Why CEOs should consider themselves the Head of Recruitment

At this year's Talent Summit, Steven Bartlett, entrepreneur and founder of FlightStory, Thirdweb, and “The Diary Of A CEO” podcast, shared why he dedicates 20-30 hours per week to recruiting, and why every CEO should consider themselves head of recruitment. His fireside chat with Hung Lee, editor at Recruiting Brainfood, revealed the cultural frameworks and hiring philosophies that have powered his companies' growth, and the insights are transformative.

Why every CEO should be the Head of Recruitment

Steven's approach is built on three foundational principles:

1. Finding the world's best people to fulfill the mission

2. Binding them with a culture that makes them do the best work of their lives

3. Setting them a vision and mission that is worthwhile and valuable

This framework emerged from a revealing analysis with his brother Jason, who discovered that Steven's net worth could be traced back to approximately 10 exceptional hiring decisions a decade ago. Those 10 people didn't just perform well; they hired other great people, creating a compound effect that propagated throughout the organization.

Culture isn't what you say. It's how you behave.

One of Steven's most powerful insights challenges how most organizations think about culture. 

To implement this understanding, Steven developed the "Culture Test,” a scenario-based screening tool that reveals how candidates behave in specific situations. Instead of asking generic questions about values, the test presents real scenarios:

• A client texts on Saturday night, needing login details while you're at dinner with your spouse

• Your company gets hacked at 4 AM, sending abusive messages to all clients from your email.

• You've worked on a project for six months, and two days before the deadline, your boss scraps it based on new data.

The responses reveal critical cultural attributes like urgency, kindness, work ethic, and adaptability to change. When tested across their organization, Steven found that all high-performing employees scored above 50 out of 100, while every person who had been let go scored negative numbers.

The Manchester United lesson

Steven's analysis of Manchester United's legendary manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, provides a masterclass in cultural leadership. Through interviews with seven former United players, Bartlett discovered that Ferguson's obsession wasn't strategy or tactics but culture.

The revelation came through Gary Neville's story about charity footballs. When players walked past a staff member collecting signed balls for charity without stopping to sign them, Ferguson "absolutely exploded" at the team. Why? Because failing to sign those balls revealed a lack of humility, which was essential for the behaviors needed to win championships.

Ferguson understood that mission success requires specific behaviors, values, people, and processes. In Manchester United's case:

• Mission: Win the Premier League/Champions League

• Required behavior: Fighting back in the final minutes when trailing

• Required value: Humility (willingness to sprint 200 meters in the rain when you're a millionaire with a Ferrari)

• Cultural signal: Signing charity balls for the local community

This framework — mission → behaviors → values → people/processes — applies directly to business hiring and culture building.

Experimentation as a competitive advantage

When asked about his podcast's rapid rise from zero to global top 10, Steven emphasized that his team's competitive edge wasn't intelligence or expertise. It was experimentation.

This approach is particularly relevant for TA professionals who struggle with content creation and employer branding. Steven's advice is direct: focus on speed of feedback loops, not perfection.

His recommendation for overcoming content paralysis:

• Set a goal of reaching 100 posts, not creating perfect content

• Remove performance anxiety by ignoring metrics initially

• Create accountability through public commitments or partnerships

• Focus on activity (posting consistently) rather than outcomes (engagement rates)

Preparing for the AI transformation

Speaking fresh from an interview with AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton, Steven offered realities and optimistic opportunities about AI's impact on recruitment and hiring.

Professionals' fundamental choice is whether to perceive AI as a threat (and respond with avoidance) or as an opportunity (and react with engagement). For recruiters, this means AI handling administrative tasks while humans focus on relationship-building, cultural assessment, and strategic talent planning — the distinctly human elements that create competitive advantage.

How AI changes hiring priorities

Steven's company has launched an "AI agent competition" to identify which roles and tasks can be automated over 60 days. This isn't about replacing people wholesale. It's about understanding how roles will evolve and what human capabilities become more valuable.

Three attributes now top his hiring priorities:

1. Taste: In a world where AI can generate infinite content, someone still needs to choose what's good

2. Hard work and agency: AI tools still require human initiative and effort to be effective

3. Pro-change attitude: With technology evolving weekly, adaptability becomes crucial

These priorities reflect a broader shift: as AI handles routine tasks, human judgment, creativity, and relationship skills become more valuable, not less.

A message for Talent Acquisition professionals

Steven's closing message resonated with urgency and opportunity.

His advice for navigating this transformation:

• Lean into uncertainty rather than avoiding it

• Experiment rapidly to accelerate learning

• Focus on AI tools and education now, before the opportunity passes

• Remember that attitude determines outcomes during periods of significant transition

Steven sees this as a defining moment, during which those who embrace change will create outsized opportunities while others will be left behind.

The recruitment imperative

Throughout the conversation, one theme remained constant: in an age of rapid technological change, the thriving companies will best identify, attract, and retain the right people with the right cultural attributes. This makes recruitment not just a business function, but the business function that determines everything else.

For TA professionals, Steven's insights offer both validation and challenge. Validation that your work sits at the heart of business success. Challenge to evolve your methods, embrace new technologies, and focus on the distinctly human elements that no AI can replicate.

The companies that get this right will survive the AI transformation and define what business looks like on the other side.