Blue Collar Skills Matching Platform Launches

In a recent podcast episode, Chris Russell sat down with Daniel Walsh, CEO and founder of Veroskills, to discuss how their AI-powered staffing platform is addressing the $1 trillion blue-collar labor gap. With a new $5.3M funding round, Veroskills is on a mission to transform hiring and empower both employers and job seekers in the blue-collar sector. Here are the highlights:

Bridging the Blue-Collar Labor Gap Veroskills focuses on connecting skilled blue-collar talent with nationwide employers, leveraging AI to streamline and enhance the recruitment process. Their technology enables efficient job matching, deep skill assessments, and even resume creation for candidates without one.

How the Process Works

• Employers provide job details, which the platform transcribes and uses to launch multi-channel job postings and targeted social media ads.

• Candidates progress through an AI-driven interview and skills assessment—an in-depth, language-agnostic process lasting up to an hour.

• AI scores candidates and determines readiness for background checks.

• For candidates without resumes, the platform generates one automatically from the interview insights.

Human Touch Where It Matters After onboarding and payroll setup, Veroskills staff coordinate interview scheduling and direct communication. Candidates are kept informed by text throughout, including preparation tips and onboarding steps.

‘No-Risk’ Working Interview Day Veroskills introduces a “working interview day,” letting candidates work on-site and get paid before a hiring decision. This builds trust with employers and has an 80% success rate in placements.

Business Model Built for SMBs As employer of record, Veroskills manages payroll, taxes, and insurance—relieving small business owners of complex administrative tasks. The platform serves sectors typically untouched by large staffing firms and charges a transparent mark-up over hourly wages.

Upskilling & Future-Proofing the Workforce Recognizing a shortage of skilled workers, Veroskills offers a library of 900 free upskilling courses to help employees advance from general labor to licensed trades, supporting both worker growth and employer retention.

Competitive Advantage By automating and scaling the candidate pipeline, Veroskills processes thousands of interviews daily and fills jobs in days, not weeks. Their AI-first approach allows them to serve niche and remote roles with efficiency unmatched by traditional firms.

Rapid Growth & Industry Connections With about 50 employees and plans to expand presence at industry conferences, Veroskills is poised for further growth. CEO Daniel Walsh emphasizes the company’s focus on human flourishing—helping people find meaningful, well-paid work in trades with long-term demand.

Conclusion Veroskills is redefining how the blue-collar workforce is sourced, screened, and onboarded—making it easier for businesses to hire qualified workers and for individuals to access promising career paths in skilled trades.

Learn more at veroskills.com.

Why the Future of Hiring May Require "Intelligent Job Throttling"

The Monday morning scene for a modern recruiter often looks like a digital disaster movie. You open a requisition on Friday afternoon. By 9:00 AM Monday, your ATS dashboard isn't just busy; it’s hyperventilating. 3,000 applicants. For one mid-level role.

We are living through a unique convergence in the labor market. A wave of high-profile layoffs has created a massive pool of eager talent. Simultaneously, generative AI has democratized corporate-grade automation for the individual job seeker. Tools that auto-apply, perfectly tailor resumes to keywords in milliseconds, and blast applications across platforms are now commonplace.

We have removed all friction from applying. The result isn't a talent pool; it's a talent deluge.

The Current Defense: Identity vs. Volume

Employers and ATS vendors are realizing that the old floodgates cannot hold. We are seeing the first signs of a defensive build-up.

Recent moves, like Greenhouse Software partnering with CLEAR for verified identity, are excellent steps toward combatting outright fraud. They ensure the person applying is a real human being, not a bot farm or a bad actor trying to phish corporate data.

But solving for identity does not solve for volume.

5,000 verified, real human beings applying to a job in 24 hours is still an unmanageable crisis for a human recruiting team. It leads to reviewer fatigue, inevitable "ghosting" (because who can send personalized rejections to thousands?), and a degradation of the candidate experience for everyone involved.

If the candidate side is using AI designed for speed and volume, the employer side needs an AI countermeasure designed for pacing and control.

The Future Concept: Intelligent Job Throttling

The next necessary evolution in ATS technology might be controversial, but it seems increasingly inevitable: AI-driven velocity throttling.

Imagine an ATS feature that functions like a stock market circuit breaker.

When the stock market crashes too fast, trading is automatically halted to allow cool heads to prevail and prevent panic. Why don't our job postings have the same mechanism?

How it might work:

An AI layer within the ATS monitors incoming application velocity against historical benchmarks for similar roles.

• Scenario: A remote marketing manager role usually gets 50 apps on Day 1. Today, it receives 400 applications in the first hour due to an AI-applier tool targeting the post.

• The Trigger: The ATS recognizes this anomalous velocity.

• The Throttle: The AI automatically initiates a tiered response without human intervention:

  • Tier 1: The job posting is immediately de-indexed from free aggregators (Indeed, LinkedIn feed, etc.).

  • Tier 2: The "Apply Now" button on the career site changes to "Join Talent Community Waitlist."

