lots of, you know, Gen Z looking for work and then people who are forty fifty looking for work.

How do we translate this strategy into action? Is this something you can learn? Is there a school for that? Do you have to practice that so you can put that in your resume? How does it look like in in proper terms? What am I gonna send to these people so they hire me that I am a a problem solver? How do we know that?

Well first you have to you have to if you can't beat him join them right you have to be trained in AI unfortunately that is the world that we're living in because AI is a tool but it's not gonna replace humans the way everybody thinks. So you do have to train yourself in AI, but then you have to show the person that's hiring you that you're able to execute what AI is pumping up. in a way that they can trust you, in a way that shows that your experience is going into what AI is pumping out.

So I think what's gonna make you what's gonna make you stand out from the rest and the people that are not going to be replaced are those people that are able to translate that, translate that tool into into leadership. Um leadership in general. So you want to be able to stand out as a a a leader that people can count on, that people admire and trust, that they have the knowledge, not only are

reading what a paper says based on what AI pumped out. I think this was the most important thing. That is a very important thing. And is there anything that I didn't ask you that was actually important to talk about? I think besides defining the authority before you hire, I also think that you have to make the executive decision to trust your leaders.

You give them them this massive salary, this massive title, you put them on your company website. You have to trust them enough. Or you have to trust your decision enough. It's a mindset. shift, right? You have to trust your decision enough from hiring this leader that this person is going to represent you and your company the way that you ex that you want. Right. But you have to have that mindset shift as a leader.

So maybe we need to retrain the leaders who are now hiring people all fluffed up with AI stuff. And people don't know what we're doing and so there's a lot of change in the whole industry. It's making some people, you know, it's just kind of ruffling our feathers a little bit'cause we are quite unsure of what what to expect. And is that the same for People who let's say they're looking for work now, but they've been doing the job for many years. Let's say twenty years, right?

And now do I have to train in AI if I have forty, fifty, maybe a single woman or divorced woman? Oh the children have gone out of the nest, the husband died and now I'm gonna go back to work. She has experience but she never knew AI, but she knows what to do. Does she really have to? Train with the I'm for a friend. Yeah. I think um it goes deeper than that and I'll give you a a very personal story.

uh one of my experiences, I because I've always been a leader in HR, I've had to execute a lot of terminations, right? You become desensitized to it, but one of the ones that affected me the most that I actually needed a minute after the termination, um I had to go back in my office and cry. Because I was releasing someone that was really well trusted in the company. It was a finance position, but this person, no matter how much we trained them, did not.

um advanced with the times. So the software that we were using, it was very hard for that person to grasp. uh we trained and overtrained and we tried many different angles for the person to to learn it, the new software. And that was just software. Right. Unfortunately in the end, it was a performance. And we had to let the person go. And it was one of the hardest ones for me because I knew that that person was at the end of their career.

And was not gonna be able to and I also knew them on a personal level because you do have conversations with your staff. And I knew that that person's family depended solely on their finances. So letting that person go was really hard, but there was no option once you put them on a performance plan and you give them the tools necessary and you sit there and and train them through new software and they're not able to grasp the information.

So if you're asking me, everyone needs to learn AI, absolutely. Because you will be replaced by somebody that's able to execute the strategy.

From AI. So it's a harsh, harsh reality, but that's that's how it is. I know you also prepared some tips for us. Is there anything you would like to share? I do have some tips, friends. I think um for me, I'm gonna keep it short and clean, right? So I'm gonna get to the point, but I will define it for those people that are listening, for those CEOs that are listening, for those company owners, um founders.

You want to define authority before you hire, right? If a role cannot clearly answer what decisions does this person own, right? They're not ready to be filled. The decision has to be owned by the person that you are giving them to. So if you don't have that clearly defined, the position is not ready to be posted. It's not ready to be filled. You have to go back to the drawing board with your team to really define it.

And stop confusing speed for progress, I would say is my next tip. Mm-hmm. Expound. If you're all if you're all if fast hiring without structure. creates churn, not growth. That embarrasses you as a company. You burn out your needers. you lose public trust. You want to make sure that you don't confuse speed as we are now, very fast at everything. I can I can build a whole business in five minutes on Chat GPT, right? You don't want to confuse speed with progress.

It's not progress if it's not well structured and if it's not a human person there verifying and executing it.

Mm-hmm. Step by step. And then I will say my last one is treat culture as an operating system, not a perk. So especially in international teams, misalignment costs more than salaries ever will. So a misaligned culture will cost you so much money. Thousands, millions, depending on your company size. So you have to treat your culture as an operating system.

So the culture is the operator can you explain mis not everyone knows this misalignment thing. Give me a clear example for'cause we have an audience that goes all the way from Brazil to Australia, I go Africans, I go Nigerian, I go Indian. What is this misalignment? Let's say that you are in a small company, you know. 5 people, 10 people working there

How can it be misaligned? Shouldn't it be quite clear what the values are, what the direction is, what the forecast, what the budget is, and I'd see it more than you know, right? So I help come US companies expand to Latin America. So if you don't understand the work culture. the way people in that office, let's say, overseas sees higher The way they communicate is different than us. The way they operate, the way

even the speed that they operate in, you know, the values that they have are different from yours. So we cannot expect just because you are a US company in Latam, That for that Latin American country or office that you're operating out of understand or expect them to work like the URL. I think we have to find a happy medium and uh really blend both cultures in order for you to be successful and in order for you not to lose um trust in your in your employ in your employee.

