TechTACon

Hi, John Vlastelica here. I started TechTACon as the entity I’m using for investments and advisory work with startups in the talent space. I invest in companies that are solving problems that speak to what I care about most – getting great talent into organizations, fairly, with a great candidate experience.

About Me

John Vlastelica

Founder & CEO, Recruiting Toolbox, Inc.

I’ve been leading Recruiting Toolbox, a global management consulting and training firm, since 2005. We help companies define their hiring bars, improve their talent strategies and processes, train recruiters to be talent advisors, train TA leaders to be strategic executive partners to the business, and train interviewers and hiring managers to hire the best talent for their teams in a fair way. Since 2005, we’ve helped over 350 companies in 30 countries, and trained over a hundred thousand people through live and online training workshops. Our clients include many of the biggest names in each industry segment, including Google, Walmart, Starbucks, LinkedIn, Nike, Uber, P&G, CVS, Siemens, Booking, PepsiCo, Adobe, Marriott, Novo Nordisk, AMD, Nubank, SAP, Autodesk, and EA Games.

My team and I draw heavily on our practitioner experience to ensure our deliverables are built for the real world. I was the head of all technical recruiting for Amazon and the global head of TA for Fortune 500 company, Expedia, the parent company to all kinds of travel companies. My team has held director level TA leader roles at companies like KPMG, T-Mobile, and Marriott.

I’ve shared my lessons learned with colleagues as an entertaining and credible repeat speaker at top recruiting conferences around the world, earning a #1 speaker rating at conferences like LinkedIn Talent Connect, SourceCon, and RecFest. I sold the conference I co-founded in 2018 (Talent42) to ERE Media, and started my large-company, head of TA workshop – Recruiting Leadership Lab 50 – in 2024.

In 2021, I began began advising the founders of Social Talent, the #1 online hiring training platform company based in Dublin, Ireland. Each year, my paid content gets an 80+ NPS rating and is watched between 500,000-1 million minutes per month by their global client base that includes Paramount, Cisco, SAP, IKEA, Accenture, and Ericsson.

In 2025, I began investing in companies and exploring more advisory opportunities.

John Vlastelica Picture

Areas of Expertise

Check out some of my recent articles here:

Topic Article Link
AI Why You Need a Company-Wide Point of View on Candidate Cheating https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/why-you-need-company-wide-pov-on-candidate-cheating
AI Will AI Replace Junior Roles? https://transform.us/articles/ai-impact-hiring-junior-roles/
AI What Talent Leaders Need to Know — and Do — About the Upsurge in Candidate Cheating https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/what-talent-leaders-need-to-know-about-candidate-cheating
AI Will AI Usher in An Era of Inefficiency in Recruiting? https://blog.recruitingtoolbox.com/blog/will-ai-usher-in-an-era-of-inefficiency-in-recruiting
Assessment How to Assess If a Candidate Is Actually Motivated to Do a Great Job https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/how-untested-assumptions-can-undercut-hiring
Culture of Recruiting Is It Time We Required a License to Hire? https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/require-license-to-hire
Culture of Recruiting Use the Hiring Manager Maturity Model to Build a Culture of Recruiting https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/hiring-manager-maturity-model
Metrics The Most Important Recruiting Metric You’ve Never Heard Of: Time to Alignment https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/most-important-recruiting-metric-you-never-heard-of-time-to-alignment
Quality of Hire We Need Speed to Get Quality: Why Now Is Not the Time to Slow Your Hiring Process https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/we-need-speed-to-get-quality
Recruiting Strategy Why It’s Time to End the ‘Ideal Target Candidate Profile’ https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/time-to-end-ideal-target-candidate-profile
Recruiting Strategy Breaking Down Silos: Why Companies Are Taking a More Holistic Approach to Talent Acquisition Leadership https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/breaking-down-silos
Recruiting Strategy Change Is Hard. Will AI Make It Easier in TA? https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/change-is-hard-will-ai-make-it-easier-in-ta
Recruiting Strategy If You’re Looking to Transform TA at Your Company, You Need These 2 Things https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/transforming-ta-at-your-company
Recruiting Strategy What Kind of Taxes Are You Paying in Talent Acquisition? https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/talent-acquisition-taxes
Recruiting Strategy Ready, Fire, Aim? Why Great TA Teams Pause to Aim First https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/ready-fire-aim-why-great-ta-teams-pause-to-aim-first
Recruiting Strategy Recruiting Toolbox’s John Vlastelica on Leading Holistically in a World of HR Silos https://blog.recruitingtoolbox.com/blog/recruiting-toolboxs-john-vlastelica-leading-in-talent-acquisition
Talent Advisor 4 Steps for Influencing Hiring Managers (and Becoming an Indispensable Advisor) https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/steps-for-influencing-hiring-managers-and-becoming-an-indispensable-advisor
Talent Advisor Stop Doing These 3 Things If You Want to Be Seen as a Talent Advisor by Hiring Managers https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/be-seen-as-talent-advisor-by-hiring-managers
Talent Advisor Why Curiosity Might Be the Most Important Skill for Recruiters https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/why-curiosity-is-most-important-skill-for-recruiters
Talent Advisor 9 Ways to Become a Strategic Talent Advisor to Your Business, According to John Vlastelica https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-connect/become-strategic-talent-advisor-to-your-business
Talent Advisor How to Be a Talent Advisor https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/how-to-be-a-talent-advisor
Talent Advisor How Recruiting Has Changed in the Past 20 Years, According to 5 Talent Leaders https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/how-recruiting-has-changed-in-past-20-years
Talent Advisor 5 Signals That You’re Operating as a Talent Advisor https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/talent-advisor-signals
Talent Advisor Becoming a Talent Advisor: 25 Free Resources to Get Started in 2025 https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/becoming-talent-advisor-free-resources-to-get-started
Training Why Most Hiring Manager Training Sucks, Fails, and Makes Us Look Bad https://recruitingtoolbox.com/how-to-build-great-hiring-manager-training/