  • Tier 3: The requisition is temporarily paused entirely, becoming invisible externally until the recruiter reviews the initial batch.

The uncomfortable Necessity

The immediate reaction to this idea from job seekers will likely be frustration. It feels like creating artificial scarcity. It feels unfair to the person who wasn't at their computer at the exact moment the job went live.

However, we must confront the reality of the alternative.

If a recruiter has 3,000 applications, they are likely only reviewing the first 100-200 anyway before they find enough qualified candidates for phone screens. The remaining 2,800 people are already being functionally "throttled"—they just don't know it yet. They are left hoping for an email that will never come.

Intelligent throttling offers a difficult but perhaps more honest approach. It stops accepting applications when the capacity to review them humanely has been exceeded. It protects the recruiter’s bandwidth, ensuring the candidates who did get in receive actual consideration, rather than a 3-second glance.

The AI Arms Race Continues

We are in the midst of a great re-balancing of power in hiring, driven by artificial intelligence. As soon as one side gains a technological advantage in speed, the other side must develop a countermeasure.

If candidates are going to use AI to accelerator pedals to the floor, employers have no choice but to install AI-powered brakes. Intelligent throttling may soon move from a hypothetical concept to an essential survival tool for the modern Talent Acquisition department.

RippleMatch COO Talks 'AI-Ready Talent'

RippleMatch recently announced the launch of its AI-Talent Marketplace, a skills-based hiring engine built to meet the realities of a job market transformed by AI. The new platform replaces resumes and proxies with verified skill signals showcasing AI fluency, interpersonal skills, and technical proficiencies. Designed to serve the next generation of talent and companies building the modern teams of tomorrow, this product marks a “shift in how early-career hiring happens”.

Here to discuss the new features and the state of early career recruiting is their COO Brennan Delsing.

TOPICS

1. Give us a brief history of Ripplematch and tell the audience what you do?

2. Your announcement places a huge emphasis on "AI fluency" as the new critical skill. This is a new and abstract concept for many. How does your platform practically and verifiably measure a candidate's ability to "wield AI tools," beyond just them listing it as a skill?

3. The releases notes that AI has amplified hiring problems by enabling "bot-like behavior and inflated qualifications." How does your marketplace technically differentiate between a candidate who truly possesses a skill versus one who simply used AI to generate a polished-but-empty application?

4. Demo …

5. With AI automating so many traditional entry-level tasks, many young professionals are anxious. How does your platform actively guide a candidate to identify their specific skill gaps and become what you call "AI-ready"?

6. This platform is built on "verified skill signals" instead of "outdated resumes." Five years from now, do you see this as the beginning of the end for the traditional resume? And what impact will that shift have on the broader early-career ecosystem, from universities to the "AI-native" students themselves?

7. Got a favorite feature?

Incredible Health CEO Discusses Success in Healthcare Recruiting

Incredible Health: Revolutionizing Healthcare Recruitment with AI and Marketplace Innovation

In a recent episode of the RecTech Podcast, Iman Abuzeid, CEO and cofounder of Incredible Health, shared the inspiring story and groundbreaking strategies behind the healthcare recruitment startup now valued at $1.65 billion. Founded eight years ago and headquartered in San Francisco, Incredible Health set out to solve one of America’s largest labor crises: chronic healthcare staffing shortages. Today, it connects over 1.5 million U.S. nurses—one out of every three nurses in the country—with 1,500 top healthcare employers including major systems like Kaiser Permanente, Trinity Health, and Johns Hopkins.

A Reverse Marketplace Model That Empowers Nurses

From the start, Incredible Health flipped the traditional hiring model. Rather than nurses applying to employers and facing long response times, the platform allows employers to apply to qualified nurses. Candidates create a profile, are screened quickly via automation and human review, and receive interview requests—sometimes the same day. This model has drastically reduced hiring from a typical 60–80 days down to just 20 days, saving health systems millions by cutting expenses related to overtime and temporary staffing.

Growth Through Product Innovation and Generational Engagement

Incredible Health doesn’t only match nurses and employers; it also invests in retaining and empowering its community. The platform offers free continuing education, salary estimators, and a social community. These features, combined with strong word of mouth and ongoing support for career advancement, keep nurses highly engaged and active on the platform—a key reason for Incredible Health’s lead over general job networks like LinkedIn in the U.S. nursing market.

Game-Changing AI Voice Agents: Gale and Lynn

At the forefront of healthcare recruitment tech is Incredible Health’s AI suite. The launch of two AI-powered voice agents, Gale (named after Florence Nightingale) and Lynn (named after Marilyn Gaston), represents a leap for both nurse candidates and employers. Gale acts as a 24/7 virtual career partner, assisting in interview prep, conducting mock interviews, and even generating high-quality resumes—particularly helpful for the 30% of nurses who begin their job search without one. Nurses give Gale a 90%+ approval rating, citing reduced anxiety and the convenience of support outside business hours.