That's a great point. And I think culturally we're all different and myself I know because thirty years in Italy, a couple of weights. Greece and whatever, and then c thirty years in in the UK and the the culture is totally different, isn't it? You expect different things at work and everything. And I remember a friend of us, some Eight years ago we we went on a an religious mission for a church and we went from England to New Zealand.

And they were there for like I don't know, eighteen months probably, two years, I can't remember. And uh when they were there they were Thinking and speaking in English because everyone speaks English, but the culture was much more chill and laid back, as you also will see in Australia.

right away, you know? And nothing happened. And a day passed, today passed. They're like, I mean we wanted this document. Why we're not here? We asked so so many hours ago and people look at them and say We don't do things fast. We don't do things fast. We will do it when we get to do it. Don't worry, but it's not England. I remember her face. Absolutely. Absolutely. I've had I've had situations where

The US leader calls the Latin American leader and who did this? Who did this? And everybody says quiet because it's a collective effort. It's not individual like here. So the work culture is very much collective. The team failed you, not one person. So they will never give you a name of one person. Right. So visor the subtle nuances the AI is not gonna catch for you, isn't it? So that's what we understand and also No, and they do.

They do. Depending how you prompt AI, it will it will catch it. The problem is without boots on the ground, without the everyday changes, without you being, without you having that person that actually is immersed in this.

In this experience in that country that you're going through, right? To or even state. Let's talk about US, right? State by state is different as well. Yeah. So If you don't have boots on the ground, there's no AI that's going to be able to help you with that kind of experience. Du, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palstält i lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, man hade en skribbord, jag köpte en sån här, och kontorstolar, och sen hade de en skit.

Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till Argen. Yeah, that's a big, big difference. I'm so thankful that we have this conversation because cultural differences are part of my life. I live with an American and I'm Italian British and we do lots of things differently and we're like oh you do this in this way and you do that in the other way This is all the time because we realise

There are hundreds of ways of doing something and they're not all wrong or whatever. It just how we we think that's that's the only way, right? It's normal, isn't it? So if a company wants to grow, especially now with a global work and we have Wi Fi, we have internet everywhere, we have AI everywhere. So we can really work with every region of the world and yet things are so different. And we are different as individuals. The culture is different. Sometimes the language is

The way of working, like for example, I was watching a documentary from an American who moved to Australia a few years ago. And no, sorry. Yeah. So the one that went to Australia said, Wow, uh we are so busy in America but here in Australia they also chill and after work in between let's say For lunch break, we all go to the beach and relax. We all play together. Um volleyball with a boss and and that's fine, you know?

It's just different culture. And then another one moved to Greece, still Americans, a couple, moved to Greece and they say, Whoa, in America we think that be very, very busy all the time and be stressed out, that's a sign of success. While in Greece If you m ask somebody how are you doing and they say, Oh, I'm so busy you people will say, Oh, I'm so sorry Because you had to chill and relax. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Those are the little nuances that you have to understand when you want to explain when you want to think global. Yeah, like the arrival for appointments time in Italy and in Greece. I remember people arrive half an hour later, forty five minutes later and you're terrified. Why are you not showing up? But that's your culture.

If you say eleven means between eleven and twelve, it doesn't mean eleven. Well here it is like eleven is eleven or in Germany it's eleven. Eleven. It's eleven oh one and gone. So these little things make life really difficult unless we make an effort as leaders. And then as a team to kind of be become more cohesive by listening, understanding and opening our mind to the possibility that things can be done differently and still work really well.

Yes, absolutely. In the US, if you're on time, you're late. That's the culture here. Actually. If you're out on time you're late. Yes. I'm gonna have to say to my husband, wait time. That's it's been funny. Yeah.

I love this. So I want to thank you so much Steph because that was so eye opening, you know? It's not just about being hired. It's about being filtered by AI and then filtered again and then when you go there this boss says And you understand what you want. And maybe the best thing is if you're deep down in this problem, you can always go to Steph and look up her website and see if maybe they can do something for you. Have you got a website that we can show to everyone?

Yes, lumenaglobal.com and I'm also on LinkedIn as Lumena Global and Steph Michelle Pimentel on LinkedIn. You can always reach out to me. And remember, if you do see a generic job posting out there that doesn't clearly define the role, don't even apply. Don't get Take your time also applying. It's not only about the leader taking his time to define the role. It's also you taking your time to really investigate the comp the company. Be intentional when you're applying for work as well.

Yes, it's a great idea. Always understand it's been written by I hold on a minute. I want to know more about this. Maybe is it a good idea then to write ask you for qualif clarifications in case it isn't quite clear what you're gonna do? Yes, I would always reach out to the recruiter if it's listed. Right. They usually do a good job reaching back out and giving you that information. Right. That's a great thing. Well, I can only say thank you so much, Stephanie. And uh you guys.

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