What is a Recruiting Leadership Lab?
A Recruiting Leadership Lab is a small-cohort workshop built only for corporate recruiting leaders. It’s hands-on and scenario-based: you leave with real plans, templates and strategies you can use the next day, not theory from a slide deck. Every lab is capped at 20 leaders and led by John Vlastelica, so you get nineteen peers from other companies in the room with you.
Small cohorts
Capped at twenty leaders, so everyone gets airtime and nobody sits at the back.
Peers at your level
Nineteen other people who run recruiting at companies with problems the size of yours.
Working sessions, not talks
You build plans, templates and strategies in the room, and take them away with you.
Upcoming labs
Events
Each lab runs as a single dated cohort with limited seats. When a lab is between dates, join the waitlist and we’ll tell you the moment the next one opens.
Improving Quality of Hire
World Trade Center Seattle
- Redefine quality of hire and align your teams on the process to deliver it in 2026 and beyond.
- Get busy hiring managers to invest their limited time on the highest-ROI hiring work.
- Decide where to spend limited recruiting capacity for the biggest gains in quality.
QBRs & Influencing Executives
Location: TBD
- Build and run a strategic, forward-looking quarterly business review with your VP-level execs.
- Use insights and metrics to diagnose root issues, influence execs and win their buy-in.
- Build a recruiting plan that balances quality against speed and scale.
This is not a conference. It’s a working session.
No academic guru. No vendor sales pitch. Every lab is designed to prepare you for the strategic conversations you’re actually having, with execs, with hiring managers, and with your own team, and to send you home able to lead them better.
- No vendor pitches and no panel of strangers agreeing with each other.
- You work on your own problems, with people who have solved them before.
- You leave with something written down that you can act on Monday.
Led by John Vlastelica.
John runs the labs himself. He founded Recruiting Toolbox in 2005 after almost ten years leading corporate recruiting at Amazon and Expedia, co-created Amazon’s bar raiser programme, and is consistently one of the highest rated speakers at LinkedIn Talent Connect. In a room of twenty, that means you are arguing with him, not listening to him.
Teams who changed how they hire.
Amazon.com
Feedback was great, professional, entertaining, and respectful of their intelligence and time.
Recruiting Director
Disney
Awesome content and applicability. I left with a toolkit to be a better leader.
Recruiting Manager
Starbucks
I can leave today and immediately implement these strategies and tools.
Tech Hiring Manager
Google X
Amazing. Worth every penny. Highly recommend.
Recruiting Leader
Nike
Engaging, credible expert who spoke our language. Extremely helpful to move this organization forward.
Recruiting Director
Am I eligible?
These labs are built for a specific room.
We keep cohorts tight and relevant, so eligibility matters. It’s part of what makes the peer conversations so valuable. Not sure if you qualify? Ask us.
A lab is for you if
- You’re a current corporate recruiting manager or leader.
- You manage recruiters, and lead recruiting for a department or region.
- You’re responsible for recruiting strategy, quality and outcomes, not just filling reqs.
Not the right fit
- Vendors, agency and RPO recruiting leaders.
- Hands-on recruiters who don’t manage a team.
- Anyone hoping for a sales pitch, this is a working session, not a demo.
Contact us
Tell us what is not working in your hiring. If we are not the right answer we will say so, and point you at who is.