Lynn steps in as an AI recruiter for employers, verifying credentials, conducting initial interviews, and actively “selling” the employer’s nurse-centric benefits. The feedback? Lynn shortens the phone screening process from four days to same-day turnaround, boosts candidate engagement, and saves recruiters up to 800 hours annually. The AI never replaces human decision-making: after each interview, Lynn generates a detailed summary for human recruiters to review, adhering to evolving state compliance regulations.

Customization, Compliance, and Market Leadership

Incredible Health’s AI solutions are highly customizable, enabling each employer to tailor questions and workflow integration to their specific needs. The system easily integrates with various applicant tracking systems, streamlining how hospitals manage all nurse applicants through a single platform. With an eye on both long-term compliance and the nuances of clinical roles, Incredible Health has trained its AI on millions of nurse interactions over its eight-year history.

Expanding the Vision

Looking ahead, Abuzeid revealed plans to expand Incredible Health’s technology and marketplace to allied health professionals, technicians, and physicians—addressing the full spectrum of clinical hiring needs across U.S. healthcare.

Conclusion

Incredible Health’s unique approach—pairing a reverse-marketplace model with AI-driven, nurse-centered technology—has rapidly transformed it into the nation’s leading hiring engine for permanent healthcare staff. By prioritizing speed, user experience, and technological innovation, the company isn’t just facilitating hires; it’s shaping the future of healthcare careers in the U.S.

For more success stories and the latest on recruiting technology, subscribe to the RecTech Podcast or visit incrediblehealth.com.

RecFest Interviews | Nashville 2025

Todays episode is sponsored by ⁠Cliquify⁠, my travel sponsor for this event.

In this episode you will hear from a variety of TA and Employer Brand execs tell you what’s in store for 2026, how AI is affecting their jobs and more!

• Ian Ide, Foundation Medicine

• Rachel Duran, HP Enterprise

• Tractor Supply TA team

• Dan Lockhart, Sondermind

• Cathy Rogers B2B VIP

• JCK, GBS Worldwide

• Kylie Denk, Index Exchange

• Michael Glenn, Agility Hire

• Nick Russell Advisor360

• Kara Yarnot, Author

Around 2,000 folks hit the Fairgrounds in Nashville for the annual two day RecFest event.

HR Technology at PepsiCo with Mark Sankarsingh

In a recent episode of the RecTech Podcast, Chris Russell interviews Mark Sankarsingh, VP of Tech Strategy at PepsiCo, to discuss the evolving landscape of HR technology and its implications for hiring practices. The conversation kicks off with Mark sharing insights from the HR Tech conference, noting the surge of AI vendors and the rapid pace of innovation in the industry.

Mark emphasizes the importance of responsible AI in the hiring process, highlighting PepsiCo's careful approach to integrating AI tools while ensuring human oversight remains central to decision-making. He details the various roles PepsiCo hires for, from frontline workers in manufacturing and logistics to knowledge workers in corporate functions, and discusses the unique challenges of recruiting in a competitive labor market.

The podcast also delves into PepsiCo's HR tech stack, including their use of iCims for applicant tracking and the potential consolidation of their systems to enhance efficiency. Mark shares anecdotes about the company's culture and the significance of brand loyalty among employees, illustrating the distinct differences between corporate environments in consumer goods versus financial services.

As the discussion wraps up, Mark reflects on the challenges of navigating the fast-paced changes in HR tech, emphasizing the need for a strategic approach to technology adoption. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to stay informed and engaged in the ever-evolving world of recruitment technology.

HR Tech Conversations: Paylocity's Melissa King

Melissa King is the SVP of Product & Technology for Paylocity. We chatted at the recent HR tech Conference in Las Vegas.

• How long have you been at Paylocity and describe your role?

• Myth you do more than payroll…All the payroll companies seem to be HCM suites at this point, correct?

• How Paylocity is weaving AI into its platform to power smarter navigation and real assistance across the HR functions? AI assistant

• Is the future of HR systems agentic?

• Whats your fav new AI feature in the product?

• What is HR software like in 10 years? Describe a couple use cases

• What do you think of all the M&A going on…?

HR Tech Conversatons: Phenom's John Deal

John Deal, Phenom’s Sr Director of Product Marketing stops by to catch us up on their Agentic AI rollout.

• You announced your Ai agents back in March give us an update on where the rollout stands.

• Any new features since the spring?

• Whats your favorite feature?

• Thoughts on all the acquisitions?

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HR Tech Conversations: isolved's Heidi Barnett

isolved’s Heidi Barnett stops by at the HR Tech show to detail their new partnership with Indeed. Along with Workable, isolved is one of only two hand-selected partners worldwide to seamlessly integrate  with Indeed Talent Scout, a new intelligent conversational artificial intelligence (AI) agent  designed to improve how employers find, engage and hire talent.

HR Tech Conversations: Draup's Co-Founder

Draup provides multi-dimensional knowledge for sales and talent domains using machine learning & human curation. Vamsee Tirukkala chatted with me on the floor of the HR tech expo to tell us more about Draups mission.