Building a talent acquisition function capable of handling hundreds of monthly hires across multiple markets and languages is the kind of challenge that breaks conventional recruiting playbooks. There are dangerous potholes to avoid - how do you not spread yourself too thin?
Robbie Simpson has been a leader in this space, first at HelloFresh, then at Wolt and Glovo, and is now a consultant helping companies rethink how they build and scale their TA teams.
We had the chance to speak to him, getting some great insights into:
Why "global" doesn't mean "universal" and the 80/20 framework that makes global hiring work
The TA metric most teams over-index on, and the one they should be tracking instead
How AI is slowly eroding stakeholder relationships from the inside
The career path from agency recruiter to global TA leader
Robbie spent his first couple of years in the blockchain and crypto space back in 2017. He moved in-house before taking on his first leadership role at HelloFresh, focusing on data recruitment. But it was his next job at Wolt where he shifted his thinking: what happens when you apply the precision of tech recruitment to high-volume hiring?
"We were doing 500 hires a month across 20 markets and about 22 languages. From a technical standpoint, it was super interesting and challenging."
That experience managing a team of 60 at its peak deepened his focus on the operational side of TA automation, process design, and friction reduction at scale.
/Why global talent attraction doesn't mean one-size-fits-all employer branding
One of the biggest misconceptions Robbie sees in global talent attraction is the assumption that "global" means centralised command and control, with universal standardisation being applied to all markets, without room for local nuances.
His framework is simpler and far more effective: 80% company DNA, 20% local market DNA.
"Your company values are your non-negotiables. But then you've got your 20% which is country nuance."
That local 20% is about language, compliance, talent availability and understanding the actual team you're joining. An example is a sales team where everyone over-indexes in certain skills but collectively weakens in one area. The local TA team needs the freedom to hire for that gap, even if it doesn't match the global criteria.
"TA teams produce a lot of friction when they detach from local context. We're not hiring for a title. We're hiring to boost the local team's P&L; they're the ones earning money, "
The balance matters, though. He's clear that this isn't about creating 23 different company cultures. It's about consistent values with flexible execution, a principle that applies as much to employer branding as it does to hiring scorecards. If your EVP says "we give feedback candidly," how that looks across locations can vary in meaning, even though the underlying value is the same.
The goal you should be working toward is coherence over uniformity.
Which talent acquisition metrics actually predict quality of hire
When it comes to TA metrics, Robbie has a strong view on what's being over-indexed and what's being ignored.
"Time to fill is probably the most misleading metric right now."
Injecting automation into a hiring process can dramatically reduce time to fill, but without understanding the trade-offs, you're optimising for the wrong thing. He points to the growing trend of companies boasting about application volumes of 400,000-500,000 a year, without any real sense of quality.
"The TA function's purpose isn't the ‘time-to-fill’. It's ‘time-to-productivity’. From someone leaving, to hiring someone, to that person then delivering revenue."
When you focus too heavily on funnel speed, you make trade-offs on skills assessment, culture fit, and general aptitude. not to mention AI-powered automation that makes those trade-offs easier than ever.
The metric he believes deserves more attention is time-to-performance and how long it takes a new hire to meet their KPIs. He ran an analysis that illustrates the point perfectly: sales hires who started in cohorts of five reached their performance targets significantly faster than those who started alone.
"The actual cost of waiting two weeks for five people to be available was recovered and then some, through faster time to productivity."
You shouldn’t spend all your time focusing on getting people through the door quickly, but instead focus on how quickly they deliver value once they're in. How can you make their onboarding strategy, team composition, and cohort planning become part of the talent acquisition conversation, not just an afterthought?
How AI tools are undermining stakeholder management in recruitment
Robbie also explained how he believes that AI is “silently ruining stakeholder management".
He started noticing that the messages his team sent to stakeholders were technically correct but emotionally off-base. The content was sound, but the trust and human element that underpin effective stakeholder management were missing.
"People don't change because you're technically correct. They change because they trust you, and you're correct."
When he reviewed one of his team members' calendars and saw back-to-back calls with stakeholders, he realised they had been replying to each other via AI. Neither had consciously registered it, but both had instinctively recognised that nothing meaningful was happening over chat anymore.
"They were just two agents speaking to each other."
It's a pattern that should concern anyone in TA, HR, or employer branding who relies on stakeholder buy-in to get things done. The efficiency gains from AI can quietly hollow out the relationships that make these functions effective. If your Slack messages are getting more polished but your stakeholder calls are multiplying, it might be worth asking why.
How to improve team collaboration in a fast-paced environment
Robbie shared a practice he's refined over time that's relevant to anyone managing people or cross-functional stakeholders: a simple one-page document he calls "how to work with me," which he updates roughly every three months.
It covers the basics. When are you at your most productive? How do you prefer to communicate? How do you give and receive feedback? What motivates you? How do you flag temporary context, such as personal life changes, that might affect how you show up?
The real value lies in what it enables: instead of guessing, he can check his guide and spot the misalignment.
" It gives me a chance to reflect. Maybe they’re not the problem. Maybe how I'm addressing the problem is the problem ."
For HR and people leaders, this is a low-effort, high-impact tool, particularly for distributed or global teams where assumptions about working styles can create friction long before anyone identifies the cause.
Key takeaways for employer brand, HR, and talent acquisition professionals
Whether you're scaling a global function, building an employer brand across multiple markets, or rethinking your TA operations, here’s a recap on some areas to be aware of:
Apply the 80/20 rule to global hiring and employer branding.
Your company values are the non-negotiable 80%. The remaining 20% should flex to local market needs, team gaps, and cultural context. This applies equally to job descriptions, EVP messaging, and how you define "culture fit" across regions.
Track time-to-productivity.
Time-to-fill is easy to optimise and easy to game. Time-to-productivity indicates whether your hiring decisions are working and may reveal that slowing down yields better outcomes. Cohort-based onboarding is one example of where this metric changes the playbook entirely.
Audit how AI is affecting your stakeholder relationships.
If your team's communication has become grammatically perfect but emotionally flat, that's a signal. The trust that makes TA and employer branding functions effective is built through human connection, not technically correct messages.
Use "how to work with me" documents across your team.
A simple one-pager can prevent friction before it starts and improve cross-functional collaboration. It's especially valuable for distributed and global teams.
